ABSTRACT
The kind of point that I made in the last chapter must also have applications to the learning of language. Children do not normally learn to talk until about the age of two, and much has gone on in the interval that must be relevant to the acquisition of that specific capacity. I make that point because some, including Chomsky, have seemed to argue as if one could consider language learning by itself without reference to the background from which it must emerge. Thus Chomsky has claimed that what is essential to linguistic competence— the capacity for coping with what is common to all languages and which therefore involves linguistic universals—cannot be derived from the data available to the child, since the data are 'corrupt' and therefore insufficient for the purpose; it is claimed in consequence that the capacity must be innate. This view involves many assumptions, as well as a model of the learning process which I have repudiated in the foregoing; the child cannot be conceived as set over against the world, trying to make sense of it. For present purposes, however, the point on which I wish to concentrate is that one cannot consider the child's acquisition of language as if it can be divorced from the other things that the child has learnt and is still learning, and also from the other features of its life.
