Chomsky – The Psychology Of Language And Thought (Plenum, 1983)

There are a number of cognitive systems which seem to have quite distinct and specific
properties. These systems provide the basis for certain cognitive capacities — for simplicity
of exposition, I will ignore the distinction and speak a bit misleadingly about cognitive
capacities. The language faculty is one of these cognitive systems. There are others. For
example, our capacity to organize visual space, or to deal with abstract properties of the
number system, or to comprehend and appreciate certain kinds of musical creation, or our
ability to make sense of the social structures in which we play a role, which undoubtedly
reflects conceptual structures that have developed in the mind, and any number of other
mental capacities. As far as I can see, to the extent that we understand anything about
these capacities, they appear to have quite specific and unique properties. That is, I don ’t
see any obvious relationship between, for example, the basic properties of the structure of
language as represented in the mind on the one hand and the properties of our capacity,
say, to recognize faces or understand some situation in which we play a role, or appreciate
music and so on. These seem to be quite different and unique in their characteristics.
Furthermore, every one of these mental capacities appears to be highly articulated as well
as specifically structured. Now it’s perfectly reasonable to ask how the development of one
of these various systems relates to the development of others. Similarly, in the study of,
say, the physical growth of the body, it makes perfect sense to ask how the development
of one system relates to the development of others. Let ’s say, how the development of the
circulatory system relates to the development of the visual system.