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Mastering a Natural Language: Rationalists Versus Empiricists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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Behaviorist theories of language acquisition are the most prominent among current empiricist theories of language. But the inherent weaknesses of behaviorism—whether or not applied to language acquisition or linguistic meaning or the like—do not as such call into question the adequacy of the empiricist conception of language. The issue is central to contemporary speculation about the nature of linguistic competence and the infant's acquisition of language. Empiricism has, in fact, been vigorously challenged in the most sustained way, in a variety of publications, by Noam Chomsky. “From a formal point of view,” Chomsky holds,
the grammar that is internalized by every normal human can be described as a theory of his language, a theory of a highly intricate and abstract form that determines, ultimately, a connection between sound and meaning by generating structural descriptions of sentences (“potential percepts”), each with its phonetic, semantic, and syntactic aspects. From this point of view, one can describe the child's acquisition of knowledge of language as a kind of theory construction. Presented with highly restricted data, he constructs a theory of the language of which this data is a sample (and, in fact, a highly degenerate sample, in the sense that much of it must be excluded as irrelevant and incorrect—thus the child learns rules of grammar that identify much of what he has heard as ill-formed, inaccurate, and inappropriate). The child's ultimate knowledge of language obviously extends far beyond the data presented to him. In other words, the theory he has in some way developed has a predictive scope of which the data on which it is based constitute a negligible part.
The normal use of language characteristically involves new sentences, sentences that bear no point-by-point resemblance or analogy to those in the child's experience. Furthermore, the task of constructing this system is carried out in a remarkably similar way by all normal language learners, despite wide differences in experience and ability. The theory of human learning must face these facts. I think that these facts suggest a theory of human intelligence that has a distinctly rationalist flavor.
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- Copyright © 1973 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 " Linguistics and Philosophy," in Language and Mind, enlarged edition, New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, 1972, pp. 170-171.
2 Cf. Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, M. I. T. Press, 1965, Ch. 1; also, Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics, New York, Harper and Row, 1966.
3 Cf. Nelson Goodman, "The Epistemological Argument," Synthese, XVII (1967), p. 24.
4 "The ‘Innateness Hypothesis' and Explanatory Models in Linguistics," Synthese, XVII (1967), 12-22.
5 Cf. particularly "Linguistic Contributions to the study of Mind: Future" and "Form and Meaning in Natural Languages," in Language and Mind.
6 Cf. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Ch. 1.
7 Cf. R. A. Gardner and Beatrice T. Gardner, "Teaching Sign Language to a Chimpanzee," Science, 165 (1969), 664-672.
8 Language and Mind, p. 91.
9 "Form and Meaning in Natural Languages," in Language and Mind, p. 107.
10 "The Formal Nature of Language," in Language and Mind, p. 133.
11 "Linguistics and Philosophy," in Language and Mind, p. 169.
12 Loc. cit.
13 "Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind: Past," in Language and Mind, p. 14.
14 "Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind: Present," in Language and Mind, pp. 26-28.
15 Cf. for instance, Chomsky's reply to Gilbert Harman's criticisms, "Linguis tics and Philosophy," Language and Mind, pp. 190-191. Harman's remarks about the "resourceful empiricist" converge with the account here given, except that Harman fails to consider the essential distinction between rules and laws; also, there are some inaccuracies in his summary of Chomsky's thesis, particularly bearing on the concepts of competence and the infant's tacit knowledge. Cf. Gilbert Harman, "Psychological Aspects of the Theory of Syntax," Journal of Philosophy, LXIV (1967), 75-87.
16 Cf. "Acquisition and Use of Language," in Cartesian Linguistics, p. 63.
17 Jerrold Katz, an advocate and expositor of Chomsky's theories, seriously confuses the quarrel between Chomsky's transformational-generative thesis and the taxonomic conception of linguistics (Leonard Bloomfield's, for instance) with that between rationalist and empiricist linguistics. As Harman, loc. cit., has suggested, Zellig Harris and Henry Hiz's method of co-occurrence is empiricist in theory, associated with the theory of transformational grammar, and yet rich enough (in contrast to taxonomic procedures) to deserve serious considera tion. More to the point, Katz explicitly says that the mentalist in linguistics (the Chomskyite) holds that "the structure of the mechanism underlying the speaker's ability to communicate with other speakers … is a brain mechanism, a compo nent of neural system." Cf. Jerrold J. Katz, "Mentalism in Linguistics," Language, XL (1964), 124-137. If this is a fair statement of Chomsky's views, then, indeed, Chomsky is committed to the view that—apart from methodolo gical difficulties in theorizing about the structure of the brain—the brain is in nately structured in terms of rules to which, in some sense, it must conform.
18 David McNeill, "Are There Specifically Linguistic Universals?," reprinted in Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits (eds.), Semantics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1971.
19 Loc. cit. The thesis is based on the reports of a Doctor P. Greenfield.
21 Loc. cit.
22 David McNeill, The Acquisition of Language, New York, Harper and Row, 1970, p. 2.
23 Ibid., Ch. 1.
24 Ibid., pp. 71-72.
25 Ibid., p. 72.
26 Ibid., p. 3.
27 Cf. P. F. Strawson, Individuals, London, Methuen, 1959, Ch. 3: also, D. C. Dennett, Content and Consciousness, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, Ch. 4.
28 Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle, The Sound Pattern of English, New York, Harper and Row, 1968, p. 25, footnote 12.
29 Ibid., p. 4.
30 The Sound Pattern of English, pp. 23-24.
31 Loc. cit.
32 "Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind: Present," in Language and Mind, p. 63.
33 Cf. Joseph Margolis, Knowledge and Existence, New York, Oxford Uni versity Press, 1973, Ch. 8.