4. Be careful!
• What does the Innateness Hypothesis claim?
• We are innately better at learning languages
than animals.
• Nobody disagrees with this.
5. We are innately superior to animals at
languages
• Nobody disagrees with that
• Nobody has EVER disagreed with it
• Never in history
• That’s NOT the innateness hypothesis!
6. OK, so what IS the INNATENESS
hypothesis?
• Human language ability is SPECIAL PURPOSE
• It is separate from other mental abilities
• It works INDEPENDENTLY from other mental
abilities
• The skills involved in language ability are
UNIQUE to language
• Ordinary mental ability is NOT involved in
language ability
7. • Anyway, the Innateness Hypothesis became
very popular
• Chomsky started looking for evidence of how
our unique language ability works