Pinker argues that the only scientific explanation of adaptive complexity is natural selection, such that “organs of extreme perfection and completion” could only arise from the physical processes of the Darwinian account. Is there a distinct, obvious delicate function of human language? Pinker attempts to address this question as it seems to be criteria for which the explanation of natural selection rests on. Pinker gives many specific examples of what he claims shows the complex system of many parts which map to specific characteristics. However, many aspects of grammar aren’t necessarily the most optimal solution for communication so how can we be sure that looking at specific characteristics of grammar directly connects back to functionality and evolved specificity of neural mechanisms to fulfill those specific characteristics? Its not clear to me why his examples would be necessary to specifically evolve for effective communication in the way that parts of the eye which allow stable object representation that evolved show clear necessity for the functioning of our visual system.
Absolutely Julia. I think we all agree with Pinker when he says that natural selection is the process by which we develop physical organs of language similar to how the eye or the ear develop. However, I am not so convinced with his suggestion that the ability to create propositions is an adaptive function. Language is clearly not the most lazy or efficient way of communicating in a setting that calls for survival. So if language was naturally selected for, species that are best at survival would have developed capacities to speak language. This is clearly not the case because species like rats which are excellent at surviving but do not have the capacity for language. If there is an evolutionary answer to language development it is one which we do not know. What we do know is that most language is categorization, which is doing the right thing with the right kind of thing. In the case of language, it is conveying categories in the best possible way. To this extent, i would go as far as to suggest that our ability to produce language occurs only in environments with language. It is a cognitive capacity that develops based on induction and later instruction. To contrast this we can look at feral children who have the capacity to produce language but don't do speak language in their feral environment.
RE: Exaptation I find the concept of Exaptation to be very interesting. From the reading I think it means that some modifications occur throughout evolution which change the function of some part of the body for different use, something that wasn’t necessarily the primary purpose it was created for. They give the example of wings on some insects where below a certain size they cannot be used to fly however, they are then used as solar heat panels. Could the part of the brain used for language be considered a modified part stemming from the parts of the brain that dictate the sounds that birds or primates make?
“Thus grammars for spoken languages must map propositional structures onto a serial channel, minimizing ambiguity in context, under the further constraints that the encoding and decoding be done rapidly, by creatures with limited short-term memories, according to a code that is shared by an entire community of potential communicants.”(pg 12) Seeing language summed up in a sentence like this, it is quite clear why there is a motivation to support UG. The only advantage I can see to UG is that it could make language acquisition faster (since it restricts the number of acceptable possibilities via parameters). But if we’re adapted to make language learning faster or communication more efficient, selection was taking place in the presence of language – ie language or some propositional capacity could have already existed. UG is motivated by the commonalities of languages, but it is not clear what selective advantage is provided by UG.
Pinker and Bloom argue that human language is a result of neo-Darwinian evolution, meaning that desirable traits are encoded in our genes and are passed on through natural selection. This theory opposes Chomsky and Gould’s argument that language evolved as a spandrel, a by-product for other evolutionary events such as an increase in overall brain size. Both arguments imply a universality of language. RE: “Every detail of grammatical competence that we wish to ascribe to selection must have conferred a reproductive advantage on its speakers, and this advantage must be large enough to have become fixed in the ancestral population” What puzzles me is how all humans evolved, in different corners of the world, to have the same grammatical competence, i.e. a universal grammar. Pinker and Bloom describe the design in language as a complex system made up of building blocks such as phrasal categories, phrase structure, linear order affixes, word movement, among others. These building blocks are what give language an expressive power. What is interesting to me is that they are prevalent in all languages. Both theories proposed by Pinker/Bloom and Chomsky/Gould assume a universality of language based on evolution (one as the subject of evolution, the other as a by-product), but neither explain how all humans arrived to have the same complex system with no communication between them.
If language capacity is uniform in every human society there are chances it did not appear in different corners of the world but when our ancestors' population was still not too spread. Just look at the presumed apparition of language (350 000 to 150 000 B.C.E) and the first massive migrations of human ancestors (100 000 to 50 000 B.C.E). Keep in mind that evolution is much slower than the spatial and cultural development of our species and that the development of abilities for language probably started very early and took more than a few thousand years and this is why we all speak similarly and still are part of the same species; as far as we know there has been no speciation since the great migrations (there will even less chance now that worldwide communication is so easy). Here the puzzle (and what pinker and bloom try to answer) is how such thing as a natural language can emerge from evolution, replying to the arguments that there does not seem to be such things as pre-linguistic abilities and that language capacity looks like an all-or-none trait, which makes it hard to see as an evolutive trait considering the huge complexity of language. They argue that evolution can still slowly go towards such a trait even if during the process the "sub-traits" it creates do not offer direct evolutionary advantages.
