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On the poverty of the challenge
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Howard Lasnik
Published/Copyright:
February 27, 2008
Abstract
Positive data involving auxiliary fronting are never evidence for a constraint such as the structure-dependent hypothesis. At best, positive data of any complexity are direct evidence for a simple-minded hypothesis, of the sort of ‘front the first auxiliary (after something or other)’. On the widespread assumption that negative data are generally unavailable to children learning language, a serious empiricist alternative to the rationalist view that linguistic structure is partly innate would have to show how the correct hypothesis (‘front the matrix auxiliary’) is induced from mere extensions from positive data. But this does not seem possible.
Published Online: 2008-02-27
Published in Print: 2002-06-26
© Walter de Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments
- Development of the concept of “the poverty of the stimulus”
- Exploring the richness of the stimulus
- Understanding stimulus poverty arguments
- On the poverty of the challenge
- Empirical re-assessment of stimulus poverty arguments
- Why language acquisition is a snap
- Searching for arguments to support linguistic nativism
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments
- Development of the concept of “the poverty of the stimulus”
- Exploring the richness of the stimulus
- Understanding stimulus poverty arguments
- On the poverty of the challenge
- Empirical re-assessment of stimulus poverty arguments
- Why language acquisition is a snap
- Searching for arguments to support linguistic nativism
