Westport: Praeger, 1986
UG is a theory of the "initial state" of the language faculty, prior to any linguistic experience. (3-4)
UG is a characterization of these innate, biologically determined principles, which constitute one component of the human mind-the language faculty. (24)
Given appropriate experience, this facu lty passes from the state So to some relatively stable steady state Ss, which then undergoes only peripheral modificalion (say, acquiring new vocabulary items). The attained state incorpora tes an I-language (it is the state of having or knowing a particular I -language) . UG is the theory of S0; particular grammars are theories of various I-languages. The I-languages tha t can be attained with So fixed and experience varying are the attainable hu man languages, where by "language" we now mean I-language. (25-26)
As a tentative empirical hypothesis, we might take the I-language to be a rule system of some sort, a specific realization of the options permitted by UG, fixed by presented experience. (46)
Unless this condition is satisfied by the theory of UG, it will be impossible to account for the fact that languages are learned. (51)
Comment: Compare this with T. F. Torrance’s theology of logos, and how we can know (learn) the logical structure of nature. UG ~ logos
The initial state of the language faculty, So, incorporates the primitive operations, the format for possible rule systems and the evaluation metric. Given experience, the language faculty in the state So searches the class of possible languages, selecting the highest valued one consistent with the data and en tering the state S 1 , which incorporates the rules of this language. Given new data, the system enters S2, and so forth, until it enters a state Ss in which the procedure terminates, either because of some property of Ss or because the system has reached a state of maturation that does not permit it to proceed. At each step, the learner's mind selects the highest valued ( "simplest") language consistent with the newly presented evidence and its current state. (52)
This is just like a drewing process of knowing nature in Torrance theology.
There is a deep similarity between the process described by Chomsky in that passage and the heuristic process described by Polanyi and T. F. Torrance—though they come from very different disciplines and frameworks (cognitive linguistics vs. epistemology and theology). Let's unpack this carefully: