HURDLE NUMBER 50. THE UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR HURDLE.
This following quotes are from the book The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker (Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University), published by William Morrow and co. inc., NY, 1994:_
Page 22:- “(Noam) Chomsky (Linguistics Society of America Professor at the University of California, and then the Beckman Professor at the University of California, Berkeley.) called attention to the fundamental facts about language - - - - Every sentence - - - - - is a brand new combination of words. - - - - - Therefore a language cannot be a repertoire of responses. THE BRAIN MUST CONTAIN A - - - - - - - - - - - - - PROGRAM - - - - - a plan common to the grammar of all languages, A UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR.”
Page 43:- The particular ways that languages do form - - - are arbitrary, species-wide conventions - - - - - Evidence - - - - that THE MIND CONTAINS BLUEPRINTS FOR GRAMMATICAL RULES.”
Page 112:- Chomsky suggests that the - - - (grammatical) super-rules (principles) are UNIVERSAL AND INNATE. - - - - - Children - - - - were BORN KNOWING THESE SUPER-RULES.”
Pages 124 to 125:- “Grammar (is) a form of MENTAL SOFTWARE - - - - The human mind is DESIGNED to use abstract variables and data structures.”
Page 237:- Chomsky’s claim that - - - the same symbol-manipulating machinery, without exception, underlies the world’s languages - - - The basic design features of language are found everywhere.”
Page 24:- “Chomsky has puzzled many readers with his SKEPTICISM ABOUT WHETHER DARWINIAN NATURAL SELECTION - - - - CAN EXPLAIN THE ORIGINS OF THE LANGUAGE ORGAN THAT HE ARGUES FOR.”
Page 333:- “Chomsky and some of his fiercest opponents agree on one thing; that A UNIQUELY HUMAN LANGUAGE INSTINCT SEEMS TO BE INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE MODERN DARWINIAN THEORY OF EVOLUTION, in which complex biological systems arise by - - - random genetic mutations.” (My capitals and highlighting.)
The next quote is from The New Yorker (magazine) issue for June 28th, 2010. Article (A Neurologist’s Notebook):- A Man Of Letters, by Oliver Sacks (pages 22 to 28) (Sacks was Clinical Professor of Neurology at Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He joined the faculty of Columbia University Medical Center as a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry.):-
The article deals with a stroke victim whose ability to READ was lost, BUT WHO COULD STILL WRITE, (thus showing that the reading/writing ability is complex, and located in more than one single center in the brain). Sacks tells us:- “Reading is, in fact, dependent on a whole hierarchy or cascade of processes, which can break down at any point.” (Thus showing that reading is a highly complex neurological process.) Sacks tells us:- “In the dominant hemisphere - - - of every literate human being there exists a neuronal system potentially available for the recognition of letters and words.” Sacks comments:- “This raises a deep problem. Why should all humans have this built-in facility for reading when writing is a relatively recent cultural invention? - - - - Writing emerged little more than five thousand years ago - - - FAR TOO RECENTLY TO HAVE OCCURRED THROUGH EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION - - - - The visual word form area of the human brain appears exquisitely tuned to the act of reading - - - - We might call this The Wallace Problem. For Alfred Russel Wallace (who discovered natural selection independently of Darwin) became intensely concerned with the paradox of the human brain’s many potential abilities:- lexical, mathematical, and so on – abilities that would have little use in a primitive or prehistoric society. While natural selection could explain the appearance of immediately useful abilities, only a divine creator, he felt, could explain the existence of potential powers that might become manifest only with the development of an advanced culture hundreds of thousands of years in the future.” (My capitals.)