Innateness of grammar

On Language Log, I came across Universal Grammar haters. For some, the debate rages on about nurture versus nature and I, like this blogger, also think the debate is inane.

My personal slant draws from the field of artificial intelligence where it's an already-firm conclusion that "grammars" aren't just abstract concepts pertaining to linguistics only. In a broader sense "grammar" is structure; it determines the sequential order of computation and clarifies the constituents of a functioning dynamic. So grammar also has relevance in other geeky subjects like computer programming, mathematics, systems theory and digital circuitry. Even our very DNA must have the innate capacity to understand a grammar because, without it, it would surely be hit-or-miss whether a string of gene sequences were executed in a timely order. Grammar is order. Neither you nor I would exist otherwise, let alone our complex brains.

Grammar is, on the most fundamental level, part of any coherent system and necessary to maintain that coherency. So, forgetting about whatever political vendettas one personally has against Chomsky et alia, most emphatically there must be some sort of basic "universal grammar" from which specialized grammars for particular languages are drawn. However this universal grammar must not be misunderstood to be only linguistic in nature but part of the fundamental processes of thought and computation. I believe that one innate capacity of the human brain, bland as it may sound, would be the ability to distinguish an object from an action performed on it.

A brain born without any inherent grammar must surely be a lump of thoughtless meat, fundamentally incapable of computation itself. Thought requires grammar. It's a foregone conclusion that an idea is nothing more than a structure of links to other ideas in an infinite sea we call knowledge. The neuronal structure of knowledge requires an innate grammar to parse it before one can comprehend it. To deny that there is a universal grammar in this sense is to say that the very act of thinking can be learned out of thin air. It can't, no more than you can teach a block of ice to think.

The misused miracles of autism

There is a particularly brilliant man by the name of Christopher Taylor in North Yorkshire who can speak some twenty languages without effort. What makes it even more exceptional is that he was born with autism, a disorder that basically rewires the brain in such a way as to make social interaction with others difficult or impossible. Despite the handicap, some of the less afflicted autistic savants have some amazing mental gifts that put our 'normalcy' to shame. I found this video on YouTube that I'm sure will blow the socks off of any polyglot:


[Youtube.com] Part 2/4 Christopher & Language Acquisition (Linguistics)

Professor Neil Smith from UCL's Institute of Neural Cognitive Science uses the example of Chris to gather evidence to support Chomsky's theory of universal grammar. All the while as I was looking at the video of this amazing individual, I naturally thought what anyone obsessed with linguistic paleontology might be thinking...

WHO CARES ABOUT CHOMSKY!!!
Give him some undeciphered Minoan texts to chew on!

Arrrgh. I hate to see the talents of an autistic savant being so utterly wasted like this, hehe.