The mentalist view on language learning explains language development mainly through the internal mental abilities of the learner. This view became influential as a reaction against behaviourist explanations, which considered language learning to be largely a result of imitation, practice, reinforcement, and habit formation. The mentalist approach argues that human beings possess an innate capacity for language and that learners actively construct knowledge about language rather than simply copying what they hear. According to the mentalist view, language is a complex mental system governed by rules. A language learner does not merely memorize individual words and sentences. Instead, the learner develops an understanding of grammatical rules and relationships that allow them to produce and understand new sentences. This explains why children can create sentences that they have never heard before. Their ability to generate novel utterances suggests that language learning involves mental processing and rule formation. Noam Chomsky is strongly associated with the mentalist or nativist perspective. Chomsky argued that children are biologically prepared to acquire language. He proposed the idea of an innate language faculty and introduced