Published 2016-11-01
Keywords
- Innatism,
- Domain-Specificity,
- Universal Grammar
- Innatismo,
- Especificidad de dominio,
- Gramática universal
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The best-known argument in favor of the innatism of certain mental structures is still the ‘Poverty of the Stimulus Argument’ (POSA). The general idea of the POSA is that the knowledge which needs to be acquired to develop a certain cognitive capacity vastly exceeds the information available in the environment, so the organism contributes innate information. A review of the literature on linguistic POSA shows that it is not yet fully clear what kind of argument this is and what it really shows. This paper is intended as a diagnosis of the innateness strategy that makes use of the POSA. I will distinguish three types of POSAs and argue, first, that the most appropriate type of POSA, according to certain empirical and theoretical criteria, does not seem to be sufficient for linguistic nativism and, second, that for it to be sufficient, it is usually supplemented with an armchair argument which weakens the empirical nature of the innateness hypothesis.
References
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Berwick, r., Pietroski, P., Yankama, B., Chomsky, n. (2011), “Poverty of the Stimulus revisited”, Cognitive Science, 35, pp. 1207-1242.
Carey, S. and Spelke, e. (1994), “Domain Specific Knowledge and Conceptual Change” in Hirschfeld, l. and Gelman, S. (eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture, New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 169-200.
Chomsky, n. (1965), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, The MIT Press.
Chomsky, n. (1975), Reflections on Language, New York, Pantheon Books.
Chomsky, n. (1980), Rules and Representations, New York, Columbia University Press.
Chomsky, n. (1986), Knowledge of Language, New York, Praeger.
Chomsky, n. (1991), “linguistics and Adjacent Fields: A Personal view” in Kasher, A. (ed.), The Chomskyan Turn, Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
Chomsky, n. (2000), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Clark, A. and Lappin, S. (2001), Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus, London, Wiley-Blackwell.
Collins, J. (2003), “Cowie on the Poverty of Stimulus,” Synthese, 136, pp. 159-190.
Collins, J. (2004), “Faculty Disputes”, Mind & Language, 19, pp. 503-533.
Collins, J. (2007), “linguistic Competence without Knowledge”, Philosophy Compass, 2 (6), pp. 880-895.
Cowie, F. (1999), What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Cowie, F. (2001), “On Cussing in Church: In Defense of What’s Within?” Mind & Language, 16 (2), pp. 231-245.
Cowie, F. (2008), “Innateness and Language”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, E. N. (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/innateness-language/
Crain, S. and Pietroski, P. (2001), “Nature, Nurture, and Universal Grammar”, Linguistics and Philosophy, 24, pp. 139-186.
Fodor, J. (2001), “Doing Without What Within: Fiona Cowie’s Critique of nativism”, Mind, 110, pp. 99-148.
Fodor, J. and Crowther, C. (2002), “Understanding Stimulus Poverty Arguments”, The Linguistic Review, 19, pp. 105-145.
Keil, F. (1994), “The Birth and nurturance of Concepts by Domains: The origins of Concepts of living Things” in Hirschfeld, l. and Gelman, S. (eds.), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture, New York, Cambridge University Press.
Lasnik, H. and Uriagereka, J. (2002), “On the Poverty of the Challenge”, The Linguistic Review, 19, pp. 147-150.
Laurence, S. and Margolis, e. (2001), “The Poverty of the Stimulus Argument”, British Journal of Philosophy of Science, 52, pp. 217-276.
Legate, J. and Yang, C. (2002), “Empirical Re-assessment of Stimulus Poverty Arguments”, The Linguistic Review, 19, pp. 151-162.
Leslie, A. (1994), “Pretending and Believing: Issues in the Theory of Tomm,” Cognition, 50, pp. 211-238.
Lewis, J. and Elman, J. (2001), “Learnability and the Statistical Structure of Language: Poverty of Stimulus Arguments Revisited” in Proceedings of the 26th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Somerville, Cascadilla Press, pp. 359-370.
Matthews, R. (2001), “Cowie’s Anti-nativism”, Mind & Language, 16 (2), pp. 215-230.
Matthews, R. (2006), “The Case for linguistic nativism” in Stainton, r. (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science, London, Blackwell, pp. 81-97.
Pinker, S. (1994), The Language Instinct, New York, William Morrow.
Pinker, S. (1997), “Evolutionary Biology and the evolution of language”, in Gopnik, m. (ed.), The Inheritance and Innateness of Grammars, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 181-208.
Pullum, G. (1996), “learnability, Hyperlearning, and the Poverty of the Stimulus”, in Johnson, J., Juge, m. l. and Moxley, J. l. (eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting: General Session and Parasession on the Role of Learnability in Grammatical Theory, Berkeley, Berkeley linguistics Society, pp. 498-513.
Pullum, G. and Scholz, B. (2002), “Empirical Assessment of Stimulus Poverty Arguments”, The Linguistic Review, 19, pp. 9-50.
Quine, W. (1972), “Methodological reflections on Current linguistic Theory” in Davidson, D. and Harman, G. (eds.), Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht, Reidle, pp. 442-454.
Quine, W. (1990), “Three Indeterminacies” in Barrett, R. and Gibson, R. (eds.), Perspectives on Quine, oxford, Blackwell, pp. 1-16.
Scholz, B. and Pullum, G. (2002), “Searching for Arguments to Support linguistic nativism”, The Linguistic Review, 19, pp. 185–223.
Simpson, T., Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (2005), “Introduction: nativism Past and Present” in Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. and Stich, S. (eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure andContents, New York, Oxford University Press.
Skidelsky, L. (2013), “Faculty of Language, Functional Models, and Mechanisms”, Journal of Cognitive Science, 14 (2), pp. 111-149.
Stone, T., and Davies, m. (2002), “Chomsky Amongst the Philosophers”, Mind & Language, 17, pp. 276-289.
Thomas, M. (2002), “Development of the Concept of ‘the Poverty of the Stimulus’”, The Linguistic Review, 19, pp. 51-71.
Travis, L. (1984), Parameters and Effects of Word Order Variation, unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, MIT. Wynn, K. (1992), “Addition and Substraction by Human Infants”, Nature, 358, pp. 749-750.