I have been describing the problem of acquisition of knowledge of language in terms that are more familiar in an epistemological than a psychological context, but I think that this is quite appropriate. Formally speaking, acquisition of “common-sense knowledge” – knowledge of a language, for example – is not unlike theory construction of the most abstract sort. Speculating about the future development of the subject, it seems to me not unlikely, for the reasons I have mentioned, that learning theory will progress by establishing the innately determined set of possible hypotheses, determining the conditions of interaction that lead the mind to put forth hypotheses from this set, and fixing the conditions under which such a hypothesis is confirmed – and, perhaps, under which much of the data is rejected as irrelevant for one reason or another.
Chomsky, Noam, Language and Mind: Linguistic Contributions to the Study of Mind , Source: Language and Mind publ. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1968. One of the six lectures
...language first? ...mind first? ...questions a priori?
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