language acquisition device: Meaning and Definition of

lan'guage acquisi'tion device"

Pronunciation: [key]
— Psycholinguistics. Psycholinguistics.
  1. a hypothesized innate mental faculty present in infants that enables them to construct and internalize the grammar of their native language on the basis of the limited and fragmentary language input to which they are exposed. Abbr.: LAD
Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.