Chomsky's Linguistic Theory

[david dissadent]

One of the problems, as I understand it, is that rapid language extinction is making verification of UGs very difficult,

No it doesnt.

We have studied thousands of languages and they overwhelmingly conform to UG. Does it matter if its 4000, 6000 or 10 000? So long as the incidence of non conforming languages remains very low then it together with the phsical evidence (although you reject parts of that because mice dont speak ) suggests very strongly that the theory provides a very strong basis upon which to build our understanding of human language.

 

[laptop]

four basic concepts, ie past, present, future and hypothetical

Actually "hypothetical" is a mood - and it can occur in any tense ("Were I to have understood this earlier... I would be about to be clearer" )

The imperative is a mood, too. So far we arguably have nine fundamental verb forms to fill in:

		Declarative	Counterfactual	Imperative	
Past 			X		X		X
Present			X		X		X
Future			X		X		X

The English subjunctive "were I to" lumps together things I might have done/do and things I absolutely did/will not do - doesn't it?

I seem to recall that some languages distinguish verbs declaring things that did/do/will happen from those that might, those that did/do/will not, and those that must/should.

There's an even longer list of "moods" here.

The Universal Grammar, however, is (afaiui) saying that "there are verbs, which have tenses, and which also have moods".

 

[littlebabyjesus]

No it doesnt.

We have studied thousands of languages and they overwhelmingly conform to UG. Does it matter if its 4000, 6000 or 10 000? So long as the incidence of non conforming languages remains very low then it together with the phsical evidence (although you reject parts of that because mice dont speak ) suggests very strongly that the theory provides a very strong basis upon which to build our understanding of human language.

This sounds like very poor methodology. Any theory that does not address exceptions to it is a very poor theory indeed.

 

[david dissadent]

This sounds like very poor methodology. Any theory that does not address exceptions to it is a very poor theory indeed.

What exceptions? You claimed that the study of the theory (that yesterday had been completely discredited) was severly hampered by the fact languages are disapearing: My point thats just nonesence. It has been so overwhelmingly successful that the disapearing languages are not critical in any way shape or form too the credibility of the theory.


Please provide a source for your claim that the disapearance of languages provides a major obsticle to the universal grammer theory.

 

[maomao]

This sounds like very poor methodology. Any theory that does not address exceptions to it is a very poor theory indeed.

Well there's only currently one 'exception' as I know and it's not a particularly convincing one. You don't seem to be floating any reasonable alternative other than some sort of vague nature and society in interaction thing which doesn't even begin to explain how language arises or what it is. Which believe it or not current linguistic theories do. Maybe they don't complete the explanation yet but they make a convincing start.

For the record, lots of languages don't have tenses at all (notably Mandarin) and people get by fine by sticking yesterday, today and tomorrow at the front of sentences, it doesn't mean they don't refer to time. However thrilling your 'insight' that there is only now and not now, however thrillingly different the Inca perception of time as 'circular' may be, most people, even the Piraha, use language to distinguish between things that have happened and things that are going to happen (or might happen)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Language is not necessary in order to think. It is also possible to form concepts without language. It is possible to form concepts that your language has no words for. Language does not mark out the limits of thought.

Our culture (of which the language we are taught is an important part) has a great influence on the way we see the world and the kind of categories we recognise. The language we are taught affects the way we think.

The two above statements are in no way contradictory.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Universal grammars, language organs, the cognitive revolution, the controversy over Darwinian explanations for language.

What do urbanites think? What's the verdict on Chomsky's theories?

Paper due?

 

[Jonti]

The spontaneous appearance of languages provides major confirmation for the universal grammar theory.

Oliver Sacks is quite a good read on this sort of thing. There have been a few cases where groups of human children have grown up isolated from any linguistic community. I recall one case involving deaf children essentially abandoned by their families and banged up in a bin (oops, I meant asylum) together. The deaf kids developed their own unique gestural language.

Of course one can't deliberately experiment on humans in this way, but seeing as how folks are routinely so ignorant and cruel there are a number of historical instances of this sort of thing. In humans, the language instinct is so strong that it will not be thwarted, not by lack of models to emulate, nor even by inability to hear sounds or to vocalise!

 

[Knotted]

Paper due?

No, its just something that worries me now and then.

To move things on, what do people here think of the generative semantics people?

