![]() ![]() Finally, he writes that there are no linguistic universals, because Universal Grammar discredited by every aspect of linguists.įinally, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater have argued that the fast-changing nature of language prevents the slower-changing genetic structures from ever catching up, undermining the possibility of a genetically hard-wired universal grammar. ![]() Then, he states that Universal Grammar is in conflict with biology, because it cannot have evolved by accepted Neo-Darwinian evolutionary principles. His first point is that Universal Grammar has no logical formulation, and is completely unnecessary. He illustrates the most common criticisms for Universal Grammar in The philosophical significance of Universal Grammar. The most interesting criticism to Chomsky's theory comes from Wolfram Hinzen. In his book Sampson's argument is that people do not have an innate ability of learning hard-wired into their brains, but, instead, that humans can in fact learn anything that presented to them. Sampson authored a book entitled The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate, which was a rebuttal to Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, who was in favor of Chomsky. ![]() He argues that the grammatical rules linguists present in this theory are simply bad observations about existing languages, rather than predictions about what is possible in a language. However, despite Universal Grammar being widely accepted and recognized there are several linguistics who disagree with the theory and have voiced their skepticism. One of those linguists is Geoffrey Sampson, and his argument is that Chomsky's theory has no real merit, and is therefore false. ![]()
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