You wonder why rats haven’t developed the skills for language. I think that the answer is quite simply: they haven't needed to. Rats get along just fine, they have no need language. Humans don’t have language because they survive, they survive because they have language. Humans have developed to be social creatures - some theories even suggesting that cognition itself arises from social interactions.
" Since we are impressed both by the synthetic theory of evolution and by the theory of generative grammar, we hope that we will not have to choose between the two. "Pinker takes the example of the eye as an evidence for natural selection due to the range of functions that the eye is able to perfectly execute. This organ could not have evolved from something like genetic drift and must be the product of evolution. To adapt this example to the case of language, the structure of the vocal chords, glottis, diaphragm etc. would have evolved to be able to produce the variety of possible sounds found in human languages. I am curious about how positive and negative evidence apply to the case of modified spandrels and adaptationism. Pinker states that "adaptation is fundamentally untestable because...adaptive stories can easily be substituted for another." This touches on the idea of just-so stories. With regards to language acquisition, we have seen that people do not receive any negative evidence of UG. To extend this comparison, would one say it is impossible to test for violations of UG because they never exist?
As mentioned by Professor Harnad, it is problematic how Pinker & Bloom overlook UG, which is a central challenge to hypotheses about the evolution of language. I took issue with the following quotation: "The assertion that a natural language grammar either functions as a whole or not at all is surprisingly common." Sure, possibly for UG but not for learned grammar. Accounting for the origin of UG is more difficult than accounting for the trivial aspects of language (largely because of UG's "syntactocentric" nature, as described by Jackendoff). It is difficult to imagine what would possibly drive the incremental evolution of an essentially syntactic mechanism before the evolution of semantics or other aspects of language. Especially given the Poverty of the Stimulus argument, the "Big Bang" theory of UG discussed earlier in this course seems like a much more logical explanation than trying to imagine the incremental evolution of UG from more primitive forms.
This paper was very, very long. The authors argue that language is adaptive and complex and claim that natural selection is the only evolutionary explanation to how our language skills have arisen. However, I think that Chomsky explains that natural selection can’t account for all the complexity and adaptations of language. He states that our cognitive abilities are directly related to our language abilities, and in my opinion, our ability to learn language is somewhat innate. Our language abilities seem to have developed alongside our cognitive abilities. So whatever traits we have developed through natural selection would have developed alongside similar language traits. When the authors talk about “the mind is composed of autonomous computational modules” they are talking about the modules that come together and create our cognitive abilities, language is an ability that is naturally embedded in this complex system.
I’ve always intuitively liked the evolutionary argument for linguistic capacity, although I’m never sure whether it’s simply because I’m a sucker for a ‘just so’ story. For a species that is slow, soft, and weak, it makes sense that humans had to develop a unique tool to ensure our survival. However, Pinker and Bloom’s arguments that propositions are part of the evolved capacity for language doesn't hit quite right for me. I think I'm struggling with the notion that something as abstract as that can be imprinted onto genetics. I will agree that propositions are what separates language from non-language and that feature must come from somewhere. I think the answer lies in the fact that there’s room for an interaction of environment and linguistic capacity. I’m not sure where adaptation and where environmental imprinting begins. Is it an environment that necessitates propositional phrases due to the complex and social nature of human interaction and environment? I think this is an interesting course for further research - perhaps using neural nets to cut down on how ethically questionable it might be.
Re: "Second, it is not necessarily illegitimate to infer both special design and adaptationist origins on the basis of function itself. It all depends on the complexity of the function from an engineering point of view. If someone told you that John uses X as a sunshade or a paperweight, you would certainly be hard-pressed to guess what X is or where X came from, because all sorts of things make good sunshades or paperweights. But if someone told you that John uses X to display television broadcasts, it would be a very good bet that X is a television set or is similar in structure to one, and that it was designed for that purpose. The reason is that it would be vanishingly unlikely for something that was not designed as a television set to display television programs; the engineering demands are simply too complex.”
