You're on the wrong track. Rather than having me try to explain Chomskyan linguistics here (I seem to have made myself the list expert by default, I'm not that comfortable with it), I suggest you try to read Chomsky, or Pinker, his popularizer. There are many other linguists who could serve just as well, but I can't think of one right now who's easier going than Chomsky himself (and he's no walk in the park).
A few points:
Language "organ": To Chomsky, an entirely abstract concept. He postulates it from external evidence but leaves the discovery and delineation of its physical attributes to the neuroscientists. In fact, he proposed it long before neuroscience was even capable of producing any direct evidence; all in all, he's pretty indifferent to what chunks of the grey stuff affect human language.
The infants' rapidly-forming brain: Known for some time, and no evidence in and of itself for the existence of a language organ (or any particular specialized section/function of the brain). But frequently brought up when studying first-language acquisition, an area that Chomskyan theories have helped greatly.
"Math as a language" and other overarching cognitive roles for the language function: A real trap. Chomsky's program posits nothing beyond the language function as language commonly defined--the traditional grammatical categories (now turned inside out!), sound, words, sentences, syntax, etc.--although it may have interesting implications for other cognitive domains.
People may be in search of the "math organ," but as far as I know, it's not Chomsky or Chomsky-project linguists. Although I know it's been postulated as following logically from the Chomskyan cognitive model.
----Original Message Follows---- From: Adam Pressler <adampopulist at yahoo.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Race Math & Language Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 09:39:45 -0800 (PST)
--- 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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