FROM INTELLIGENCE OR INNATE IDEAS?

• By Group 7

• Emy Suryani (1805085015)

• Nurhidayaty (1805085017)
• Aprilia Dwy Hastuti (1805085024)
1. Where do language ideas come from?

The quest for the perfect circle

• Minds
• Ideas
2. EMPIRICIST AND RATIONALIST ANSWER

1. The empiricist view: no knowledge is innate

• The empiricist believes the ideas come through experience.
• The mind at birth does not contain any ideas that can be
regarded as knowledge.
2. The Rationalist view: no knowledge is innate
• The rationalist believes that basic ideas already present in the
mind at birth
• Example
The ideas of ‘Justice’ (plato), (God) and Perfection
(Descartes) a ‘Triangle’ (Leibnitz) and others like ‘circle’ and
‘Infinity’
3. CHOMSKY’S UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

• He dispenses with reason altogether and posits essentially independent

sets of basic knowledge, so-called “faculties of the mind”, each of which
has its own processing procedures. Which consiststs of a set of logical
ideas and that there could be a moral and ethical faculty, with a set of
related ideas.
A. THE RATIONALIST VIEW : BASIC
KNOWLEDGE IS INNATE
Although Rationalists are in agreement that basic knowledge,
is already in the mind at birth, there are radec, differences among
theorists regarding what knowledge it that is innate, and, how that
knowledge is made operation or functional.
4. ARGUMENTS RE INTELLIGENCE AND UNIVERSAL
GRAMMAR

• Until Chomsky came along in the 1960s with his Rationalist ideas, western
philosophy and psychology tended to be dominated by such doctrines as
Behaviourism and Logical Positivism, ones that are antipathetic to the
study of mind. The result has been that Chomsky’s arguments favouring
Rationalism are no longer accorded the uncritical acceptance they once
enjoyed.
SOME OF THE MAIN ARGUMENTS THAT CHOMSKY HAS
OFFERED IN SUPPORT OF INNATE LANGUAGE IDEAS
1. CHOMSKY’S EASE AND SPEED OF CHILD
ACQUISITION ARGUMENT

• According to Chomsky, humans are born with minds that contain innate
knowledge concerning a number of different areas. One such area or
faculty of the mind concerns language.
• Universal Grammar is not a grammar of any particular language but it
contains the essentials with which any particular grammar can be acquired.

• Chomsky argues that through the help of innate language ideas that the
acquisition of language is made so easy and rapid.
2. OBJECTIONS TO EASE AND SPEED OF CHILD
ACQUISITION ARGUMENT

• Putnam (1967) has countered Chomsky's argument by comparing the

number of hours spent by a child in learning language with that of an adult
learning a language. He contends that a child of 4 or 5 years who has
learned the essentials of the language spends much more time in the
process than would an adult, and that this time is not a short time at all.
• The argument that every language has certain essential principles or
functions that could not possibly be acquired through the experience. Yet,
it is a fact that, given enough time and proper language and environmental
input, adult language learners can learn a foreign grammar rather well –
pronunciation problems aside.
3. CHOMSKY’S INADEQUATE LANGUAGE DATA
ARGUMENT

• Chomsky argues that children’s acquisition of a well-formed grammar of

the language, despite their being exposed to inadequate language data, is
evidence of the assistance of innate language ideas.

• The language data, Chomsky (1967, p. 6) insists, are ‘meager in scope’,

and ‘degenerate in quality’. They consist, ‘in large measure’, of sentences
that deviate in form from the idealized structures defined by the grammar
that the child develops’. Such imperfect language data alone could not
provide the basis for a perfect grammar.
4. OBJECTIONS TO THE INADEQUATE LANGUAGE
DATA ARGUMENT

• Imperfect language data as input

According to Labov, Newport and others Empirical research,to think that the child
would attempt to construct a whole grammar to account for these few
ungrammatical sentences is unreasonable. Is it not more likely that the child will
focus on the 98 per cent that are grammatical and simply discard the sentences
which present particularly difficult problems?. True, a meticulous scientist might
spend a great amount of time puzzling over the 2 per cent. There is no good reason,
though, to think that a child would do the same, especially since, once spoken, the
physical data disappear and the child's attention is drawn to other things. Neither
does the child write down data for future reference. Such problem data, therefore,
can easily be disregarded by the child.
• Minute as sample as input
As to Chomsky's claim that only a 'minute sample' of language is experienced, I am aware
of no empirical evidence which he presents to support that claim. It could well be that the
sentences which the child experiences (finite though their number may be) docs contain in
them an adequate representation of the syntactic structures which the child has learned.
5. CHOMSKY’S POVERTY OF STIMULUS
ARGUMENT

• Chomsky claims that certain structures are acquired by children despite the input data being
'impoverished' or limited. In support of his view, Chomsky presents a number of examples.

