The Branches of Language Innateness Theories

My purpose in this next set of blog posts will be to do some preliminary research paper probing. While starting to write on a topic without yet having a thesis or solidified stance is a little awkward, I’m hoping that these explorations into language innateness theories will give me a well-read background into the topic of my paper, while giving the reader a chance to set me straight if I’ve come to a preliminary faulty conclusion, and a chance for education about the vast theories of language innateness beyond Lera, Pinker, and Chomsky.

I’ve chosen to examine language innateness because it’s the subject area of class that seems to be the least settled and most controversial. I could, of course, be entirely wrong in that assertion, but for me personally, I don’t have a problem accepting that language affects thought, thought affects language, thoughts are made in language at least sometimes, language shapes abilities (perfect pitch and Mandarin). After considering split-brain patients, patients with hemispherectomies, patients with massive stroke damage, and their ensuing recoveries in language-related areas, I’m also convinced of the amazing plasticity of the human brain, and willing to accept the notion that language does not have to be localized to any specific structures in the brain, that the “seat” of language (if something that specific could ever be pinned down) is more of a mobile wheelchair than a permanent throne. I hope to cover Chomsky, Pinker, Boroditsky, Jerry Fodor, Michael Tomasello, possibly Elizabeth Bates and Catherine Snow as well.

Noam Chomsky

While very active politically and in other cognitive disciplines, Chomsky essentially is the first foundational thinker on language in the twentieth century, at least beyond B.F. Skinner. Chomsky's language theories began as anti-Skinnerian, that is, anti-radical behaviorism. Behaviorism, as applied to language, argues that everything is a behavior, and that behaviors can be described and analyzed scientifically without reference to internal physiological events or undefined, questionable constructs such as the mind. Skinner, inventor of the famous Skinner box (or operant conditioning chamber) used to study operant or classical conditioning, took behaviorism further, into radical behaviorism. Radical behaviorism had the advantage that it could accept unobservable, private events like thought.
Instead of just a behavior as Skinner proposed in his book Verbal Behavior, Chomsky proposes that language has certain innate characteristics, particularly his famous universal grammar that allows children to generalize the grammatical rules of their language to an extent far greater than is possible through what they are exposed to alone. His universal grammar seems to suggest that a great deal of language is innate and there only need be a few switches thrown during the course of development before fully-fledged language emerges, such as whether you need an explicit subject as in English, or if the subject is sometimes optional, as in Spanish. This, as I understand, is essentially his "Principles and Parameters" approach. Recently (1995) Chomsky has revised some of his former theories in the Minimalist Program, keeping the central concepts of generative grammar, but emphasizing instead the economy of the design of language learning.
Further analysis of Chomsky's theories would require a look at evidence and counter-evidence for his theories. Perhaps in my final paper, I might examine the case studies of the Nicaraguan sign language phenomena by Judy Kegl, or alternatively, the Piraha people of Brazil who were studied by Daniel Everett and apparently are a counter-example to universal grammar. I hope to go deeper into Chomsky's theories, and explore those of the other aformentioned language theorists as well.