Criticism of the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument (POSA)

Abstract

This paper intends to provide information about the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument (POSA) by presenting different viewpoints. At the outset a brief history of Nativism was provided, and then linguistic nativism and empiricism were elaborated on. Afterward, Plato’s ideas will be argued for and against and then Plato’s problem will be discussed in detail. For this purpose, his ideas will be compared and contrasted with Chomsky’s perspective of innateness. Chomsky’s Universal Grammar will be discussed in the scope of POSA, and its properties will be explained in detail. In addition, Chomsky’s viewpoints will be compared with Skinner’s and Tomasello’s to find out their perspectives on language learning processes. Finally, Universal Grammar will be discussed from the perspective of Usage-Based linguistics in order to highlight the shortcomings of Universal Grammar and address the questions that this theory is unable to resolve.