Language is innate?

Hi,

Chomsky has asserted that Language is innate. In support of his
assertion, he resorts to the universal principles of human language.
Binding is a universal principle. one of the sub-principles of Binding
says that an anaphor must be bound within its binding domain. Now,
let's turn the clock back to hundreds of thousands of years ago. Did
the human language at that time had the said principles? Did their
language followed the Theta criterion? Was there such a principle in
their language that dictated all the NPs, which I doubt if they had,
were case-marked?

If Chomsky or his follwers could prove that their synchronic universal
principles are also diachronically universal, then they might be right
in their assertion. Of course, therehave been some diachronic support
for their theory, but they are all related to languages of no more
than thousands of years tops.

What are your comments?

Farhad

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Language is innate?
    ... Chomsky has asserted that Language is innate. ... Binding is a universal principle. ... Did the human language at that time had the ... principles are also diachronically universal, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Defining symbolic AI, what it really is and what its not?
    ... symbolic AI principles don't allow much intelligence, ... thinking machine or a knowledge machine that stores or manipulates ... knowledge in ways similar to how humans use and manipulate language. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Armenian, Sumerian, Burushaski, and Turkic languages
    ... out any principles, ... (by specialists in the various language families) ... part of my "Encyclopedic dictionary of linguistics" ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: dynamic scope and free variables
    ... For lexical scoping: "A variable x occurs free in E iff there is some use ... we look for a binding of x in the environment. ... in a staticly-scoped language it's possible to ...
    (comp.lang.scheme)
  • Re: Forms and UserControls, New to C#
    ... You might look around for a good text on the principles of object-oriented ... This isn't really a language issue - the principles apply to VB just ... design that you'll come across. ... >> Dacon Software Consulting ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp)