Ignorance of Language [Paperback]

The Chomskian revolution in linguistics gave rise to a new orthodoxy about mind and language. Michael Devitt throws down a provocative challenge to that orthodoxy. What is linguistics about? What role should linguistic intuitions play in constructing grammars? What is innate about language? Is there a language faculty? These questions are crucial to our developing understanding of ourselves; Michael Devitt offers refreshingly original answers. He argues that linguistics is about linguistic reality and is not part of psychology; that linguistic rules are not represented in the mind; that speakers are largely ignorant of their language; that speakers' intuitions do not reflect information supplied by the language faculty and are not the main evidence for grammars; that the rules of Universal Grammar are largely, if not entirely, innate structure rules of thought; indeed, that there is little or nothing to the language faculty. Devitt's controversial theses will prove highly stimulating to anyone working on language and the mind

I. Linguistics is not Psychology
1. Introduction
2. A grammar as a theory of linguistic reality
II. Positions on Psychological Reality
3. Some possible positions on psychological reality
4. Some actual postions on psychological reality
III. 'Philosophical' Arguments for the Representational Thesis
5. The Rejection of Behaviourism
6. Folk Psychology
7. Intuitions
IV. The Relation of Language to Thought
8. Thought before language
9. A case for the psychological reality of language
10. Thought and the language faculty
V. Language Use and Acquisition
11. Language use
12. Language acquisition

A wealth of careful distinctions and detailed arguments...an example of how serious philosophy of a very technical area may be conducted with thoroughness, lucidity, and elegance. --John Collins,Mind Journallc,