• Based on the hypoteses that have been stated, Chomsky argues, because there is insufficient
language data in the environment, a 'poverty of the stimulus', there is no way that the child
could have acquired H2 by any Empiricist means. The relevant data is simply not there to be
experienced. That being the case, the only reasonable thing is to assume that the child was
assisted by innate ' language ideas, Universal Grammar
6. OBJECTIONS TO CHOMSKY’S POVERTY OF
STIMULUS ARGUMENT

• The presentation of proper and relevant input on the part of parents(in the case of
Chomsky’s example) will serve to assist the child in developing the correct hypothesis for
dealing with questions. Stimulus input, thus, is quite adequate and not at all
‘impoverished’ as Chomsky claims.
7. CHOMSKYS’S IRRELEVANCE OF
INTELLIGENCE ARGUMENT

• Chomsky holds that language acquisition is essentially independent of

intelligence. In support of this thesis he argues that grammar is so peculiar,
so different from any other kind of knowledge that it cannot be a function
of rational operating intelligence. This is evidence for Universal Grammar
in humans, a species- specific innate language structure that does not
appear in animals.
• Chomsky implies that if intelligence is relevant to language acquisition,
then more intelligent people should acquire a greater competence. But,
more intelligent persons do not acquire a greater competence than do less
intelligent persons, he says. That being the case, he then concludes that
different degrees of intelligence do not affect language acquisition, and,
intelligence itself is irrelevant to the acquisition of language. Since the
uniformity of competence regarding all linguistic essentials observed
among speakers of a language is not due to intelligence, it must be due to
something else. That something else must be Universal Grammar,
according to Chomsky
8. OBJECTIONS TO THE IRRELEVANCE OF
INTELLIGENCE ARGUMENT

• Animal and high-low intelligence

Chomsky supposes that increases in intelligence beyond that of low intelligence
should result in greater or improved competence, from a supposed Empiricist point
of view. But, there is no basis for assuming that a grammar needs high intelligence
for its acquisition. It could well be that low intelligence is sufficient for the
acquisition of a grammar. Thus, it may well be that although intelligence is relevant
for language, only a low degree of intelligence is necessary for their mastery.
• Mathematics and intelligence
According to Chomsky’s latest formulation, mathematics is a product, directly and
indirectly, or Universal Grammar. However, one cannot but wonder whether by
expanding the scope of Universal Grammar in order to take in Problem areas like
mathematics, UG has become too powerful a theory, one that could possible encompass
any complex abstract field of human endeavor. That being the case, unless Chomsky is
able to specify in more detail the contents of UG, UG seems to simply serve as a filing
cabinet for problems which are filed away for later consideration and then forgotten.
5. MENTALISM AND BEHAVIOURISM
CONTRASTED
Self-test : are you a Behaviourist or Mentalist?

you ask a friend if you could borrow a videotape. How is your speech, the spoken request
for the videotape, to be explained? Did your mind have anything to do with 1 creating this
speech? Did your mind in any way influence the creating of the sentences and their
pronunciation through the organs of speech (vocal chords, mouth, tongue, 1 lips, etc.)?
INSTRUCTIONS : SIMPLY ANSWER ‘YES’ OR ‘NO’
TO THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS
• Do humans have minds?
(A mind is said to have, for example, consciousness, feelings, and ideas)
• If humans have minds, do their minds influence the behavior of their bodies?
(the talking about a videotape are cases in point here)
• Should the subject matter of psychology and linguistics include the study of mind?
(You could agree with Questions 1 and 2 but disagret with this one.)
SCORING

• A 'No' to any one of the above, makes you ; Behaviourist.

• A 'Yes' to all three makes you a Mentalist

THANK YOU!