Eric Heinz Lenneberg was a linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition

Language acquisition

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...

 and cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....

, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness.
He was born in Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

, Germany. An ethnic Jew, he left Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 because of rising Nazi

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 persecution

Persecution

Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. The inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation,...

. He initially fled to Brazil with his family and then to the United States where he attended the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. A professor of psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 and neurobiology, he taught at the Harvard Medical School, the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 in Ann Arbor and Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 and Medical School.

Lenneberg's 1964 paper "The Capacity of Language Acquisition," originally published in 1960, sets forth seminal arguments about the human-specific biological capacity for language, which were then being developed in his research and discussions with George A. Miller, Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

, and others at Harvard and MIT, and popularized by Steven Pinker in his book, The Language Instinct

The Language Instinct

The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...

. He presents four arguments for biological innateness of psychological capacities, parallel to arguments in biology for the innateness of physical traits:

• Universal appearance of a trait at a single time across a species. "Species typical" traits.
• Universal appearance across time for a group. Not just an artifact of cultural history. Again, "species typical" diagnostic feature.
• No learning of the trait is possible.
• Individual development of a trait rigidly follows a given schedule regardless of the particular experience of the organism.

In his publication Biological Foundations of Language he advanced the hypothesis

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...

 of a critical period

Critical period

This article is about a critical period in an organism's or person's development. See also America's Critical Period.In general, a critical period is a limited time in which an event can occur, usually to result in some kind of transformation...

 for language development; a topic which remains controversial and the subject of debate. Lenneberg's biological approach to language was related to developments such as the motor theory of speech perception

Motor theory of speech perception

thumb|250px|right|When we hear [[speech|spoken words]] we sense that they are made of auditory [[sound]]s. The motor theory of speech perception argues that behind the sounds we hear are the intended movements of the [[vocal tract]] that [[pronunciation|pronounces]] them.The motor theory of speech...

 developed by Alvin Liberman and colleagues at Haskins Laboratories

Haskins Laboratories

Haskins Laboratories is an independent, international, multidisciplinary community of researchers conducting basic research on spoken and written language. Founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut since 1970, Haskins Laboratories is a private, non-profit research institute with a...

 and also provided historical antecedents to issues now emerging in embodied philosophy and embodied cognition

Embodied cognitive science

Embodied Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary field of research, the aim of which is to explain the mechanisms underlying intelligent behavior...

.