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From: vlsi_lib@netcom.com (Gerard Malecki)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
Message-ID: <vlsi_libD3nCMF.18G@netcom.com>
Organization: VLSI Libraries Incorporated
References: <D3LF78.C8n@hpl.hp.com> <3h67n3$d4r@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D3nA3L.GKD@hpl.hp.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Feb 1995 20:23:03 GMT
Lines: 25
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.philosophy:25278 sci.lang:35291

In article <D3nA3L.GKD@hpl.hp.com> curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry) writes:
>
>Chomsky's work includes Germanic, Asian, and many other languages.
>It is just those approximations, and ultimate capabilities,
>which are *common to all known languages* which provide evidence
>for universal grammar. There are many such commonalities, and they
>are very difficult to explain under any alternative hypothesis
>I am aware of (precisely because of the many cultural and
>environmental differences you point out).
>
>Bo

I had not been following this thread, but what is Chomsky's UG supposed
to be anyway? Couldn't the similarities between languages be simply 
because there isn't really much to play around with in the first place?
In English, usually we have action phrases in which the verb is in
between the subject and the object (something like infix) while in a few
other languages that I am aware of (like French or the south Indian
languages), the verb follows the subject and object, like RPN. Nest
phrases inside one another and you get two completely different structures
that mean the same thing. 

Shankar Ramakrishnan
shankar@vlibs.com

