Questão 96597

Noam Chomsky's 1959 review of B.F. Skinner's 'Verbal Behavior' presented a formidable challenge to the psychological theories underpinning the Audio-Lingual Method. Chomsky's critique was not merely a minor academic disagreement; it fundamentally questioned the adequacy of behaviorist explanations for language acquisition, paving the way for the cognitive revolution in linguistics and psychology. He argued that language was not a collection of habits acquired through imitation and reinforcement, but rather a complex cognitive system governed by an innate 'Language Acquisition Device' (LAD), enabling humans to generate and understand a virtually infinite number of novel sentences from a finite set of rules.

Which of the following aspects of language use most directly supports Chomsky's critique and exposes a fundamental weakness of the Audio-Lingual Method's focus on habit formation?