Argument in Favour of the Poverty of Stimulus
In Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct (1994) he discusses various topics related to language acquisition and the mental life of language. He is a vehement follower of the Chomskyan theory of Universal Grammar and the innateness of language hypothesis. According to Pinker the well known assumptions that, “children learn to talk from role models and caregivers,... grammatical sophistication used to be nurtured in schools, but sagging educational standards… have led to a frightening decline in the ability of the average person to construct a grammatical sentence” (1994:18) is entirely false. The main reason that Pinker gives for this position is the fact that, “Language… is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains… which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction” (1994:18) In the following essay I will be supporting Pinker’s claim by firstly discussing some of the terms and theories that I will be using in the essay (such as nativism, Universal Grammar and some of Chomsky’s theories), analyzing the Poverty of Stimulus argument and its background, and then giving some evidence in favour of and against the argument.
In my assignment I will mainly be using the work of the following researchers: Steven Pinker who, as previously stated, is in favour of the Poverty of Stimulus argument and Chomskyan theories (1994), Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis who argue for the Poverty of Stimulus argument and try to dispel some of the skepticisms surrounding the argument (2001), Geoffrey K. Pullum and Barbara C. Scholz both of whom feel that the POV argument is lacking in evidence and requires more research (2002), Peter Gordon who examines an idea that children can learn natural languages without any innate knowledge but through negative feedback (1990) and of course various of Noam Chomsky’s own articles. I will also be quoting various philosophers including Rene Descartes, Roger Bacon and Benedict Spinoza. Personally
In my assignment I will mainly be using the work of the following researchers: Steven Pinker who, as previously stated, is in favour of the Poverty of Stimulus argument and Chomskyan theories (1994), Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis who argue for the Poverty of Stimulus argument and try to dispel some of the skepticisms surrounding the argument (2001), Geoffrey K. Pullum and Barbara C. Scholz both of whom feel that the POV argument is lacking in evidence and requires more research (2002), Peter Gordon who examines an idea that children can learn natural languages without any innate knowledge but through negative feedback (1990) and of course various of Noam Chomsky’s own articles. I will also be quoting various philosophers including Rene Descartes, Roger Bacon and Benedict Spinoza. Personally
References: Bates, E. and Elman J. Learning Revisited. Science 274, 1996. Chomsky, N. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, 1965. Chomsky, N. Carteisian linguistics: a chapter in the history of rationalist thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Chomsky, N. Rules and representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. Gordon, P. Learnability and Feedback. Developmental Psychology Vol. 26, 1990. Laurence, S and Margolis, E. The Poverty of Stimulus Argument. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 2001 Pinker, S. The Language Instinct. Great Britain.: The Penguin Press, 1994. Pullum, G. K. and Scholz, B. C. Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments. The Linguistic Review 19, 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Last accessed: 28 September 2006.