Compare and contrast the behaviorist answer, the linguistic answer, the cognitive answer, and the social-interaction answer to the question, "How do children acquire grammar?"

What will be an ideal response?

The behaviorist answer to acquisition of grammar is through imitation and reinforcement. One problem with this is that most of children's sentences are novel which is difficult to explain in terms of simple imitation of adults' speech. The linguistic answer is that children are born with mechanisms that simplify the task of learning grammar. Although there are findings that support this view, such as specific regions in the brain are involved in learning grammar and the existence of a critical period for acquiring language, they do not prove the existence of the linguistic answer's mechanisms. The cognitive answer is that children learn grammar through powerful cognitive skills that help them rapidly detect regularities in their environment, including patterns in the speech they hear. With this view, children learn language by searching for regularities across many examples that are stored in memory, not through an inborn grammar-learning device. The social-interaction answer draws on each of the views considered above. In addition, this perspective emphasizes that much language learning takes place in the context of interactions between children and adults, with both parties eager for better communication.