Knowledge of Language

Knowledge of Language is the first extended, philosophical critique of ‘The New Rationalism’. This is a set of doctrines about language, learning, and the mind – associated especially with Noam Chomsky – which has come to dominate psycholinguistic thought in recent years. The author argues at length against the view that our linguistic competence consists of unconscious knowledge of rules of grammar, and against the associated and notorious ‘innatist’ doctrine. He shows that these doctrines rest upon radical confusions about such notions as: knowledge, ability, rule, intuition, concept, and universality. It is concluded that the extravagant claims of recent linguists to have uncovered important and unexpected features of the human mind are without foundation.