The Case of Curry Part I

Let's return to the Fiona Cowie book, we've been working through bit by bit.

Today we move to the portion of the book that speaks specifically of Noam Chomsky, and of his influential arguments to the effect that, (a) all languages conform to the same structural principles, a 'universal grammar,' but that (b) growing children as they acquire their grasp of these languages, do not receive sufficient data from the outside world to allow us to see this universal grammar as learned, thus (c) we ought to see it as innate -- hardwired into our brains.  Further, the pertinent hard-wiring is specific to the linguistic domain. 

Cow thinks this is misguided, and to show why, she invokes a culinary example of learning. She writes about curry, that dense use of spices and herbs associated with the Indian subcontinent.

See pp. 211 - 17 of the book.

Many humans, perhaps most, eventually learn to recognize curry as a type of cuisine.

How do we learn about curry? Chomsky often asks in effect how does a growing child learn what is an appropriate sentence and what is not? In the same spirit, Cowie wants us to ask: how does anyone (perhaps an adult sheltered in some blander cuisine in his youth, coming to learn about the spicier stuff) come to learn what counts as curry and what does not?  One could make the same sort of argument to a mysterious inference,  since "it is not the case that everyone can be guaranteed access to the same curry examples," it may be thought mysterious that "all normal people exposed to a curry or two arrive at more or less the correct view about what curries are."

Further, just as there are some cases where qualified speakers of a language, with presumably the same neurological equipment, can argue about whether a sentence is grammatically correct, so there are some dishes that one gourmand might think "curry," another might think not.

In the latter situation, there is the mulligatawny soup [pictured above]. As Cowie explains, this is "a delicious concoction of meats, vegetables, and spices with that characteristically subcontinental taste." On the other hand, although 'paradigmatic' curry is a stew, the mulligatawny soup is, as the name implies, a soup. If one draws a firm line between stew and soup, it is NOT a curry. That firm line is not predestined, and we don't say that someone is utterly ignorant of curry simply because he draws the line where we would not.

Anyway: curry competence may well be considered a nice parallel to linguistic competence.  But, Cowie says, we don't posit a special "culinary faculty" in the wiring of the brain "as guarantor of our ability to acquire curry competence" and "we should be equally reluctant to accept [an inborn language faculty] as the conclusion of the precisely parallel argument offered by the nativist in the linguistic case."

I'll make some further observations about this analogy tomorrow.