Nativism on Our Syntactic Competence

Abstract

More than half a century ago, Noam Chomsky advanced the nativist hypothesis that our syntactic competence is innate. His hypothesis has received a number of objections from the philosophers and psychologists oriented to empiricism. The debate is still ongoing. This paper aims to elucidate the structure of this debate between nativism and empiricism. First, we delineate the meaning of “innateness” relevant in this debate. Then we articulate four arguments for nativism and the objections from empiricists against each of them. The four arguments are Poverty of Stimulus Argument, the argument from linguistic universals, the argument from convergence, and the argument from critical period effects.