Language and Mind

systems that enter into action and interpretation, and, beyond that, the basis in our fixed biological nature for the growth and development of these internal systems. From this point of view, the central topic of concern is what Juan Huarte, in the sixteenth century, regarded as the essential property of human intelligence: the capacity of the human mind to “engender within itself, by its own power, the principles on which knowledge rests,”2 ideas that were developed in important ways in the philosophical–scientific traditions of later years. For language, “the principles on which knowledge rests” are those of the internalized language (Ilanguage) that the person has acquired. Having acquired these principles, Jones has a wide range of knowledge, for example that glink but not glnik is a possible lexical item of English; that John is too angry to talk to (Mary) means that John is to be talked to (if Mary is missing) but John is to do the talking (if Mary is present); that him can be used to refer to John in the sentence I wonder who John expects to see him, but not if I wonder who is omitted; that if John painted the house brown then he put the paint on the exterior surface though he could paint the house brown on the inside; that when John climbed the mountain he went up although he can climb down the mountain; that books are in some sense simultaneously abstract and concrete as in John memorized and then burned the book; and so on over an unbounded range. “The power to engender” the I-language principles on which such particular cases of knowledge rest is understood to be the component of the genetic endowment that accounts for their growth and development. حق تکثیر: Cambridge University Press