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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 16:31:57 GMT
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In article <3guoku$bci@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <D3GBKw.F5D@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>In article <3gtu3i$rf3@mp.cs.niu.edu>, Neil Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:

>>>By the time of the next generation, this ungrammatical speech has
>>>become the norm.  Therefore, by virtue of the way linguists define
>>>grammatical, it has become the correct grammar for the new
>>>generation.  In other words, without a UG, the language itself
>>>evolves so as to become learnable without a UG.  Who is to say that
>>>the English language has not already evolved so as to become
>>>learnable without a UG?

But perhaps this is not actually possible.  Perhaps w/o a UG
creatures like us can't learn a sufficiently expressive language.

>I was presenting a thought experiment, not suggesting something that
>might have actually happened.  What I was trying to suggest was that,
>even without there being a UG, you can pretty well guarantee that any
>language will evolve to be learnable, simply because a language has
>to be learnable to survive into the next generation.

What if, w/o the UG, we have the linguistic abilities of chimps.
If English (say) evolved to be learnable by such creatures, there'd
be very little left.

>  In the
>circumstances, it is almost certain that there will be apparent
>evidence which supports a "poverty of stimulus" argument.

I don't see how this follows (even assuming that the rest of
your argument is ok).

-- jd
