The Argument for Innate Knowledge

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The Argument for Innate Knowledge (?????)

• The way children learn to talk implies that the
  human brain contains a genetically determined
  specialization for language.
• How do children acquire their mother tongues (get
  the corresponding mental grammars)?
• Seemingly, from other speakers around them . . .

2

• Mainly taught by parents?
• E.g. teaching words like puppy by ostension
  (??).
• What about if, from, not, . . .?
• What about children of immigrants?
• A famous illustration of the difficulty of
  teaching grammatical patterns
• CHILD Nobody dont like me.
• MOTHER No, say nobody likes me.
• CHILD Nobody dont like me.
• . . . (8 repetitions of this dialogue)
• MOTHER No, now listen carefully say nobody
  likes me.
• CHILD Oh! Nobody dont likes me.

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• Mainly taught in school?
• E.g. school grammar
• What about pre-school children?
• What about non-literate societies?
• The failure of teaching prescriptive rules like
  a preposition is something you must never end a
  sentence with

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• Is this teaching / learning model adequate?
• Chomskys Poverty of the Stimulus Argument
  (?????)
• Who was ever taught about these contrasts?
• Joey appeared to Judy to like herself.
• Joey appeared to Judy to like her.
• Joey appealed to Judy to like herself.
• Joey appealed to Judy to like her.
• Also, expletive infixation
• Where is this uni-goddam-versity! (But
  not, say, un-goddam-iversity)
• I hate this manu-fuckin-facturer! (But
  not, say, manufac-fuckin-turer)

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• Why do children of diverse backgrounds (e.g.
  intelligence, parents education and wealth)
  around the world acquire their mother tongues
  roughly at about the same age?
• Why do children acquire their mother tongues much
  easier and much more successful than adults learn
  a new language?
• After all, who can teach children unconscious
  mental grammars?
• So, seemingly, children have to unconsciously
  construct their own unconscious mental grammars
  on the basis of linguistic data like grammatical
  expressions heard and occasional corrections from
  others. But how?

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• The Enigma of Language Acquisition (??????)
• A normal child (unconsciously) much outperforms
  an army of professional linguists!
• Chomskyan way for solving the enigma
• The postulation of Universal Grammar (UG, ????)
• A body of innate (tacit) knowledge (universal
  grammatical principles) pertaining to language
  acquisition

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• But how do children acquire UG?
• How can cognitive structure be available to the
  child before learning? (Recall tabula rasa)
• A scientifically reasonable answer the Genetic
  Hypothesis (????)
• The mechanism for acquiring innate knowledge is
  genetic transmission, through the medium of brain
  structure.

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• But how could brain structures for UG have
  originally come to be coded into the genes?
• By evolution (?????), presumably.
• Did language constitute any evolutionary
  advantages?

9

• Tracing back the arguments
• The Genetic Hypothesis
• How come UG?
• Why need UG?
• The Enigma of Language Acquisition
• Why such an enigma?
• The failure of the teaching / learning model
  children can unconsciously construct an
  exceedingly complex unconscious mental grammar
• Why need unconscious mental grammar?
• The expressive variety of language

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• What is human nature as revealed in this section?
• The existence of genetically determined innate
  mental structures which make the unconscious
  acquisition of mental grammar possible

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The Argument for the Construction of Experience
(????)

• The experience of spoken language is actively
  constructed by the hearers mental grammar.
• Communication of ideas

12

• For someone who doesnt know English
• More generally, mind has active participation /
  contribution in perceiving the world.

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Mental Capacities other than Language Music

• Why a sequence of notes coheres into a melody
  (?????), makes sense as music?
• Not every collection of notes sounds like music.
  Compare, e.g.
• Yadhtrib
  Yppah
• Which one is more like music? Why?
• Just because the former has been heard before?

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• The former conforms to patterns of music that
  were familiar with, while the latter doesnt.
• Melody, rhythm (?????), beat (??), ending, etc.
• Linguistic analogy vs.
  Yadhtrib Yppah
• Another phenomenon Noticing the performers
  wrong performance on some notes even on first
  hearing.
• An analogue to the Argument for Mental Grammar
• Our ability to make sense of new pieces of music
  in a familiar style implies that weve an
  unconscious musical grammar that organizes our
  understanding of music in this style.

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• How did we get the mental musical grammar?
• Presumably, also partly nurture, partly nature.
• Nurture
• Just as therere different languages, therere
  different styles of music.
• http//news.calabashmusic.com/world/getstarted
• Nature
• Cf. Jackendoff Lerdahl (1983, pp. 281-3)
  proposed two sources of evidence
• 1. The Poverty of Stimulus Argument (?????)
• The complexity of tacit musical knowledge
• The poverty of presented musical surfaces

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• 2. The existence of universals in theory of
  musical grammar
• An analogue to the Argument for Innate Knowledge
• Just as our ability to learn language requires
  innate resources that form the basis of learning,
  our unconscious ability to construct musical
  grammars requires some underlying innate
  resources - Universal Musical Grammar (UMG,
  ??????).
• Also an analogue to the Genetic Hypothesis (????)

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• Questions related to UMG
• 1. How much of musical grammar for any particular
  style is due to UMG, and how much to learning?
• 2. How much of UMG comes from a brain
  specialization for music, and how much of it
  comes from general-purpose processes of
  perception?

UMG
x
ULG
UVG
x
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• 3. Why should the somewhat specialized principles
  of UMG be present in our genetic heritage, when
  their only apparent use is for organizing
  aesthetic (???) objects? After all, what
  evolutionary advantage, if any, does music
  possess?

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• An analogue to the Argument for the Construction
  of Experience
• E.g. emotional content of music.
• Mental capacities other than language and music
  vision, thought, social organization.
• Cf. Jackendoff (1993, Chapter 13-15)
• Paper topic?

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Final Thoughts

• Can you think of any objections to the foregoing
  arguments for various domains? paper topic?
• Against the existence of complex mental grammar?
  But then how to account for the expressive
  variety of language?
• Against the existence of UG?
• Against the existence of universal grammatical
  principles?
• Against the Poverty of Stimulus Argument? But
  then how to account for language acquisition?

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• Difficulties in evolutionary explanation in
  domains like music?
• Again, what is human nature according to our
  study?
• Human nature consists in having a collection of
  innate brain specializations or modules, each of
  which confers on us certain kinds of cognitive
  powers.

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• In view of this human nature, are there any
  implications for educational and social policies?
  paper topic? E.g.
• Compare with the tabula rasa view
• Human limitations
• Genetic engineering (????), etc.

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Suggested Readings / References

• Readings
• Jackendoff, R. (1993). Patterns in the Mind.
  London Harvester Wheatsheaf.
• Chapter 1 Finding our way into the problem The
  nature/nurture issue
• Chapter 2 The argument for mental grammar
• Chapter 3 The argument for innate knowledge
• Chapter 12 The argument for the construction of
  experience
• Chapter 13 Music and vision

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• References
• Chomsky, N. (2006). Language and Mind (3rd
  edition). Singapore Cambridge University Press.
• Jackendoff, R. Lerdahl, F. (1983). A Generative
  Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge, Mass. MIT
  Press.
• Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate. New York
  Viking.

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31

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