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From: curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 19:15:55 GMT
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Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: <long discourse about inter-group learning differences omitted>
: The effect is that language will evolve so as to mainly contain
: features which are easy to learn, given the particular learning
: biases.  Since these features are easy to learn, we would expect
: children to learn them with relatively little stimulus.  Thus there
: would be evidence to support a 'poverty of stimulus' argument.

But the important point about the Universal Grammar is that it is
*universal*. This is an observation. If Arabian nomads learned
White Christmas myths at an early age, then we might well begin
to suspect genetic influences.

Bo
