What kind of evidence could refute
نویسنده
چکیده
A science is a series of ‘conjectures and refutations’. The most powerful conjectures are those that are formulated in such a way that they may be easily refuted by observation. On this account, Universal Grammar is an extremely weak hypothesis. This is because (i) there are very few precise formulations of exactly what is in UG (Wunderlich’s list on pp.620–623 being an admirable exception), and (ii) there are very few suggestions for how one might go about testing any precise conjectures that are put forward. Although the most common practice is to invoke UG without specifying precisely what is intended, there are some specific (thoughmostly non-exhaustive) proposals. The problem is that these proposals assume UG to be very different things. For example:
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