Subject: re : 6 . 132 innateness

don churma writes : " this elephant is too big for any one " blind man " to figure out alone ! " probably true , especially for this blind man , but we probably should keep our hands firmly in contact with the beast anyway . for me , this means taking to heart warnings such as michael studdert - kennedy 's : " characteristic motor systems have evolved for locomotion , predation , consumption , mating . matching perceptual systems have evolved to guide the animan in these activities . the selection pressure shaping each species ' perceptuomotor capacities have come , in the first instance , from physical properties of the world . by contrast , these perceptuomotor capacities themselves must have played a crucial role in the form of a social species ' communication system . . . . certainly , specialized neuroanatomical signaling devices have often evolved , but they have typically done so by modifying pre-existing structures just enough for them to perform their new function without appreciable loss of their old . . . . language has evolved within the constraints of pre-existing perceptual and motor systems . we surrender much of our power to understand that evolution if we disregard the properties of those systems . " and . . . " if there is indeed a universal set of linguistic features that owes nothing to the nonlinguistic capacities of talkers and listeners , their biological origin must be due to some quantal evolutionary jump , a structure producing mutation . while modern biologists may look for favorably on evolutionary discontinuities that did darwin , we are not justified in accepting discontinuity until we have ruled continity out . this has not been done . on the contrary , the primacy of linguistic form has been a cardinal , untested assumption of modern phonology - - with the result that phonology is sustained in grand isolation from its surrounding disciplines . " sherman wilcox dept . of linguistics university of new mexico