The above quote is a useful analogy, but its relevance relies on knowing what the functions of language are. Prompted by this thought, the rest of the article made me think about what is implied by the word ‘language.’ Does ‘language’ just involve rules and symbols, or does language imply the actual (spoken) production and (auditory) comprehension of these rules and symbols too?
Pinker and Bloom mainly use aspects of UG to back their argument, which does not necessarily entail speech mechanisms. However, their paper also includes arguments that depend on the sensorimotor abilities involved in producing and understanding spoken language, mentioning phonology, prosodic rules, and features of the vocal-auditory channel, among others. This ambiguity of the term ‘language’ stood out to me because the question: Did language evolve as a result of natural selection, depends on this definition.
The lack of clarity and consistency of how Pinker and Bloom define ‘language’ throughout the article weakens their argument, particularly the way they seemed to equate ‘grammar’ and ‘language’ at some points in the article, and not at others. If ‘language’ does just reflect grammar as entailed by UG (let’s call this Y-Lang), then I do think language has evolved by natural selection, but if ‘language’ also implies speech related abilities (let’s call this X-Lang), I don’t think one could say ‘language’ evolved by natural selection.
Arguments I’ve read for music as an adaptation are the reason I don’t think X-Lang is a specific adaptation. These debates argue that musical and linguistic abilities and functions share many of the same underlying brain processes and areas, like those involved in sound production, auditory stream analysis (picking out relevant sounds in the environment) and recognition of speech patterns. Some argue that these capacities developed for other reasons related to survival (ex: auditory stream analysis and it’s role in prey and predator detection), prompting both musical and linguistic capacity to develop as spandrels. Other argue that capacities are specific to music, and precede linguistic capacity, suggesting that linguistic abilities developed by high jacking the brain's machinery for musical ability. Across all arguments, though, the aspects of language that involve sound production and comprehension, may reflect a spandrel.
Pinker’s and Bloom’s arguments convinced me that Y-LANG evolved by natural selection, however, in order to arrive at the conclusion they did (that language evolved by natural selection) a clearer definition of ‘language’ is necessary.
Firstly, I though chapter 1 and 2 of Pinker's paper were very well done, and I appreciated him explaining evolution in a simple but comprehensive way, it gave me my most global understanding of evolution to date.
I thought that describing language as a 'decisive advantage in competition with other species that can only defend themselves against new threats in evolutionary time' was an insightful framing of the power of language.
A critique would be that I did not understand his explanations of why there is more than one language, which I thought was a great question to ask, especially considering his argument in favor of a universal language design. I thought his reversal of the perspective on this topic to one more in line with his view, "that there is a learning mechanism, which leads to the development of multiple languages" could've been very strong, but by using an example of "sequenced elements within a bounded unit" which to a person not studying linguistics means little to, it becomes hard to decide for myself if the argument is well structured, and has value.
Although for the most part I think Pinker's explanations for why language is evolved by natural selection are pretty straight forward and have a solid logic to them, evidently I can not dismiss Chomsky's explanation of language as a function of physical laws, by the token that Pinker does, when he begs the question, "is there any reason to believe that there are as of yet undiscovered theorems of physics that can account for the design of language?" Firstly, this isn't enough to dismiss Chomsky because the weakness of Pinker's argument is that he himself has used the lack of positive evidence from natural selection to explain certain aspects of language as a weak argument for Piattelli-Palmarini's belief in language as a spandrel. Thus, he can not in turn say, the lack of positive evidence is reason enough to dismiss, because this can easily be refuted in the future, when and if a theorem or mechanism is discovered. However, more importantly is the argument Chomsky makes that there isn't an autonomy of syntax in natural languages. Essentially, the idea being that we have UG, which doesn't have an evolutionary origin and thus must be innate, and its supported by the poverty of stimulus, which is due to the lack of autonomy of syntax, meaning there is a constraint on thought, and these constraints are the parameters for UG. So until there is a reasonable way of explaining UG as a function of evolution and not of constraint of thought and thus some sort of "physical laws" that we must consider, I can not agree with Pinker in dismissing Chomsky, although even the idea of language as a spandrel isn't impregnable as a concept. Furthermore, the paper brings up under the title of "the process of language evolution" key points about the genetic variation among individuals in grammatical competence and the steps going from no language at all to language as we know it, which I thought were strong arguments against N.S. that were not addressed properly in the paper.
