The Case of Archaeopteryx and Chomsky’s Conflicts with Himself

초록

Chomsky started his linguistic research with an attack on empiricism (behaviorism) based on rationalism. Chomsky (2010; 2011) assumes UG consists of external and internal Merge. However, this UG, he assumes, developed suddenly through the process of mutation(s), which is empiricism in the sense that he comes to deny the boundary of species. The case of Archaeopteryx is a disaster to Chomsky’s assumption of the evolution across the species in that the case of Archaeopteryx is not the evidence of the species-crossing evolution. To explain language acquisition(growth), especially in feral children, he must have assumed two conflicting mutation(s) about UG, individual, and at the same time group mutation(s). Chomsky (2010: 19) assumed individual mutation, and Chomsky (2010: 20), contradictory to his former statement, assumed group mutation(s). I rather propose, to explain language, instead of Chomsky’s assumptions, Behe’s (1996:39) irreducible complexity and Dembski’s (1999:47) specified complexity based on intelligent design. Language is just a good example of irreducible complexity and specified complexity, showing the working together of speech anatomy and Chomsky’s internal system, which together consist of language faculty (the internal system, the sensory motor system, and externalization).

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