Induction, evolution and accountability.
Harnad, S, Steklis, H.D. and Lancaster, J.B. (eds.)
Origins and Evolution of Language andSpeech
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
HARNAD: Let me just ask a question which everyone else who has been faithfully attending these sessions is surely burning to ask: If some rules you have described constitute universal constraints on all languages, yet they are not learned, nor are they somehow logically necessary a priori, how did language get that way? ---- CHOMSKY: Well, it seems to me that would be like asking the question how does the heart get that way? I mean we don't learn to have a heart, we don't learn to have arms rather than wings. What is interesting to me is that the question should be asked. It seems to be a natural question, everyone asks it. And we should ask, why people ask it.
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