Great questions. I would say that a majority of linguists probably accept the fast-childhood-acquisition argument for the innateness of language but a lot depends on how the question is phrased. I would agree that language is innate to humans in the weak and banal sense that humans in any sort of natural environment will in short order develop a complex system of communication. But I don’t think it follows that we have a specialized language module—we may be using some more generic part of our cognitive capacity. I’m not sure if we really have the data to settle this yet.
The whole thing is tricky. How fast is fast? If humans definitely had no language model and had to learn language using a more generic cognitive ability, how fast would we expect them to do it? Five years? Ten years? Fifty years? Never? I don’t know of any convincing argument ruling out that the answer would be “pretty much the speed at which they are actually observed to learn it”.
And what qualifies as language, anyway? Deaf children can learn complex sign languages. Is that just as innate as spoken language or are they using a more generic cognitive ability? My one-year-old is a whiz on the iPad. Is he using the language module or a more generic cognitive ability? Is it a language module or a symbolic processing module? Or an abstract-thinking module?
I’m personally very skeptical that the brain has any sort of neatly defined language module—is that really Azathoth’s style? There is a lot more to say about this, maybe there’d be enough interest for a top-level post.
I’m personally very skeptical that the brain has any sort of neatly defined language module—is that really Azathoth’s style? There is a lot more to say about this, maybe there’d be enough interest for a top-level post.
But I don’t think it follows that we have a specialized language module—we may be using some more generic part of our cognitive capacity. I’m not sure if we really have the data to settle this yet.
The whole thing is tricky. How fast is fast? If humans definitely had no language model and had to learn language using a more generic cognitive ability, how fast would we expect them to do it? Five years? Ten years? Fifty years? Never? I don’t know of any convincing argument ruling out that the answer would be “pretty much the speed at which they are actually observed to learn it”.
Honestly, I suspect the answer is “never”… unless the “more general capacity” is only somewhat more general. Languages seem to be among the most complicated things most people ever learn, with the main competition for the title of “the most complicated” coming from things like “how to interact socially with other humans.”
And what qualifies as language, anyway? Deaf children can learn complex sign languages. Is that just as innate as spoken language or are they using a more generic cognitive ability?
What I’ve read on this is that the way deaf children learn sign language is extremely similar to how most children learn spoken language.
There is a lot more to say about this, maybe there’d be enough interest for a top-level post.
You are not alone—that is the orthodox Chomskyan position. Chomsky has argued that grammar is unlearnable given the limited data available to children, and therefore there must be an innate linguistic capacity. This is the celebrated “poverty of the stimulus” argument. Like most of Chomsky’s ideas, it is armchair theorizing with little empirical support.
I would totally support a top-level post.
Given the number of replies and upvotes, that seems warranted. I’ll try to find the time.
Certainly, humans are endowed with some sort of predisposition toward language learning. The substantive issue is whether a full description of that predisposition incorporates anything that entails specific contingent facts about natural languages.
So this makes it sound like the only thing the authors are rejecting is the idea of a system with certain rigid assumptions built in—as opposed to, say, a more or less Bayesian system that has a prior which favors certain assumptions without making those assumptions indefeasible. Am I reading that right?
Yes, you’re reading that right. They address this even more explicitly at the beginning of section 2.2 on page 17, and, especially in footnotes 5 and 6.
As for the statement that humans have “some sort of predisposition toward language learning”, that is weak enough for even me to agree with it. We are social animals, with innate desires to communicate and the intelligence to do so in complex ways.
But I don’t think it follows that we have a specialized language module—we may be using some more generic part of our cognitive capacity. I’m not sure if we really have the data to settle this yet.
There was an autistic savant, Chris, whose skill was in learning languages, and who was unable to learn a fake language put together by researchers that used easy but non-attested types of rules (eg. reversing the whole sentence to form a question). What do you make of it?
I’ve always thought it was fairly weak evidence in the sense that autistic people often have all kinds of other things potentially going on with them, that it’s a sample size of 1, and so on.
Great questions. I would say that a majority of linguists probably accept the fast-childhood-acquisition argument for the innateness of language but a lot depends on how the question is phrased. I would agree that language is innate to humans in the weak and banal sense that humans in any sort of natural environment will in short order develop a complex system of communication. But I don’t think it follows that we have a specialized language module—we may be using some more generic part of our cognitive capacity. I’m not sure if we really have the data to settle this yet.
The whole thing is tricky. How fast is fast? If humans definitely had no language model and had to learn language using a more generic cognitive ability, how fast would we expect them to do it? Five years? Ten years? Fifty years? Never? I don’t know of any convincing argument ruling out that the answer would be “pretty much the speed at which they are actually observed to learn it”.
And what qualifies as language, anyway? Deaf children can learn complex sign languages. Is that just as innate as spoken language or are they using a more generic cognitive ability? My one-year-old is a whiz on the iPad. Is he using the language module or a more generic cognitive ability? Is it a language module or a symbolic processing module? Or an abstract-thinking module?
I’m personally very skeptical that the brain has any sort of neatly defined language module—is that really Azathoth’s style? There is a lot more to say about this, maybe there’d be enough interest for a top-level post.
I would look forward to reading that post.
Honestly, I suspect the answer is “never”… unless the “more general capacity” is only somewhat more general. Languages seem to be among the most complicated things most people ever learn, with the main competition for the title of “the most complicated” coming from things like “how to interact socially with other humans.”
What I’ve read on this is that the way deaf children learn sign language is extremely similar to how most children learn spoken language.
I would totally support a top-level post.
You are not alone—that is the orthodox Chomskyan position. Chomsky has argued that grammar is unlearnable given the limited data available to children, and therefore there must be an innate linguistic capacity. This is the celebrated “poverty of the stimulus” argument. Like most of Chomsky’s ideas, it is armchair theorizing with little empirical support.
Given the number of replies and upvotes, that seems warranted. I’ll try to find the time.
Reading the article:
So this makes it sound like the only thing the authors are rejecting is the idea of a system with certain rigid assumptions built in—as opposed to, say, a more or less Bayesian system that has a prior which favors certain assumptions without making those assumptions indefeasible. Am I reading that right?
Yes, you’re reading that right. They address this even more explicitly at the beginning of section 2.2 on page 17, and, especially in footnotes 5 and 6.
As for the statement that humans have “some sort of predisposition toward language learning”, that is weak enough for even me to agree with it. We are social animals, with innate desires to communicate and the intelligence to do so in complex ways.
There was an autistic savant, Chris, whose skill was in learning languages, and who was unable to learn a fake language put together by researchers that used easy but non-attested types of rules (eg. reversing the whole sentence to form a question). What do you make of it?
I’ve always thought it was fairly weak evidence in the sense that autistic people often have all kinds of other things potentially going on with them, that it’s a sample size of 1, and so on.
As an ignorant layman, I’d expect a large part of our so-called cognitive capacity to be a poorly hacked-and-generalized language module.