Bob, I'm not sure I could have made that much clearer. I also have not said and would not say that the IH is not a plausible and interesting set of claims. It clearly is both, since it's drawn so much discussion. And it has been well articulated, not only by Pinker but also by Steve Anderson. The book he did in 2002 with David Lightfoot, The Language Organ: Linguistics as Cognitive Philosophy, is probably the best account of the idea that I've read. But we still don't know enough about what we are born programmed to learn and how that programming works or what it specifies. I would argue, along with much better qualified people like Terrence Deacon, that we have a very complex learning function and that that function defines what a language can be, what kind of language is learnable as opposed to what kinds might not be. It may be in the end, that, as you suggest, some of that learning theory may be so task-specific as to be definable in linguistic terms, but I strongly suspect that the boundaries between that part of our cognitive programming and the rest of our cognition are not simply blurry but non-existent. That is, while we are programmed to learn things like language quickly and easily, that programming is not modular and is not functionally distinct from our ability to recognize faces very quickly. As to the speed of first language acquisition, bear in mind that the area of language mastered earliest and that is most difficult to master in a second language as an adult is the accentual system. But we come into the world with a pretty firm command of the rhythm and melody of our language, having heard our mother speaking it for however many months our ears have been operating. Changes in amplitude, pitch, and duration will make it through all that tissue even if segmental differences don't. And there is experimental evidence in SLA research now that the reason adults don't learn a second language as well or as quickly as a child does has much to do with the fact that adults are busy with a lot of other tasks whereas for children that is the task, or at least a big part of it. The notion "critical period" appears to have hit a critical period. As much fun as this is to argue, we're not going to resolve it. We may help each other clarify our views and firm up our positions, but the fact remains that both the IH position and the cognitivist remain seriously underdetermined. Herb -----Original Message----- From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert Yates Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2006 12:03 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: On innate knowledge of language 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 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/