Pinker argues that the only scientific explanation of adaptive complexity is natural selection, such that “organs of extreme perfection and completion” could only arise from the physical processes of the Darwinian account. Is there a distinct, obvious delicate function of human language? Pinker attempts to address this question as it seems to be criteria for which the explanation of natural selection rests on. Pinker gives many specific examples of what he claims shows the complex system of many parts which map to specific characteristics. However, many aspects of grammar aren’t necessarily the most optimal solution for communication so how can we be sure that looking at specific characteristics of grammar directly connects back to functionality and evolved specificity of neural mechanisms to fulfill those specific characteristics? Its not clear to me why his examples would be necessary to specifically evolve for effective communication in the way that parts of the eye which allow stable object representation that evolved show clear necessity for the functioning of our visual system.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely Julia. I think we all agree with Pinker when he says that natural selection is the process by which we develop physical organs of language similar to how the eye or the ear develop. However, I am not so convinced with his suggestion that the ability to create propositions is an adaptive function. Language is clearly not the most lazy or efficient way of communicating in a setting that calls for survival. So if language was naturally selected for, species that are best at survival would have developed capacities to speak language. This is clearly not the case because species like rats which are excellent at surviving but do not have the capacity for language. If there is an evolutionary answer to language development it is one which we do not know. What we do know is that most language is categorization, which is doing the right thing with the right kind of thing. In the case of language, it is conveying categories in the best possible way. To this extent, i would go as far as to suggest that our ability to produce language occurs only in environments with language. It is a cognitive capacity that develops based on induction and later instruction. To contrast this we can look at feral children who have the capacity to produce language but don't do speak language in their feral environment.
DeleteRE: Exaptation
ReplyDeleteI find the concept of Exaptation to be very interesting. From the reading I think it means that some modifications occur throughout evolution which change the function of some part of the body for different use, something that wasn’t necessarily the primary purpose it was created for. They give the example of wings on some insects where below a certain size they cannot be used to fly however, they are then used as solar heat panels. Could the part of the brain used for language be considered a modified part stemming from the parts of the brain that dictate the sounds that birds or primates make?
“Thus grammars for spoken languages must map propositional structures onto a serial channel, minimizing ambiguity in context, under the further constraints that the encoding and decoding be done rapidly, by creatures with limited short-term memories, according to a code that is shared by an entire community of potential communicants.”(pg 12)
ReplyDeleteSeeing language summed up in a sentence like this, it is quite clear why there is a motivation to support UG. The only advantage I can see to UG is that it could make language acquisition faster (since it restricts the number of acceptable possibilities via parameters). But if we’re adapted to make language learning faster or communication more efficient, selection was taking place in the presence of language – ie language or some propositional capacity could have already existed. UG is motivated by the commonalities of languages, but it is not clear what selective advantage is provided by UG.
Pinker and Bloom argue that human language is a result of neo-Darwinian evolution, meaning that desirable traits are encoded in our genes and are passed on through natural selection. This theory opposes Chomsky and Gould’s argument that language evolved as a spandrel, a by-product for other evolutionary events such as an increase in overall brain size. Both arguments imply a universality of language.
ReplyDeleteRE: “Every detail of grammatical competence that we wish to ascribe to selection must have conferred a reproductive advantage on its speakers, and this advantage must be large enough to have become fixed in the ancestral population”
What puzzles me is how all humans evolved, in different corners of the world, to have the same grammatical competence, i.e. a universal grammar. Pinker and Bloom describe the design in language as a complex system made up of building blocks such as phrasal categories, phrase structure, linear order affixes, word movement, among others. These building blocks are what give language an expressive power. What is interesting to me is that they are prevalent in all languages. Both theories proposed by Pinker/Bloom and Chomsky/Gould assume a universality of language based on evolution (one as the subject of evolution, the other as a by-product), but neither explain how all humans arrived to have the same complex system with no communication between them.
If language capacity is uniform in every human society there are chances it did not appear in different corners of the world but when our ancestors' population was still not too spread. Just look at the presumed apparition of language (350 000 to 150 000 B.C.E) and the first massive migrations of human ancestors (100 000 to 50 000 B.C.E). Keep in mind that evolution is much slower than the spatial and cultural development of our species and that the development of abilities for language probably started very early and took more than a few thousand years and this is why we all speak similarly and still are part of the same species; as far as we know there has been no speciation since the great migrations (there will even less chance now that worldwide communication is so easy).
