What term names the view that language is a system of knowledge made manifest in linguistic but innate and universal?

• A. Functionalist
• B. Interactionist
• C. Structuralist
• D. Transformationalist

Answer: (D)

This view treats language as an inborn system of knowledge shared by all humans, with an underlying set of universal principles that shape how we can form and understand sentences. It argues that our minds contain a built-in grammar, and surface speech comes from applying rules to that deep, universal knowledge. In practice, this is the idea that there are common structures across all languages, and transformation rules turn those deep structures into the variety of sentences we actually speak. That’s why it’s called Transformationalist: the emphasis is on how innate knowledge is transformed into different linguistic forms.

Other perspectives focus more on how language is used, learned through social interaction, or analyzed in terms of structural elements, rather than on an inborn, universal knowledge base.