Chomsky's celebrated "Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus" (PoS) claims that "To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task" because: (i) "A human language is a system of remarkable complexity;" and (ii) "A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific training." Many linguists believe the purpose of research on universal grammar is to flesh out this argument.

Ongoing research has raised questions about Chomsky's argument, while other research has sought to bolster it. Geoffrey Pullum (UCSC) and Barbara Scholz (SJSU) examine the logic of various versions of PoS in considerable detail, clarifying precisely what is at stake. Eve Clark (Stanford) and Michelle Chouinard (Stanford) investigate the question of just how impoverished the stimulus actually is, questioning the claim that children receive no direct evidence of what is ungrammatical (download paper). Ken Wexler (MIT) looks at some newly discovered cases in which children's knowledge of language evidently goes well beyond their direct experience (download paper).

This symposium brings these scholars together to present brief synopses of their current research on this topic and to comment on the work of the others.