Cartesian Linguistics ieri e oggi: note sulla storia dell’innatismo linguistico

The paper intends to reconsider “Cartesian Linguistics” by Noam Chomsky. Moving from the philosophical context and theoretical assumptions that motivated the author, we first briefly trace the history of CL’s critical reception from the 60ties up to recent times. Then, we proceed by presenting some central passages of the book, in order to inquire the later development of its aims along Chomsky’s work until nowadays. Finally, the well-known ‘Plato’s Problem’ is retrieved, in order to trace a possible common thread between the ancient and the modern versions of innatism.