DeleteHere the puzzle (and what pinker and bloom try to answer) is how such thing as a natural language can emerge from evolution, replying to the arguments that there does not seem to be such things as pre-linguistic abilities and that language capacity looks like an all-or-none trait, which makes it hard to see as an evolutive trait considering the huge complexity of language. They argue that evolution can still slowly go towards such a trait even if during the process the "sub-traits" it creates do not offer direct evolutionary advantages.
You wonder why rats haven’t developed the skills for language. I think that the answer is quite simply: they haven't needed to. Rats get along just fine, they have no need language. Humans don’t have language because they survive, they survive because they have language. Humans have developed to be social creatures - some theories even suggesting that cognition itself arises from social interactions.
Delete" Since we are impressed both by the synthetic theory of evolution and by the theory of generative grammar, we hope that we will not have to choose between the two. "Pinker takes the example of the eye as an evidence for natural selection due to the range of functions that the eye is able to perfectly execute. This organ could not have evolved from something like genetic drift and must be the product of evolution. To adapt this example to the case of language, the structure of the vocal chords, glottis, diaphragm etc. would have evolved to be able to produce the variety of possible sounds found in human languages. I am curious about how positive and negative evidence apply to the case of modified spandrels and adaptationism. Pinker states that "adaptation is fundamentally untestable because...adaptive stories can easily be substituted for another." This touches on the idea of just-so stories. With regards to language acquisition, we have seen that people do not receive any negative evidence of UG. To extend this comparison, would one say it is impossible to test for violations of UG because they never exist?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned by Professor Harnad, it is problematic how Pinker & Bloom overlook UG, which is a central challenge to hypotheses about the evolution of language. I took issue with the following quotation: "The assertion that a natural language grammar either functions as a whole or not at all is surprisingly common." Sure, possibly for UG but not for learned grammar. Accounting for the origin of UG is more difficult than accounting for the trivial aspects of language (largely because of UG's "syntactocentric" nature, as described by Jackendoff). It is difficult to imagine what would possibly drive the incremental evolution of an essentially syntactic mechanism before the evolution of semantics or other aspects of language. Especially given the Poverty of the Stimulus argument, the "Big Bang" theory of UG discussed earlier in this course seems like a much more logical explanation than trying to imagine the incremental evolution of UG from more primitive forms.
ReplyDeleteThis paper was very, very long. The authors argue that language is adaptive and complex and claim that natural selection is the only evolutionary explanation to how our language skills have arisen. However, I think that Chomsky explains that natural selection can’t account for all the complexity and adaptations of language. He states that our cognitive abilities are directly related to our language abilities, and in my opinion, our ability to learn language is somewhat innate. Our language abilities seem to have developed alongside our cognitive abilities. So whatever traits we have developed through natural selection would have developed alongside similar language traits. When the authors talk about “the mind is composed of autonomous computational modules” they are talking about the modules that come together and create our cognitive abilities, language is an ability that is naturally embedded in this complex system.
ReplyDeleteI’ve always intuitively liked the evolutionary argument for linguistic capacity, although I’m never sure whether it’s simply because I’m a sucker for a ‘just so’ story. For a species that is slow, soft, and weak, it makes sense that humans had to develop a unique tool to ensure our survival. However, Pinker and Bloom’s arguments that propositions are part of the evolved capacity for language doesn't hit quite right for me. I think I'm struggling with the notion that something as abstract as that can be imprinted onto genetics. I will agree that propositions are what separates language from non-language and that feature must come from somewhere. I think the answer lies in the fact that there’s room for an interaction of environment and linguistic capacity. I’m not sure where adaptation and where environmental imprinting begins. Is it an environment that necessitates propositional phrases due to the complex and social nature of human interaction and environment? I think this is an interesting course for further research - perhaps using neural nets to cut down on how ethically questionable it might be.
ReplyDeleteRe: "Second, it is not necessarily illegitimate to infer both special design and adaptationist origins on the basis of function itself. It all depends on the complexity of the function from an engineering point of view. If someone told you that John uses X as a sunshade or a paperweight, you would certainly be hard-pressed to guess what X is or where X came from, because all sorts of things make good sunshades or paperweights. But if someone told you that John uses X to display television broadcasts, it would be a very good bet that X is a television set or is similar in structure to one, and that it was designed for that purpose. The reason is that it would be vanishingly unlikely for something that was not designed as a television set to display television programs; the engineering demands are simply too complex.”
