andie nachgeborenen wrote:
(I am carefully avoiding the term "genetic" here, as Chomsky also does usually in this context.)
Arash:
No, Chomsky is quite explicit in stating his belief that universal grammar is genetically specified as you can see in the snippet from an interview below. What he is averse to is the claim that this genetic specification necessarily implies natural selection.
A cute story to go with this, I met a guy at a party once who had asked Chomsky what he thought was the most important thing someone needed when learning another language. Chomsky gave him a wry smile and replied, "genes."
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1984----.htm
QUESTION: Do we genetically inherit this knowledge?
CHOMSKY: Yes, we must. In fact, by universal grammar I mean just that system of principles and structures that are the prerequisites for acquisition of language, and to which every language necessarily conforms.
QUESTION: Does it mean that this genetic basis of language is universal?
CHOMSKY: Yes, that's right. But we are only one species. You can imagine a different world in which a number of species developed with different genetically determined linguistic systems. It hasn't happened in evolution. What has happened is that one species has developed, and the genetic structure of this species happens to involve a variety of intricate abstract principles of linguistic organization that, therefore, necessarily constrain every language, and, in fact, create the basis for learning language as a way of organizing experience rather than constituting something learned from experience.
andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>But Chomsky sees his transformational grammar as a
sort of innate idea, a structure to our language (all
human language) that we come with without having to
learn it from experience the way we learn to speak a
particular language. (I am carefully avoiding the term
"genetic" here, as Chomsky also does usually in this
context.) That is why he calls himself "Cartesian."