Empiricist Views on the Innateness Hypothesis
Barbiero, in his note on framing the innateness hypothesis, mentions that "to frame the innateness question is to attempt to distinguish among the different constraints and mechanisms that can be attributed to the human biological endowment for language". In this note, I follow up on Barbiero's proposal by discussing empiricist views, mainly Quinean views, on the innate learning mechanisms that enable children to acquire not only the semantics but also the syntax of their language. Barbiero does mention empiricist theories. But he does not discuss the learning mechanisms that are assumed by these theories.
Generalizations.
Chomsky (1965) had argued that syntactic competence is not "obtainable from [examples] by any sort of generalization known to psychology and philosophy" (p. 58, see also Chomsky,1957, 1959). Chomsky's claim is indeed true, but only for the generalizations that psychologists and philosophers had considered until then. In the meantime, however, empiricists started examining more closely human generalization dispositions, and they noted that they are more sophisticated than had been assumed previously (see, e.g., Quine, 1974, p. 20-21; Stemmer, 1973, pp. 52-56, 1983, pp. 80-84). They then suggested that some of these dispositions indeed account for the child's syntactic competence. In the following, I will give a brief outline of the empiricist views. Consider first the ostensive learning of new words, say of the word 'giraffe'. This learning process is based on the child being exposed to an event (or events) in which the child sees a giraffe while hearing the word "giraffe", e.g., as part of the utterance "Look, this is a giraffe!". According to empiricist...
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The first of these statements offers parameters as the solution to the question of how children are able to learn any language after birth. Baker argues that by simply identifying which parameters are present within a given language, children are able to rapidly acquire an understanding of how to construct and interpret its constituents (Baker 23). While this explanation is accessible to unexperienced readers, it is by no means complete. In his justification for this statement, Baker cites no studies or concrete facts to augment its validity, asking instead for the reader to take his assertion for granted based off of logical reasoning. The presence of parameters is a possible explanation for the process of learning language; however, it is by no means the only explanation and by not addressing and/or disproving the others, the overall strength of his argument is diminished. Another technique employed by Baker to support his thesis is example sentences from different languages that he translates in order to prove the existence of particular parameters. One specific instance of this is when Baker contrasts Mohawk and Japanese phrases in order to illustrate the presence of a fundamental parameter related to possessive and possessed nouns within noun phrases.
According to Bornstein & Arterberry (2010), categories are especially valuable in infancy and early childhood, when new objects, events, and people are encountered, because without the ability and proclivity to categorize, children would have to learn to respond anew to each novel entity they experience. Examining whether children value the same sample of characteristics as adults do when solving induction problems provides a window into how inductive abilities develop (Rhodes,...
In efforts to find truth, Descartes used only his logic to identify his existence. He also proved that there is some type of knowledge that we are born with. “Some of our ideas seem to be “born with me,” some “invented” by me, whereas others “come from without” (Descartes, 2008, p. 211). Which means Descartes believed that we enter this world with some innate ideas that overtime helps us to develop understanding of our sense (invented by me) and through our experiences (comes from without). Descartes was a dualist; he stated that there existed something outside of our bodies. Descartes suggested that at the “ghost in the machine” theory developed by Gilbert Ryle, which states that there is some mystical being, which we understand is the mind, that is primary to the machine (or the body). Which leads me to believe, innate ideas are active within our minds.
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While alleged sex addictions have existed for many years, they have only recently been accepted as valid excuses for sexual deviancy. Attitudes toward sex addiction in the past offer a stark contrast to how it is viewed today, as the constantly medicalizing society insists on putting everything under the technical microscope. Sex addiction is commonly associated with a person’s inability to control his sexual behavior, implying an abnormally high sex drive and obsession with sex which have negative effects on his personal life (MedicineNet 2007, 1). Rather than breaking down the science behind the disorder, a customary practice in today’s medicalized society, older attitudes towards sex addiction placed it under the same light as alcoholism, where a lack of control and unwillin...
Throughout the passage of time, philosophers have written and discussed many topics in philosophy. Sometimes, these philosophers agree on ideas or sometimes they make their own assumptions. There are two philosophers who had different ideas concerning where innate ideas come from and how we get these types of ideas. Rene Descartes and John Locke were these two philosophers with the opposing argument on innate ideas. The place where Descartes discusses his views were in the Meditations on First Philosophy and Locke's argument is located in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. By using these sources I will be able to describe the difference between these two arguments on innate ideas.
There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.
Biological foundation of language may contribute significantly to such universality. The issue here is not whether language is innate, for, clearly, language must be learned. Nor is the issue whether the aptitude for learning a la...
In this part, the writer will point out the importance of the biological and neural foundation of language learning by discussing the following :First, the brain anatomy. Second, l...
Language acquisition is perhaps one of the most debated issues of human development. Various theories and approaches have emerged over the years to study and analyse this developmental process. One factor contributing to the differing theories is the debate between nature v’s nurture. A question commonly asked is: Do humans a...
Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.
middle of paper ... ... (1958), as cited in ‘Children’s Cognitive and Language Development, Gupta, P and Richardson, K (1995), Blackwell Publishers Ltd in association with the Open University. Light P and Oates, J (1990) ‘ The development of Children’s Understanding’ in Roth, I (Ed) Introduction to Psychology, Vol 1, Hove, East Sussex, Psychology Press in association with the Open University.