Givon and Chomsky

[Salinas17 at aol.com]

Jagdish Jain wrote:
<<Recursion is not limited to clause embedding. Recursion is a wide spread 
design feature of language; it is not a FRAMEWORK (as Givon calls it).>>

Of course, recursiveness is NOTHING BUT A FRAMEWORK.  It's a structural form, 
and that makes it only a framework in which to present "meaning", to convey 
information.  The fact that a particular structure might be effective at 
presenting a particular information or "meaning" is no reason to confuse the 
FRAMEWORK with the CONTENT.

<<Because of the confusion created by the term 'competence,' Chomsky has 
started using the term I-language (= internalized linguistic system)...>>

The fact that "competence" created confusion is not Tom Givon's fault.  It's 
Chomsky's.  

<<Chomsky used the term 'competence' in the 1960s in the sense of a native 
speaker's TACIT knowledge of his her language. The concept "tacit" has no 
connection with the concept "innate.">>

Whatever "tacit" is supposed to mean, Chomsky's "competence" had a lot to do 
with the supposed innateness of language, perhaps depending on whom he was 
talking to.  

In the Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind lecture (1968) -- in 
which he never uses the word "tacit" -- Chomsky makes it very clear that when he 
says competence is knowledge, that knowledge is not primarily based on 
experience (learning):

"...we cannot avoid being struck by the enormous disparity between knowledge 
and experience – in the case of language, between the generative grammar that 
expresses the linguistic competence of the native speaker and the meagre and 
degenerate data on the basis of which he has constructed this grammar for 
himself."

Not only does he say that experience supplies "meagre and degenerate data" 
and therefore can't be the source of generative grammar and linguistic knowledge 
(competence), he also tells us that competence is going to help settle the 
issue of innateness:

"Putnam takes for granted that it is only general “learning strategies” that 
are innate....  As I have argued earlier, a non-dogmatic approach to this 
problem can be pursued... through the investigation of specific areas of human 
competence, such as language,..."

So you are mistaken in thinking that Chomsky was not using competence to 
refer to innateness.  Whether he himself was confused about it, or whether the 
word "tacit" or I-language idea somehow cleared up that confusion, is another 
matter.

Steve Long
















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