Pinker and Jackendoff

[Shalom Lappin]

It is not clear to me in what sense Chomsky has changed his view with respect
to the relation between evolution and the design of universal grammar.
The Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch article postulates a distinction between
a broad and narrow language faculty, with the former corresponding to
core grammar (the "computational system") and the latter to interface
modules. Evolutionary selection is restricted to the latter, with the former
effectively exempted from its influence. This seems to be a restatement of
the I-Language/E-language distinction, with the narrow language faculty
still carefully protected from evolutionary explanation. Where is the shift?
I must be missing something here. Regards.
                          Shalom


On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 06:46:26PM -0700, dmellow at sfu.ca wrote:
> Thank you for pointing out these articles.
>
> I am rather astonished by Chomsky's apparent change of perspective on the
> nature of cognition -- moving substantially away from universal grammar and
> innatism.  Has this shift received much attention (in journals and hallways)
> among generative syntactians (broadly defined)? Or have we entered something
> of a post-Chomskyian era in which his shifting hypotheses no longer have as
> much influence?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dean Mellow
> Simon Fraser University
>
>
> On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:54:13 +0100 (BST) rborsley at essex.ac.uk wrote:
> > Anyone who is interested the current position of minimalism within
> > syntactic theory should take a look at Pinker and Jackendoff's 'The
> > faculty of language: What's special about it?', a reply to the Hauser,
> > Chomsky and Fitch Cognition article, available from Jackendoff's web page:
>
> >
> > http://people.brandeis.edu/~jackendo/
> >
> > It says all sorts of things that most of us would agree with. It seems to
> > me that we sometimes exaggerate the strength of minimalism. It is coming
> > under attack by various people who were once quite close to Chomskyan
> > syntax. (Newmeyer's recent review article in Language provides another
> > example.) I think there are some grounds for optimism here.
> >
> > Bob Borsley
> >
> >
> > --
> > Prof. Robert D. Borsley
> > Department of Language and Linguistics
> > University of Essex
> > Wivenhoe Park
> > COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ, UK
> >
> > rborsley at essex.ac.uk
> > tel: +44 1206 873762
> > fax: +44 1206 872198
> > http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~rborsley
>
>
>