Saturday, June 7, 2008

Language Acquisition

Noam Chomsky argued that the speed at which young children acquire language—which is indeed impressive—supports the idea that language must be an instinct in humans. But he failed to recognize the speed at which the species itself acquired language—even more impressive, and a death blow to any talk of language instincts.

What most children have an instinct for is to do what other humans do.

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