Ignorance of Language [Hardcover]

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.

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