Chomsky -- Put up or blah blah

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at Princeton.EDU
Sat Apr 1 09:47:03 PST 2000


Going in reverse order on this thread, Bill Fancher just noted:


>See "Rethinking Innateness" by Elfman, Bates, Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith,
>Parisi, and Plunkett to hear from six who don't. (They don't find "poverty
>of stimulus" very convincing either.)

Strong evidence of a genetically specified module or organ for language that makes it possible for children to learn to talk would be the existence of mutations that affect it (consequence being feature blind grammar and dysphasia), no? And is there not strong evidence (cited by Maynard Smith and Szathmary) that there is a gene that affects it?

Yours, Rakesh



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