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Chomskyetal 17 generative 2

Generative Grammar and the Faculty of Language Insights Questions and Challenges Noam Chomsky Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ángel J Gallego Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Dennis Ott University of Ottawa Introduction Generative Grammar GG is the study of linguistic capacity as a component of human cognition Its point of departure is Descartes ? observation that ??there are no men so dull-witted or stupid ? that they are incapable of arranging various words together and forming an utterance from them in order to make their thoughts understood whereas there is no other animal however perfect and well endowed it may be that can do the same ? Discours de la méthode Studies in comparative cognition over the last decades vindicate Decartes ? insight only humans appear to possess a mental grammar ?? an ??I-language ? or internal-individual language system ?? that permits the composition of in ?nitely many meaningful expressions from a ?nite stock of discrete units Hauser et al Anderson Chomsky a The term Universal Grammar UG is simply a label for this striking di ?erence in cognitive capacity between ??us and them ? As such UG is the research topic of GG what is it and how did it evolve in us While we may never ?nd a satisfying answer to the latter question any theory of UG seeking to address the former must meet a criterion of evolvability any mechanisms and primitives ascribed to UG rather than derived from independent factors must plausibly have emerged in what appears to have been a unique and relatively sudden event on the evolutionary timescale Bolhuis et al Berwick Chomsky For feedback and suggestions we are indebted to Luigi Rizzi and Juan Uriagereka Parts of this paper are based on a Question Answer session with Noam Chomsky that took place at the Residència d ? Investigadors Barcelona on November We would like to thank the students who helped with the transcription of that session Alba Cerrudo Elena Ciutescu Natalia Jardón Pablo Rico and Laura Vela Ángel J Gallego would like to acknowledge support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad FFI - -C - -P the Generalitat de Catalunya SGR- and the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats ICREA Acadèmia CGG ? s objectives open up many avenues for interdisciplinary research into the nature of UG Fifty years ago Eric Lenneberg published his now-classic work that founded the study of the biology of language sometimes called ??biolinguistics ? Lenneberg In conjunction with the thennascent generative-internalist perspective on language Chomsky this major contribution inspired a wealth of research and much has been learned about language as a result The techniques of psychological experimentation have become far more sophisticated in recent years and work in neurolinguistics is beginning to connect in interesting ways with the concerns of GG Berwick et al Nelson et al Friederici to appear Important results have emerged from the study of language acquisition which is concerned with the interaction of UG and learning mechanisms in the development of an I-language