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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
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    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The poverty of the stimulus argument gives no more support to a nativist (UG-based) theory than to alternative non-nativist theories.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The argument is purely negative against Popperian learning strategies.
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    • 2.Alternative theories (e.g., learners formulating grammatical hypotheses based on statistical information about the primary linguistic data and rejecting them for reasons other than outright falsification, such as lack of explicit confirmation or incoherence with other parts of the grammar) are equally compatible with the argument's negative conclusion.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Bayesian learners (Perfors et al. 2011) can infer hierarchical phrase structure from distributional data without innate syntactic constraints.
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    • 2.If non-nativist models demonstrably converge on adult grammars from realistic input, the poverty of the stimulus loses its force as an argument for UG specifically.
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    • 3.The explanatory burden falls on nativists to show UG is uniquely necessary, not merely compatible with observed acquisition patterns.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Pullum and Scholz (2002) showed that the primary linguistic data children receive is richer than Chomskyan poverty-of-stimulus arguments presuppose.
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    • 2.If the stimulus is not genuinely impoverished for the relevant constructions, the logical gap that UG is invoked to bridge does not exist, leaving nativist and non-nativist theories on equal empirical footing.
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