I have been reading about language acquisition and Chomsky's opinion based on Poverty of Linguistic Stimulus and how purely inductive generalisation about sentence structures can lead is NOT present in children.
For example, in case of children, while they are learning 'Wh-' questions, there are some structres which can be concluded as acceptable if the child merely relies on generalisation of whatever linguistic data he hears. So, Chomsky says that the child has some innate knowledge about which structures are acceptable and which are not. Or, his Hypothesis space of potentials grammars is already constrained when he starts learning. But Why? and How?
Well, if we assume that the child is a blank slate when he is born (though many would not accept that) then , this Hypothesis space is constrained only due to the experiences which he has since birth. This experiences can have as basic origin as physical force of 'gravity'. Hence, the physical world pre-conditions the mind of a child before it's language acquisition kicks in and hence, Constricting it's Grammar Hypothesis space.
How does that sound??
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