OAO - Chomsky

[theapportioner]

I think a strong language empiricist would say that we are a blank slate at birth, and that language is taught to us, and furthermore, that our thoughts are shaped by our language. Whorf and Sapir claimed to go around and show that the Hopi had no conception of time, etc. Cognitive scientists like Pinker reject this view, instead claiming that there is a sort of independent "mentalese", or language of thought, that is innate and does not depend on differences in languages. I take a more intermediate view.