ReplyDeleteThe above quote is a useful analogy, but its relevance relies on knowing what the functions of language are. Prompted by this thought, the rest of the article made me think about what is implied by the word ‘language.’ Does ‘language’ just involve rules and symbols, or does language imply the actual (spoken) production and (auditory) comprehension of these rules and symbols too?
Pinker and Bloom mainly use aspects of UG to back their argument, which does not necessarily entail speech mechanisms. However, their paper also includes arguments that depend on the sensorimotor abilities involved in producing and understanding spoken language, mentioning phonology, prosodic rules, and features of the vocal-auditory channel, among others. This ambiguity of the term ‘language’ stood out to me because the question: Did language evolve as a result of natural selection, depends on this definition.
The lack of clarity and consistency of how Pinker and Bloom define ‘language’ throughout the article weakens their argument, particularly the way they seemed to equate ‘grammar’ and ‘language’ at some points in the article, and not at others. If ‘language’ does just reflect grammar as entailed by UG (let’s call this Y-Lang), then I do think language has evolved by natural selection, but if ‘language’ also implies speech related abilities (let’s call this X-Lang), I don’t think one could say ‘language’ evolved by natural selection.
Arguments I’ve read for music as an adaptation are the reason I don’t think X-Lang is a specific adaptation. These debates argue that musical and linguistic abilities and functions share many of the same underlying brain processes and areas, like those involved in sound production, auditory stream analysis (picking out relevant sounds in the environment) and recognition of speech patterns. Some argue that these capacities developed for other reasons related to survival (ex: auditory stream analysis and it’s role in prey and predator detection), prompting both musical and linguistic capacity to develop as spandrels. Other argue that capacities are specific to music, and precede linguistic capacity, suggesting that linguistic abilities developed by high jacking the brain's machinery for musical ability. Across all arguments, though, the aspects of language that involve sound production and comprehension, may reflect a spandrel.
Pinker’s and Bloom’s arguments convinced me that Y-LANG evolved by natural selection, however, in order to arrive at the conclusion they did (that language evolved by natural selection) a clearer definition of ‘language’ is necessary.
Firstly, I though chapter 1 and 2 of Pinker's paper were very well done, and I appreciated him explaining evolution in a simple but comprehensive way, it gave me my most global understanding of evolution to date.
ReplyDeleteI thought that describing language as a 'decisive advantage in competition with other species that can only defend themselves against new threats in evolutionary time' was an insightful framing of the power of language.
A critique would be that I did not understand his explanations of why there is more than one language, which I thought was a great question to ask, especially considering his argument in favor of a universal language design. I thought his reversal of the perspective on this topic to one more in line with his view, "that there is a learning mechanism, which leads to the development of multiple languages" could've been very strong, but by using an example of "sequenced elements within a bounded unit" which to a person not studying linguistics means little to, it becomes hard to decide for myself if the argument is well structured, and has value.
Although for the most part I think Pinker's explanations for why language is evolved by natural selection are pretty straight forward and have a solid logic to them, evidently I can not dismiss Chomsky's explanation of language as a function of physical laws, by the token that Pinker does, when he begs the question, "is there any reason to believe that there are as of yet undiscovered theorems of physics that can account for the design of language?" Firstly, this isn't enough to dismiss Chomsky because the weakness of Pinker's argument is that he himself has used the lack of positive evidence from natural selection to explain certain aspects of language as a weak argument for Piattelli-Palmarini's belief in language as a spandrel. Thus, he can not in turn say, the lack of positive evidence is reason enough to dismiss, because this can easily be refuted in the future, when and if a theorem or mechanism is discovered. However, more importantly is the argument Chomsky makes that there isn't an autonomy of syntax in natural languages. Essentially, the idea being that we have UG, which doesn't have an evolutionary origin and thus must be innate, and its supported by the poverty of stimulus, which is due to the lack of autonomy of syntax, meaning there is a constraint on thought, and these constraints are the parameters for UG. So until there is a reasonable way of explaining UG as a function of evolution and not of constraint of thought and thus some sort of "physical laws" that we must consider, I can not agree with Pinker in dismissing Chomsky, although even the idea of language as a spandrel isn't impregnable as a concept. Furthermore, the paper brings up under the title of "the process of language evolution" key points about the genetic variation among individuals in grammatical competence and the steps going from no language at all to language as we know it, which I thought were strong arguments against N.S. that were not addressed properly in the paper.