The problematic transition from specific competences to general competence - Commentary on Peter Carruthers: 'The cognitive functions of language'
Résumé
Postulating a variety of mutually isolated thought domains for pre-linguistic creatures is both unparsimonious and implausible, requiring unexplained parallel evolution of each separate module. Furthermore, the proposal that domain-general concepts are not accessible without prior exposure to phonetically realized human language utterances cannot be implemented by any concept-acquisition mechanism.