A Quote by Noam Chomsky

It's perfectly obvious that there is some genetic factor that distinguishes humans from other animals and that it is language-specific. The theory of that genetic component, whatever it turns out to be, is what is called universal grammar.

Noam Chomsky

Quote Topics

Animals Component Distinguishes Factor Genetic Grammar Humans Language Obvious Other Out Perfectly Some Specific Theory Turns Universal Whatever

Quote Author

Noam Chomsky
American - Activist
Born: December 7, 1928

Part of how easily we go to sleep is genetic: many sleep disturbances, ranging from insomnia to circadian disruption, have a large genetic component.

Maria Konnikova

Superficially it's a problem if homosexuality is genetic - if the difference between people's sexual preferences is genetic - because at least a pure homosexual would be unlikely to reproduce and therefore pass on the genes. So the first question you ask is, is it actually genetic, and the answer is probably to some extent yes.

Richard Dawkins

We can do genetics. We can do experiments on fruit flies. We can do experiments on yeast. It's not so easy to do experiments on humans. So, in fact, it helps us, to interpret our own genetic code, to have the genetic code of the other species.

Craig Venter

People say their weight is genetic. But it turns out that people who are overweight don't just have overweight kids. They also have overweight pets. That's not genetic.

Mehmet Oz

Part of the problem with the discovery of the so-called breast-cancer genes was that physicians wrongly told women that had the genetic changes associated with the genes that they had a 99% chance of getting breast cancer. Turns out all women that have these genetic changes don't get breast cancer.

Craig Venter

I'm pretty sure there is some genetic component towards intelligence.

Richard Dawkins

I think nobody would claim that random genetic drift is capable of producing adaptation, that is to say the illusion of design. Random genetic drift can't produce wings that are good at flying, or eyes that are good at seeing, or legs that are good at running. But random genetic drift probably is very important in driving evolution at the molecular genetic level.

Richard Dawkins

I never take credit for anything, because it's mostly genetic to my way of thinking. Even the need to work hard with some genetic talent you're given - the need to go out and develop it, and push hard to bring it to people.

George Carlin

Memetics provides a new approach to the evolution of language in which we apply Darwinian thinking to two replicators, not one. On this theory, memetic selection, as well as genetic selection, does the work of creating language.

Susan Blackmore

If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.

Joseph Brodsky

UG [universal grammar] may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. One may think of thisfaculty as a 'language acquisition device,' an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with present experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.

Noam Chomsky

Conventional psychiatry has emphasized the genetic roots of psychosis based on the claim that twin and other studies show that schizophrenia is 80% heritable, which means that 80% of the cause is genetic.

Richard Bentall

I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless you identify the learning mechanisms. And these have some genetic basis.

Steven Pinker

Plant genetic resources are seldom 'raw materials'; they are the expression of the current wisdom of farmers who have played a highly significant role in the building up of the world's genetic resource base... As is already happening in my country, farmers and national genebanks in developing countries can work together to preserve and expand crop genetic diversity on behalf of all humanity.

Melaku Worede

Some innate capacity - some part of the human genetic endowment - enters into language acquisition. That much is uncontroversial among those who believe that humans are part of the natural world. If it were not true, would be a miracle that my granddaughter reflexively identified some elements of the blooming buzzing confusion as language-related and went on to acquire capacities of the kind that you and I are now exercising, while her pet kitten (chimp, songbird, bee...), presented with exactly the same data, could not take the first step, let alone the later ones.

Noam Chomsky

Hip flexibility is genetic to a degree, and the most gifted hitters have won both the genetic and mechanical lottery.