New Evidence Rebuts Noam Chomsky's Language Theory

LowDown · Sep 11, 2016

It's an article in The Scientific American, long and involved. A key graph:

A child learning a first language does not rely on an innate grammar module. Instead the new research shows that young children use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all—such as the ability to classify the world into categories (people or objects, for instance) and to understand the relations among things. These capabilities, coupled with a unique human ability to grasp what others intend to communicate, allow language to happen. The new findings indicate that if researchers truly want to understand how children, and others, learn languages, they need to look outside of Chomsky’s theory for guidance.

Chomsky gained fame with his theory and used that fame to push all sorts of anti-American political nonsense. For a fellow who claimed not to be a communist he certainly had a lot of deference and respect for Marxism. His historical recounting of the Cold War era just sort of leaves the threat of communist expansion out of the story.

If he did his science like he did his politics then it's no wonder that the former is falling apart now.

New Evidence Rebuts Noam Chomsky's Language Theory

LowDown

Curmudgeon