Yes, true, the induction problem and all that. We already went over Chomsky's lack of field work, so the bits from me above are not so much his central argument as they are incomplete empirical validation of his idea. There are two domains above: the domain of human beings as sentence producers, and the domain of languages. Consider only the former: if we don't have a little reliable UG device sitting inside us somewhere, how come each of us (who speaks say the English language), from the get go, obeys the universal grammar rules? That's the argument. My discussion with Michael though is whether the above if true (which I am inclined to believe) necessitates the second claim of dedicated circuitry. There are good arguments, I think, in favour of the second claim as well -- but I am not convinced that the poverty of input is one of them.
> Seems to me there's a lot up in the air, which is part of what
> Kenneally is driving at no?
I don't really know. I have never read Kenneally, and I have no disagreement with her. But if what you say above is true (Kenneally is driving at the point that there's a lot up in the air), is this a new finding? I thought it is common knowledge that Chomskyian ideas are under attack on multiple fronts (behavioural psychologists question his innate organ argument, Pinker and the EP crowd question his lack of faith in adaptationism, etc).
--ravi