Pinker and Jackendoff

[Shalom Lappin]

Sorry, "former" and "latter" should be permutted here. I intended to identify
the narrow language faculty with I-language/core grammar and the broad
language faculty with E-language. My apologies for the confusion. Regards.
                    Shalom


On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 07:16:00AM +0100, Shalom Lappin wrote:
> 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
> >
> >
> >