This critique of Chomsky seems to be on the right lines. The only question in my mind is whether it is just a quible.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

There have been a few cases where groups of human children have grown up isolated from any linguistic community. I recall one case involving deaf children essentially abandoned by their families and banged up in a bin (oops, I meant asylum) together. The deaf kids developed their own unique gestural language.:

That's just like Lord of the Flies!

Do you have any sort of cite for these stories of children alone in the wild?

 

[Jonti]

err, no

but I found this here while looking ...

... sign language involves much more than bare handshapes. In signing, tenses, adjectives and all the little "glue" words which make speech fluent are inserted not as extra handshapes but in other ways, such as the use that signers make of the space around them. For example, a gesture made up behind the ear puts a word into the past tense. The same gesture made in varying positions out in front will span a time-line that runs from the present into the future.

Deaf people also use this sign space as if it were a stage on which they enact the story they are telling. For instance, when a signer mentions an object, such as the driver of a car, it is "left behind" in a certain position in this gestural space. To refer back to the driver, even some sentences later, there is no need to repeat the sign driver as merely bringing the hands back to the original spot is enough to remind the listener as to what or whom is being spoken about.

The only real difference between sign and speech is that whereas in spoken language, words have to be strung together in sequence, sign allows whole phrases to be expressed in one go, the various parts being scattered around in sign space. This compression is important because it takes roughly twice as long to move the hands into a sign shape as it does to speak a word. By, in effect, speaking in phrases rather than words, sign overcomes this built-in speed disadvantage and so happily can match the pace of speech. Not only has sign got the speed and grammatical complexity of spoken language, it is also a fully symbolic form of communication.

 

[dash_two]

On the sign language front, there was an interesting article in the New York Times in 2005 about a new form of sign language arising among deaf people in a Bedouin village in the Negev desert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/s...98bf086a37cb2&ei=5070&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

 

[dash_two]

That's just like Lord of the Flies!

Do you have any sort of cite for these stories of children alone in the wild?

New York Times article from 1999:

Following the 1979 Sandinista revolution, the newly installed Nicaraguan Government inaugurated the country's first large-scale effort to educate deaf children. Hundreds of students were enrolled in two Managua schools. Not being privy to the more than 200 existing sign languages used by hearing-impaired people around the world, Managua's deaf children started from ground zero. They had no grammar or syntax -- only crude gestural signs developed within their own families. These pantomimes, which deaf kids use to communicate basic needs like "eat," "drink" and "ice cream," are called mimicas in Spanish.

Most of the children arrived in Managua with only a limited repertory of mimicas. But once the students were placed together, they began to build on one another's signs. One child's gesture solidified into the community's word. The children's inexperienced teachers -- who were having paltry success communicating with their profoundly deaf students -- watched in awe as the kids began signing among themselves. A new language had begun to bloom.

http://www.indiana.edu/~langacq/E105/Nicaragua.html

 

[david dissadent]

Language is not necessary in order to think. It is also possible to form concepts without language. It is possible to form concepts that your language has no words for. Language does not mark out the limits of thought.

What do you mean by "think" and "thought"?

 

[Knotted]

New York Times article from 1999:



http://www.indiana.edu/~langacq/E105/Nicaragua.html

The New Scientist ran an article a while back on this. If I remember correctly (I'll dig it out later), the conclusion was that it provided evidence against a strict Chomskyan view. There needs to be a critical mass of speakers before a language can take off so there is a social element to language aquisition.

 

[Fruitloop]

Does Chomsky think that there isn't?

 

[Knotted]

Does Chomsky think that there isn't?

I think that Chomsky would say that there are aspects of language aquistion that are completely dependent on hard wired universal grammar. I don't think that's a misrepresentation.

Fortunately the guy who wrote the article has published it on his website:
http://www.michaelerard.com/fulltext/2006/08/a_language_is_born_new_scienti.html

It surprises Bickerton too. Historical records from places such as Surinam, Mauritius and Hawaii suggest that creoles typically develop characteristics such as verb tense markers by the second generation of speakers at the latest, he says. "Although ABSL ought to be a full-fledged language by now, since it's been going for two or three generations, it still looks like a pidgin, which is a language spoken only by adults. This is baffling."

