Hakuta 1991

Hakuta, Kenji. 1991. "Review of 'Language and learning: The debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky' by Piatelli-Palmarini 1980." In Minami and Kennedy 1991. Interest level: academic.

Has the following central tensions that characterize the debate:

• Nature of development. For Piaget, "cognitive development consists of the elaboration of sensorimotor schemes into logico-mathematical structures through interaction with the environment." Chomsky characterizes development as the "successive maturation of specialized hardware." Argues there could be no relevant experiences that would lead to the construction of such linguistic knowledge.
• Extent to which different cognitive capabilities should be treated as independent of each other. Chomsky sees language as a mental organ. Piaget considers language as a subset of the general semiotic system. Rejects Chomsky's claim that it is qualitatively different from other cognitive capacities.

• Bibliography module: Hakuta 1991
• In overview module: Bibliography (Literacy): H
• In modular book: Bibliography (Literacy), by Doris Gallemore, Trudi C. Hunt, Jeanne Swanson, and Stephen L. Walter
• In document collection: Reference materials
• In bookshelf: Literacy

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 4.0, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

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