Criticism on his Theory
Criticism
Universal Grammar supplants a broadly construed definition of language – an organized system of communication with some sort of meaningful consistency and coherence of terms – with a much more provincial one. For Chomsky, modern language is an evolutionary legacy of universal grammar. However, other linguistic communicative systems that have evolved in tandem with our spoken language, like mathematics, music, and computer science, ought also to qualify as language, because we use them as such. But it seems that do not, under Chomsky’s rule, because they are devoid of universal grammar. For in Math, there is no present or past tense, in music there is not subject/verb/object, and in programming, there need not be intentionality, especially if the ‘listener’ has a microprocessor instead of a brain. Are these things not then languages ?
The denial of future languages, is concerned with the first. Do the unconventional languages abovementioned qualify as languages? If they don’t, and Chomsky is right about the language faculty, wouldn’t all these language-esque constructions (like music, math, and programming), need their own brain faculties and universal structures in order to exist in such complex and endless variety? Is their an ‘art faculty,’ a ‘math faculty’ and so on… Yet, supposing that the aforementioned languages do posses some relationship with Chomsky’s universal grammar, why are they so fundamentally different to normative conception of language? Any rule of UG that we predict can surely be contradicted by some language, or linguistic system that approaches the structure of a language. Ultimately, my opinion is that, while universal grammar is attractive and seductive as an idea, it limits our means to create and instantiate new languages because of an evolutionary burden that Chomsky has rested upon our shoulders. And I’m not sure its even there in the first place