At 11:48 30/05/2004, UUC wrote:I agree with Trask. But, whether or not it is evidence for Chomsky's wider views about built-in mechanisms, there certainly *is* evidence concerning different rates of language acquisition by children and adults using different methods. And certainly one of the slowest methods, for adults and children, is to work from a grammar book with lists of tenses and paradigms.
This is close
to what Chomsky says, actually. There is a built-in mechanism in our minds
for understanding the structure of language;
Three days ago a linguist called Larry Trask, who had never accepted this, died.
As his obituary in " The Times " [ London ] of March 28 stated:
>> He rejected any theory that could not be supported through evidence and refuted much that was myth and conjecture. <<
and it went on to deal specifically with this point of Chomsky's
>> Trask was an opponent of Chomsky's theories of Universal Grammar, first proposed in the late 1950s and by this time widely accepted. Chomsky had proposed that some fundamentals of grammar are hard-wired into the human brain before birth, but that some options within it are fixed later by experience. Trask believed that there was no evidence to support this idea, and that it should not be taught as fact. His own arguments were always based on sound knowledge of facts and scientific principles, and he would take the greatest pains to make sure they were understood by everyone from first-year undergraduates to colleagues and competitors. <<
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