Counterarguments to the Chomskyan thesis

A. Language or cognition? Many argue that the speed with which humans learn language is but one aspect of the general learning abilities of young people. One might argue that it is remarkable how quickly children learn to pour liquid into a container, throw a ball with aim, or jump rope, and one might observe that the ability to learn such things erodes with age. Few would argue, however, that we are genetically specified for such activities.

B. Specific language impairment or mental deficit? In a subsequent study, the family with language impairment was shown to have a general deficit in intelligence rather than a linguistic deficit specifically, against the hypothesis that there is a discrete genetic endowment for speaking.

C. How poor is the stimulus? No one has ever actually documented just how much language children hear is fragmentary, and some researchers suggest that it is much less than Chomsky and his followers assume.