Linguistics 490, Vicissitudes of War 2
McCawley
Comments
•
“Chomsky’s well-known arguments that language acquisition cannot be
accomplished purely
by general purpose learning faculties should not lead to the non sequitur of concluding that general purpose learning
mechanisms play no
role in language acquisition:
General purpose learning faculties clearly
exist . . . And it is absurd to suppose that they shut off while language is
being acquired”
(p. 192).