'From Chomsky's Nativistic Theory to Sociolinguistics' is a discussion of an attempt to connect Chomsky's nativistic program with sociolinguistics as presented in Pateman (1987). Pateman suggests that the link between two approaches should be Stephen Stich's 'syntactic theory of mind' (STM). The questions discussed in the article are: 1. Is Chomsky's nativistic program adequate as a cognitivistic base for linguistics? and 2. Can a link between nativism and social sciences be a syntactic theory of mind? The answers given are: 1. Chomsky's nativistic program is not an adequate base on which social theories can be elaborated. He resists making meaning part of his theory, he gives no place to content and does not mention truth and reference at all in specifying the basic problems in semantics. Since sociolinguistics deals with (conscious) contentful beliefs about language forms, it is wrong to lake Chomsky's nativistic program as a cognitivistic base for social sciences. 2. If the nativistic program should include content and Stich's program is actually based on mental slates and processes which exclude any mention of content, then the gap between nalivism and sociolinguistics cannot be bridged by using just syntactic theory of mind as a link. A plausible possibility of connecting mind and society is a model that gives an adequate role would be given to mental stales which are not only synta ctic (Deviti 1989). Only sychological theory which explains cognitive stales on the base o f th e ir coment can serve as a base for developing a sociolinguistics theory. Psychological theory which is concerned only with syntactic properties of mental processes cannot play the role that this particular approach assumes.
