--- Gregory Geboski <ggeboski at hotmail.com> wrote:
> << Language, not capacity for language, is a learned
> skill that shapes our consciousness. ... >>
>
> To call language acquisition "learning" in any
> meaningful sense of the word
> "learning" doesn't stand up to how language
> acquisition actually works. What
> Chomsky proved (and I stress the word *proved*,
> through an elegant
> mathematically-based reductio argument) is that
> humans *cannot* pick up all
> the rules for language through their environment; in
> fact, their exposure to
> language is relatively impoverished, and only
> through hypothesizing an
> internal language-generating organ (Chomsky's
> preferred word) can one
> explain this infinitely-generating marvel known as
> human language.
>
Wow. Interesting idea this language-generating organ. I guess poses the question: Is math a language and therefore generated by the language-generating organ or a mathematical equivalent?
Also, recent news reports have stated that neurologists have found that brain activity in infants (measured by synapses formed per time period) is significantly greater than older people. Their interpretaion is that infants make connections like crazy until something finally make sense. After this, they eliminate synapses that don't fit the "sense" and begin building new synapses within this new "sense". The reduction of synaptic activity seeems to correspond to the age at which language is generated - which also corresponds to the age at which basic math concepts such as quantity and conservation can be expressed.
In light of these observations, it seems to me that Chomsky's language-generating-organ is somehow concerned with more than just language.
Adam
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