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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: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:16:59 GMT
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In article <D3n9IJ.GBz@hpl.hp.com> curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry) writes:
>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.

But of course the UG is uiversal: it's constructed to be universal.
(Surely Chomsky et al change their account of the UG when they encounter
something the current version gets wrong or doesn't explain.)  So
it matters what Chomsky's theories look like: it matters that they're
not incredibly _ad hoc_.

-- jd




