Language: Properties, Universality, and Innateness
This is the initial (innate) state of the human mind that equips it to be fine-tuned to acquire a language.
What is Universal Grammar?
Tommy’s condition, who speaks in fluent sentences but lacks coherent meaning, shows that he has damage to this brain region.
What is Wernicke’s Area?
As a consequence of defining innate as “present at birth”, we would also be able to make this related claim.
What is: if a trait emerges sometime after birth, then it is not innate?
This is the definition of a module.
What is: a mental computer that is specialized to do one kind of mental job?
This is the foundation claim about mind/brain computation in cognitive science.
What is Computational Theory of Mind: All mentation (i.e. all thinking) is computation?
The fact that you can understand sentences that you've never encountered before (e.g. I ran over Fidel's ham sandwich after it fell out of the bed of his Toyota Tacoma) is an example of this feature of language.
Novelty
In the sentence “I saw a monkey on the bus,” the interpretation “I was on the bus when I saw a monkey” has the prepositional phrase (“on the bus”) modifying this word. (Hint: is it a noun or a verb?)
What is “saw”?
This example provides a counterargument to “reliably develops across (most) normal environments” as a definition for innateness.
What is the belief that the sky is blue reliably develops across most normal environments, but we don’t think that the belief that the sky is blue is innate?
While many modular systems lack this characteristic of modularity, Motor cortex, Broca's area, Auditory cortex, and Wernicke's area are all examples of this characteristic feature of modularity.
What is discrete neural localization?
The mapping of each member of one set of symbols (the input) to a single member of another set of symbols (the output) refers to this level of Marr’s levels of explanation.
What is functional?
These are the four core properties of language that associationism is unable to explain.
What is stimulus dependence, novelty, productivity, and systematicity?
Semantic priming studies illustrate the key claim that much of language processing is this.
What is: automatic and not available to conscious awareness?
This explains how innateness fits into a hybrid position of the nature vs nurture debate.
What is: Innate principles may be realized as default or “factory settings” but updated and tuned via interaction with the environment. (Callback to Bayes)
Being able to recognize a grammatical error but unable to pinpoint the specific grammatical rule you know is an example of this characteristic feature of modules.
What is inaccessibility?
The Turing Test for Intelligence relies on this key idea.
What is: All that matters for intelligence is input-output equivalence?
These are the three arguments for innateness of language.
What is Universality, Poverty of the Stimulus, and language emergence?
Studies of those with William’s syndrome give evidence of a dissociation between these two things.
What is general cognitive ability and language?
People having teeth and growing beards is a counterargument for these three proposed definitions of innateness.
What is Innate = “present at birth”, Innate = “product of internal causes”, and Innate = “genetically determined”?
Two-part question: The fact that these types of tasks are slower and more effortful than these ones demonstrates domain-specificity.
What are logic puzzles (XM37) vs. cheater detection (underage beer-drinking example) Wason Selection Tasks?
The claim that Turing Machines are maximally powerful means this.
What is: for any computable function, there exists a Turing Machine that can compute it?
Findings from the Nicaraguan Sign Language study support this claim.
What is: humans have innate language learning abilities, including the ability to create core properties of language?
These are the effects of damage to Broca’s area on syntax of language production, semantics of language production, and language comprehension.
What is: impaired syntax (ungrammatical sentences), intact semantics (meaningful sentences), and intact language comprehension?
This example provides a counterargument to the claim “genetically determined = having high heritability" as a definition for innateness.
What is having a head?
(Having a head is a trait that exhibits no variation across people, therefore its heritability is undefined)
Two-part question: If a module has limited access to information in other mental systems, the module is this. If other mental systems have only limited access to the information in the module, the module is this.
What is (1) informationally encapsulated and (2) inaccessible?
This characteristic sets Universal Turing Machines apart from Turing Machines.
What is: Universal Turing Machines can compute every computable function?