Thursday, September 27, 2007

The Innateness Hypothesis

Juan Uriagereka is a very good linguist, no doubt. He writes here that

"Language is an innate faculty, rather than a learned behavior...Language may indeed be unique to humans, but the processes that underlie it are not."

Yes, most linguist agree that some sort of cognitive endowment is unique to humans which helps us learn and use language, but the nature of that endowment is far from well understood. Uriagereka has a particularly apropos background for the topic of language evolution, I respect that. Nonetheless, I suspect he is a tad biased towards the Chomskyan view. Therefore, I will try to list the arguments AGAINST the innateness hypothesis for y'all this weekend (I guess this makes #4 on my list of blog promises).
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