LING 1010: Language and Mind - Empiricism and Nativism

Flashcards covering key concepts from the LING 1010 lecture on Empiricism and Nativism, including definitions of philosophical terms, historical figures, and linguistic theories related to language acquisition.

Recursion

A formal property of language that allows for infinite creativity; a linguistic unit may contain another linguistic unit of the same kind.

Plato's Problem

The question of how humans know things they don't know they know, or how they possess tacit knowledge.

Rationalists / Nativists

Philosophers who claim that some (or all) knowledge is independent of sensory experience and must be innately endowed.

Empiricists

Philosophers who claim that all knowledge must ultimately derive from sensory experience.

Tacit knowledge

Knowledge that one possesses but does not consciously realize they have.

Innate knowledge (Plato's view)

Knowledge that is inborn, present unconsciously in our souls, and carried over from a previous existence.

Anamnesis

According to Plato, the process of gaining conscious knowledge through recollection of innate but forgotten knowledge.

Plato's Problem in Linguistics

The observation that native speakers know things about their language they were never taught or experienced, suggesting innate linguistic knowledge.

Rationalism (17th Century)

A philosophical view, held by Descartes and Leibniz, that humans have innate knowledge of concepts not available to sensory experience, such as God, infinity, and necessary truth, and are endowed with a rational soul equipped with innate ideas.

Universal Grammar (early concept)

An idea proposed by Rationalists that language involved innate universal ideas and principles, seen as evidence for a rational soul.

Empiricism (John Locke)

A philosophical theory stating that all knowledge is based in experience, and the human mind at birth is a blank slate (tabula rasa).

Tabula rasa

A Latin term meaning 'blank slate,' proposed by John Locke to describe the human mind at birth, implying all knowledge comes from experience.

Behaviorism

A development of empiricist ideas, focusing on observable behavior and proposing that all learning, including language, is a modification of behavioral responses to stimuli through reinforcement or punishment.

B.F. Skinner

A leading scholar of the Behaviorist movement who applied behaviorist ideas to language learning in his book 'Verbal Behavior.'

Verbal Behavior

B.F. Skinner's 1957 book arguing that children learn language by receiving reinforcement for producing correct words or sentences in appropriate contexts.

Progressive approximation

Skinner's term for how children's language improves and becomes more accurate over time through reinforcement.

Connectionism

A modern form of empiricism that argues human cognitive processes can be modeled with artificial neural networks, which learn by adjusting connection strengths based on training data.

Artificial neural networks

Models of neural structures with layers of input, output, and potentially hidden nodes, whose connection strengths are adjusted during training to 'learn' associations in data.

Modern Nativism (Noam Chomsky)

A theory, advanced by Noam Chomsky, that innate knowledge, specifically Universal Grammar, is required for language acquisition because empiricist learning mechanisms alone cannot account for language's creative aspects.

Noam Chomsky

A linguist who critiqued Behaviorism and revived aspects of Nativism, proposing the existence of innate Universal Grammar to explain language acquisition.

Cartesian Linguistics

Noam Chomsky's approach, which revived aspects of René Descartes' views on innate knowledge in relation to language.

Universal Grammar (Chomsky's concept)

An innate, pre-specified, domain-specific body of knowledge about human language, viewed as an inherent part of human biology and genetics.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

A theoretical mechanism, equipped by Universal Grammar, that constrains the course and outcome of language acquisition in humans.

Role of experience in Modern Nativism

Acknowledged as crucial for determining the specific language acquired, the grammatical 'settings,' and for learning the particular words of a language.