innate

[P. Reich]

I, for one don't. I believe we contain the ability to relate
sequences of input and to relate these sequences to the external
and internal environment--i.e., to make connections from, for
example, sound to meaning. The need to have more built in was due
to the need, according the Chomsky and followers, to learn a system
of rules that was not produceable by a finite state device. That
assumption was false, the falacious argument leading to it was
discussed in my 1969 paper "Finiteness of Natural Language" in
Language, which paper was never refuted by Chomsky et al.

The implication is that syntax is learnable, thus does not have to
be built in.

--Peter Reich, University of Toronto

On Thu, 24 Apr 1997, Chris Cleirigh wrote:

> yokita at CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU asked:
>
> >Do people think any human gene carries linguistic syntactic
> >information??
>
> I haven't seen any replies to this reasonable question.
>
> Chris
>