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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, 24 Jan 1995 22:27:34 GMT
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Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: Chomsky explicitly denies that language acquisition can be part of a
: general learning facility.  Thus he must be arguing for a completely
: new structure built on completely new principles.  But Chomsky has
: not provided a plausible evolutionary path which would allow the
: development of this completely new structure.  He normally refuses to
: seriously discuss the question of how language might have evolved.

The opposable thumb we anthropoids enjoy is a specialized adaptation
for grasping, not a general locomotor facility. This is not to say
that it did not evolve from such a general facility. Similarly,
Chomsky claims that human language acquisition is a special
genetic adaptation. He does *not* claim that this adaptation
did not evolve from a general learning facility, nor that it
is a "completely new structure". He claims that it is, in modern
humans, *no longer* a general purpose facility. There are so
many examples in evolution of such specializations that this
claim is not radical or unusual, and it does not seem to be
necessary for Chomsky to demonstrate the mechanism for this
particular specialization (though it would, of course, be
very interesting if *someone* would do so). A simple comparison
of the ease with which children learn language with their
difficulties learning arithmetic (a learning problem of
comparable or lesser magnitude) would seem to put the burden
of argument on those who would deny the existence of a human
language specialization.

Bo
