All examinations must be typed

Do not use the same evidence and examples in different questions

A. Answer one of following:

1. Outline the computational theory of learnability. What factors are involved? What does learning mean in this approach? How does learnability provide limits on what can be learned? Then show how this theory might apply to a domain of knowledge other than language (e.g., objects, faces, number, etc.).

2. Can a mind be built? Give at least one clear argument and illustration of the possibility of building a mind, and at least one clear argument and illustration of its impossibility. (These may be the same illustration and argument, but viewed from different sides.)

B. Answer one of the following:

1. One of the claims of linguistics is that there is a complex, abstract structure implicit in the expressions we say and hear. Using examples from both phonology and syntax, argue for the existence of this structure and illustrate its complex organization.

2. How is language "about" the world? If there is a semantic module that is part of universal grammar, does this mean that infants, who have no linguistic experience, come into the world already knowing how their language is about the world? Isn't this a contradiction? (Hint: has this question been asked previously about other domains?)

C. Answer the following:

Describe one belief about cognitive or linguistic development which you once thought to be uncontroversial or self-evident but which you now see has to be wrong. Give the evidence you had for holding that view and describe the new evidence and how this has changed your belief. Be specific.