dren is analogized to a black box called the "Language Acquisition Device" (LAD). This box contains all linguistic principles that do not derive from the interaction with the environment. In Chomsky's (1981) "Principles-and-Parameters Theory" and his subsequent work, his version of how children utilize their linguistic knowledge to acquire language in their specific environments is presented. Before their interaction with the environment, children possess an "universal grammar." With exposure to specific linguistic environments, all children need to do is to set the switches on certain parameters that correspond to their language (in Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996, pp. 31-2).
Therefore, what fundamentally differentiates the rationalist type theories from the empiricist theories lies in the rationalists' belief that children possess the complete potential to develop language. Chomsky's analogy of children to a seed captures his idea about language acquisition. Like a seed that is meant to become a plant, children are programmed to acquire language. However, depending on their environment, they will either excel in their language ability or fail to tap into their language potential (in Cook, 1988, p. 73).
The rationalist type theorists are split between the structure-oriented and the process-oriented groups. The first group of theorists focuses their research on the substantiation of universal linguistic principles. For example, they explore the ways in which these principles are incorporated in language acquisition. The structure-oriented theories are based on the assumption that the children possess tremendous linguistic knowledge (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996, p. 18). Therefore, they are interested in how the children manifest their linguistic knowledge. These theorists do not explore the children's innate linguistic knowledge. In this perspective, the environment is a catalyst that can elicit or suppress the language potentia...