The course will explore central theories of child language acquisition in the core areas of language – phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, with an emphasis on the Innateness Hypothesis as formulated in various works of Chomsky (1986), Pinker (1994) and others. Some questions that will guide our inquiry are: What properties of the human mind make language so easily accessible to all normally-developing children? Why does it get harder to learn a language as we get older? What evidence is there for the claim that part of linguistic knowledge is innate and can develop independently of other cognitive skills (e.g. logical thought)? How do children attain an impressive depth of linguistic knowledge by the age of 3 - 4 without any explicit teaching of grammar rules by care-takers? We will consider how (psycho)linguistic studies of language provide some answers to these complex questions. How convincing these answers are is up to us to decide in this course. Course requirements include weekly readings, exercises and three exams.