It is one thing to be agnostic on the issue of innateness, but it is
unclear what the following means.  

>>> [log in to unmask] 09/04/06 5:25 PM >>>
Neither position is sufficiently well articulated or supported by data
to be falsified.  Neither is, at this point, a testable hypothesis,
which is what makes arguing about them so much fun and so pointless. 

No hypothesis about our language knowledge is going to be proved or
disproved a laboratory setting.  However, this does not mean that we
cannot figure out certain predictions various accounts of how we might
come to know a language and determine whether those predictions are
supported by the facts.

If language is the result of some general cognitive capacity(s), then we
 have explain why these general cognitive capacity(s)  decline with age.
 Every normal child with input (and this input can be quite degraded --
see the work of Jenny Singleton with Simon)  has no trouble learning her
primary language.  The older we get it, it becomes increasingly more
difficult to learn our primary (there is very good evidence of this not
only with wild children but with deaf who are exposed to ASL late (after
the age of 18)).  We also know that almost all adult second language
learners  never attain native-like competence in that second language. 
Yet every primary language learner is able to attain this competence.  

An innate hypothesis that proposes there is a sensitive period for
learning a language predicts this fact.

Likewise, whatever the nature of these general cognitive capacities is
they must be very sensitive to linguistic input.  Those capacities have
to be sensitive to the possible sounds of human language, have the
ability to distinguish morphemes and words in a constant stream of
noise, and have the ability to figure out abstract structure from   
those item in a linear order.  

I suspect that if we ever do figure out what the general cognitive
capacities are they will have such an important specialization for
language that it will be hard to tell whether they don't constitute the
innate capacity for language.

As been observed by several people here, elementary school children have
a very complex knowledge of their primary language. That knowledge
should be used making them aware this knowledge.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

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