Noam Chomsky's concept of a “Language Organ” that exists within the brain is a very interesting concept in that it attempts to explain the background structures that go in to actually learning a language. Chomsky proposes that the “Language Organ” exists from a heredity standpoint as pointed out here in this quotation:

“QUESTION: Why do you believe that language behavior critically depends on the existence of a genetically preprogrammed language organ in the brain?

CHOMSKY: There’s a lot of linguistic evidence to support this contention. But even in advance of detailed linguistic research, we should expect heredity to play a major role in language because there is really no other way to account for the fact that children learn to speak in the first place.”

(Gliedman, 1983)

The proposition by Chomsky that there is a structure in the human brain that exists from birth that provides the underlying foundations for someone to learn how to speak is a bold proposition and one that provides for much discussion and research. The first question is how do we know that this exists? Theorists and researchers who oppose the “Language Organ” concept will contend that there is actually no scientific proof to verify the existence of it. So then it becomes a question of how to prove the existence of the “Language Organ”? As cited from the Gliedman interview here:

“QUESTION: What about the linguistic evidence? What have you learned from studying human languages to corroborate your biological viewpoint?

CHOMSKY: The best evidence involves those aspects of a language grammar that are so obvious, so intuitively self-evident to everyone, that they are quite rightly never mentioned in traditional grammars.

QUESTION: You mean that school grammars fill in the gaps left by heredity? They teach everything about French or Russian, for example, that can’t be taken for granted by virtue of the fact that you’re human?

CHOMSKY: That’s right. It is precisely what seems self-evident that is most likely to be part of our hereditary baggage. Some of the oddities of English pronoun behavior illustrate what I mean. Take the sentence, “John believes he is intelligent.” Okay, we all know that “he” can refer either to John or to someone else; so the sentence is ambiguous. It can mean either that John thinks he, John, is intelligent, or that someone else is intelligent. In contrast, consider the sentence, “John believes him to be intelligent.” Here, the pronoun “him” can’t refer to John; it can refer only to someone else.

Now, did anyone teach us this peculiarity about English pronouns when we were children? It would be hard to even imagine a training procedure that would convey such information to a person. Nevertheless, everybody knows it — knows it without experience, without training, and at quite an early age. There are any number of other examples that show that we humans have explicit and highly articulate linguistic knowledge that simply has no basis in linguistic experience.”

(Gliedman, 1983)

So the question of how a person learns how to speak is a deep and interesting question that has many facets to explore. It occurs to me that there must be some underlying hereditary language 'code' embedded within the brain from birth. I base this on my own consideration of reading through Chomsky and others (Skinner, Pinker for example) and this “Language Organ” seems to make the most sense. Language is so complex and has many nuances that if you take in to consideration a language such as Mandarin Chinese or Icelandic, which have very unique characteristics, there must be something within the brain that allows that person to have a foundation for learning that particular language.

But then the question would arise, what if someone of any particular heritage was raised in an environment different than that of their genetic heritage where a different language was spoken? Does the “Language Organ” allow for adaptation to provide foundation for learning a language to that which is different then that of the genetic heritage of the individual?

There are many interesting aspects to Chomsky's concept of the “Language Organ” and I find this to be a semi-plausible concept.

References

Gliedman, J. (1983, November). Things No Amount of Learning Can Teach, Noam Chomsky interviewed by John Gliedman. Retrieved from https://chomsky.info/198311__/