poverty of the stimulus argument

E87785

argument for linguistic nativism linguistic argument philosophical argument

The poverty of the stimulus argument is a key claim in linguistics that children’s limited and imperfect exposure to language cannot fully explain their rich grammatical knowledge, implying an innate component to language acquisition.

Statements (50)

Predicate	Object
instanceOf	argument for linguistic nativism → linguistic argument → philosophical argument →
aimsToExplain	how children acquire complex grammar quickly and uniformly →
associatedWith	Noam Chomsky → generative grammar → innateness hypothesis → language acquisition → linguistic nativism → universal grammar →
challenge	to data-driven accounts of grammar learning →
concerns	discrepancy between input data and acquired grammatical competence →
coreClaim	children acquire knowledge of grammatical rules that are underdetermined by the data they hear → children converge on similar grammars despite variation in input → children’s linguistic input is too limited to account for their eventual grammatical knowledge → language input is noisy, imperfect, and contains errors → some aspects of grammar must be innate →
criticizedBy	connectionist models of language learning → constructivist approaches to language development → empiricist philosophers of language → usage-based theories of language acquisition →
field	cognitive science → linguistics → philosophy of language → psycholinguistics →
hasComponent	inference to innate constraints on possible grammars → premise that children’s grammatical competence is rich and systematic → premise that input is degenerate and incomplete →
notableCritic	Barbara Scholz → Geoffrey Pullum → Michael Tomasello →
notableProponent	Jerry Fodor → Noam Chomsky → Steven Pinker →
opposes	purely empiricist accounts of language learning → strong behaviorist theories of language acquisition →
relatesTo	Gold’s theorem in language learnability → learnability theory → rationalist traditions in epistemology → underdetermination of theory by data →
status	controversial in contemporary linguistics and cognitive science →
supports	existence of an innate language faculty → existence of universal grammar → nativist theories of language acquisition →
timePeriod	second half of the 20th century →
typicalExample	children’s avoidance of logically possible but unattested grammars → children’s knowledge of structure dependence in forming questions → children’s rapid acquisition of complex syntactic constraints →
usedIn	arguments against induction-only models of language learning → arguments against simple associationist learning theories →

Referenced by (1)

Subject (surface form when different)	Predicate
Chomskyan linguistics →	associatedWith