Don't play with Occham's Rasor or it will cut you

From: Glen Gordon
Message: 1410
Date: 2000-02-07

Piotr:
>People often argue in favour of monogenesis pointing out that the >human
>language faculty seems to work in the same way across the >species, and
>that there exist linguistic universals restricting the >range of
>permissible grammars. This is absurd. "Universal Grammar" >is not
>fossilised "Proto-Grammar"; its just a set of constraints >which define
>what is learnable for a human child, and which are >compatible with ANY
>number of languages now, just as they were in >the remote past.

Exactly. And we would expect this solidarity anyway according to the
polygenetic arguement of a slow evolutionary process from very ancient
times. I just don't understand why monogenesis survives at all to this day
with such a blatant and basic paradox underlying the hypothesis. But then,
that's what church is for... Oh my, I'm sorry, you must excuse my Torret's
(<- I haven't mispelled that too, have I?)

Piotr:
> My only quibble, Glen, concerns the way you spell the name >of the
>man with the razor (unless I'm missing a pun).

Ah touch�. As you can see, I'm hopelessly bad with names, especially those
of an obscure spelling. Yes, quite right, Piotr. I should have said "Occam's
Razor". Thanks. I confuse it with a not-so-popular, popular first name
"Achim". It's by pure accident and has nothing to do with Achim Albrecht, a
professional bodybuilder who no doubt uses his razor much too much too often
over the steroid-induced hypertrichosis state of his inhumanly stretched
epidermis as a ritual of pre-contest preparations and other acts of legal
prostitution.

Consider me sliced by the cruel hand of logic.

- gLeN

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