A Mind for Language An Introduction to the Innateness Debate

Chapter 9 focuses on the claim that the language input that children are exposed to is not rich enough to explain how they can construct a mental grammar. This leads to the poverty of the stimulus argument in support of the Innateness Hypothesis, which holds that if the input is insufficient, children must be born with an innate system that bridges the gap between the poor input and the richness of their knowledge of language. We will examine in detail in which ways the input could be called poor. We then turn to Chomsky’s Principles and Parameters model of language acquisition, paying attention to certain developments in this model that reduced the role of innate knowledge. Along the way we also introduce two additional arguments. The argument from convergence is based on the fact that all learners that grow up in the same speech community end up with (essentially) the same mental grammar despite having received different input. We also mention the argument from speed of acquisition, which is based on the fact that language acquisition is “fast,” no matter how you measure it. We then review alternative, more empiricist, approaches to language acquisition.