tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 20 14:57:39 1994

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Re: <Hol wIja'chuq> was: Re:...

> I believe pretty strongly in the theory of language that posits that 
> humans are born with a considerable amount of linguistic knowledge, 
> and that this knowledge must be the same for all humans, regardless of 
> what linguistic community s/he is born in to.  In this sense, most of 
> our knowledge and use of language, with the exception of vocabulary 
> and a few "parameter settings," are "instinctive," in the sense that 
> we're born with it.  I'm not going to bring a generative syntax lesson 
> to this list, but I wanted to point out that instincts are not 
> based on experience, especially when it comes to language.
> 
> --Holtej

Having been brought up in the Chomsky era myself, and as a psychologist 
having read the famous debates between Noam and B.F. Skinner, the two 
poles of the nature/nurture issue in language, I still have to take 
acception to this.

I don't think you mean instinct. The notion of instincts was pretty much 
abandoned some years back for explaining away human behavior, mainly 
because it didn't explain anything, it merely labeled it. Less than useful.

However, I don't think Chomsky was talking about "instinct" either when 
he referred to "an organ of langauge" but rather to the notion that we 
are predisposed to be linguistic beings. That we're hardwired for it at 
some cerebral substrate or other. Or to put it more bluntly, that we 
possess a mechanism that makes us ready to be speakers in a linguistic 
community. Before you jump all over this idea, keep in mind that the same 
argument can be easily demonstrated for the organs of articulation. 
Humans seem to be physically built to speak. It's part of why we can do 
it and chimps cannot (and here I am referring specifically to vocal 
language), they don't have the physical mechanisms, we do. I've always 
understood Chomsky's argument to refer to the cerebral parallel to this 
case. Not instinct, but structure. You can't do squat with instinct. But 
you can point to sections of the brain (left hemisphere for most of us on 
here) and say very definitively some of the linguistic processes that are 
modulated by this or that structure.

Okay, that was my two cents worth here at three in the morning. I'm going 
to sleep now, these other 184 messages can wait till morning.

Lawrence

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