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In Defense of General Nativism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

William O’Grady
William O’Grady*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

In a recent reply to my review of The Language Lottery, David Lightfoot (1985) attempts to rebut the claims which I made about the viability of language learning without task-specific innate principles. The basic thrust of Lightfoot’s book is that there are innate linguistic principles which constrain the form of grammars and play a crucial role in language acquisition. I referred to this view as “special nativism” and contrasted it with “general nativism”, the thesis that genetic structuring of the mind is of a more general sort and does not include principles or notions specific to language. I suggested that special nativism is linked to a particular syntactic theory (transformational grammar) and that a theory of language learning more compatible with general nativism could well emerge from a different type of syntactic analysis. As an illustration of this, I briefly outlined two counterproposals, one pertaining to the interpretation of the indefinite pronoun one and the other to binding theory. In his reply to my review, Lightfoot misinterprets my suggestions, pointing to supposed inadequacies which would undermine the more general point I advanced.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Spring 1986 , pp. 45 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1986

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