Language Acquisition in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives: A Comparative Study of Ibn Khaldun’s Conception of Linguistic Aptitude and Noam Chomsky’s Theory of Generative Grammar

Language acquisition has been a central subject of inquiry across intellectual traditions, bridging the fields of linguistics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology.While modern linguistic thought is often associated with Noam Chomsky's theory of transformational-generative grammar, historical scholarship-most notably that of the fourteenth-century historian and sociologist Ibn Khaldun-offers significant insights into the mechanisms and conditions of language acquisition.This study undertakes a comparative examination of Ibn Khaldun's conception of language acquisition, rooted in environmental exposure, practice, and repetition, and Chomsky's perspective, which foregrounds the innate faculties of the human mind.Employing a descriptive and comparative methodology, this article identifies both convergences and divergences in their positions.The findings reveal that Ibn Khaldun's emphasis on environmental and social determinants complements, rather than contradicts, Chomsky's proposition of an inborn linguistic faculty.The novelty of this research lies in situating Ibn Khaldun within contemporary debates in psycholinguistics, thereby bridging premodern sociological thought with modern linguistic theory.By integrating two epistemologically distant yet intellectually resonant frameworks, this study contributes to a broader and more inclusive understanding of language acquisition.