An Account of the move in linguistics from the Standard Social Science Model to Usage-Based

I start by describing the framework of studies that led to Chomsky’s idea of the genetic component of human language. I then examine his contribution to modern linguistics, the Universal Grammar Theory and X-bar theory. A special place is reserved to John Tooby and Leda Cosmides’ introduction to the 1992 volume The Adapted Mind. I later introduce Pinker’s idea of the language instinct, and then proceed to describe his theory of the language of the mind. I conclude my essay by describing the most recent development in the realm of cognitive studies of language acquisition, usage-based linguistics. The description of the different theories follows the chronological order.