Methodological confusions in universal grammar: Reply to Kim

Kim (2018) argues that the method adopted in universal grammar (UG) is the same as that employed in the empirical sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology, and that my rejection of UG in Lin (2017a) amounts to a rejection of these sciences. In this reply I show that Kim has misunderstood the main point of my original paper, which is that UG is crucially different from typical scientific theories in that it does not consider causal factors. I further show that once this misunderstanding is cleared his objections can be dissolved smoothly, that the fatal problem with UG will become more evident, and that the methodological confusions embedded in Kim's arguments will be dispelled. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.