【正文】 Reflections on the Innateness of Language1. Introduction BackgroundWhether language is due to nature or due to learning has always been one of the most controversial issues for philosophers, anthropologists and linguists both in home and abroad for centuries. However, no generally received conclusions have ever been reached since this question was first proposed. In the middle of the 20th century, a breakthrough was made when Noam Chomsky, perhaps the most influential and meanwhile controversial linguist in the 20th century, elaborated his ideas on the nature of language in his review on B. F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior. To the contrary of the view held by Skinner, who believes language is a set of habits gradually built up over the years, Chomsky argues that there must exist in human brain an innately built device of language acquisition, namely, the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Despite its extreme popularity in the field of linguistics throughout the world, Chomsky’s theory has aroused great controversy and been criticized a lot especially since 1990s. The opponents of Chomsky’s theory, following the tradition of Jean Piaget, hold the view that human is endowed with the general cognitive petence to learn things including language rather than a special device for language acquisition. Despite the intense arguments on this issue, with some linguists prefer Chomsky’s LAD while others may oppose it, nowadays most linguists would agree on the innateness of language, namely, human capacity for language has a genetic basis even though the details of language have to be taught and learned. Literature reviewThe traditional behaviorism sets up the once dominant view that language is no more than habitual behavior on a stimulidespondence basis. The famous psychologist B. F. Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior fully elaborated this idea on language. Noam Chomsky’s review on this book turned a new page of linguistic studies and laid the foundation of his theory on the nature of language. Later, with a series of publications, to name a few, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965), Deep Structure, Surface Structure and Semantic Interpretation (1971), Language and Mind (1972), Essays on Form and Interpretation (1977), Rules and Representations (1980), Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding (1982), The Minimalist Program (1995), Chomsky modified, improved and developed his theories on the nature of language but always insisted on the existence of the special device for language acquisition. (Zhu, 2008) As Chomsky’s theories gradually developed and matured, a group of linguists opposed his ideas in a great number of publications, . The Form of Language (1975) and Making Sense (1980) by Geoffrey Sampson, Language Learnability and Language Development (1984), The Bootstrapping Problem in Language Acquisition (1987), Learnability and Cognition (1989) and The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (1994) by Steven Pinker, and a new view of language which argue that language acquisition is an ordinary learning process exactly like any other kinds of learning, say, learning to drive, was thus established. Theories Skinner’s Elaboration on LanguageAccording to Skinner, no plicated innate or mental mechanisms are needed to acquire language. All that is necessary is the systematic observation of the events in the external world which prompt the speaker to utter sounds. (Aitchison, 2000:7)This explanation of language by Skinner was based on his work with rats and pigeons in which the rats were supposed to learn plex behaviors under the stimuli of food through trialanderror learning which was proved to be true. Skinner believes that the same goes for the acquisition of language, and he thus holds the idea that languag