The reason may be that relatively few people speak ABSL. Complexity increases in a language depending on how many people learn the language and each conversation that takes place in it, says Senghas. Nicaraguan sign changes rapidly because 30 children a year learn it; home sign languages never change because they are learned once and conversations are few. ABSL may be right on the threshold.

The fact that a certain critical number of speakers seems to be necessary for a fully fledged language to evolve could be seen as a blow for those arguing that language is innate. "If you take a very orthodox Chomskyan view," Sandler points out, "you hardly need more than one brain."

 

[dash_two]

"If you take a very orthodox Chomskyan view," Sandler points out, "you hardly need more than one brain."

That is an exaggeration, but this . . .

Complexity increases in a language depending on how many people learn the language and each conversation that takes place in it, says Senghas.

. . . is interesting.

 

[Knotted]

That is an exaggeration,

That depends on what you think Sandler is talking about. If you think he is talking about language aquisition then yes it is an exaggeration, but if you think he is talking about a single child developing well formed grammar from a population of pidgin speakers then no, it is not an exaggeration.

 

[Fruitloop]

I don't get it though. What use is an idiolectic grammar, when it could have meaning only to the speaker?

 

[Knotted]

I don't get it though. What use is an idiolectic grammar, when it could have meaning only to the speaker?

You may as well ask what the use of your eyes are when it is dark - we still have eyes when it is dark. A child who is born and lives in a lightless cave will have eyes. We still have an innate universal grammar even when surounded by pidgin speakers.

This might sound outrageous, but if it isn't Chomsky's theory then I can't see what Chomsky's theory is.

 

[Fruitloop]

A child that is born and lives in a lightless cave would quite possibly have a much reduced ability to process visual information, just as a child that is brought up without linguistic interaction might well operate far below its grammatical potential - I don't think either case says anything definitive about the innateness or otherwise of visual or linguistic structures.

 

[Knotted]

A child that is born and lives in a lightless cave would quite possibly have a much reduced ability to process visual information, just as a child that is brought up without linguistic interaction might well operate far below its grammatical potential - I don't think either case says anything definitive about the innateness or otherwise of visual or linguistic structures.

You're missing the point (actually my analogy misses the point a bit). It isn't that the child has no linguistic interaction, it is that it only has linguistic interaction with pidgin speakers - that is speakers with ad hoc grammatical rules which were formed in adulthood rather than in childhood.

According to the theory the child should grow up as a creole speaker - imposing the innate universal grammar on the language regardless of whether there are any others doing this. If the theory says anything at all it says this.

 

[Fruitloop]

But language is first and foremost about two-way communication - I think it's highly likely that unless a new grammatical inflection has someone to understand it and repeat it back it might well be tried and then discarded - in fact you can see children do exactly that with word-games, i.e. try out new combinations, test them on adults and peers and see which ones 'take'. A child that wilfully persisted with combinations that didn't take would be a much less adept language learner than one that knows which recombinations to discard. So the UG probably works more like a set of attractors in the chaotic environment that is actual discourse, than like a Five Year Plan.

I reckon it's enough for the UG theory to say that things ultimately tend in a particular direction, not that every single pidgin will have creolised in a certain number or generations - if a language is moving in the expected direction but more slowly than others then there is probably some reason why, like a low number of speakers or the continued influence of the pidgin speakers on the younger generation.

 

[Jonti]

I don't get it though. What use is an idiolectic grammar, when it could have meaning only to the speaker?

It enables the inner voice ...

For centuries, philosophers and psychologists have debated whether thought takes place in language or images. Psychologists, such as Hans Furth, have taken the ability of the deaf to think as proof that thought does not need words - entirely missing the point that an internal sign language is serving the same role as the inner voice. Others have taken the "awakening" of Helen Keller by language as proof that words, not images, are the substance of thought.

However, the deaf and the deaf/blind should make it clear that thought is a marriage of words and images. Thought is how we describe what takes place at the boundary of the bifold mind as words and images spark off each other. Sometimes the orderly rhythms of speech take the upper hand, at other times images flash through our heads, driven by animal association. But thought is always a dual process, an interaction between the software and the hardware of the mind.

dichotomistic > the tale of Helen Keller

 

[Knotted]

But language is first and foremost about two-way communication - I think it's highly likely that unless a new grammatical inflection has someone to understand it and repeat it back it might well be tried and then discarded - in fact you can see children do exactly that with word-games, i.e. try out new combinations, test them on adults and peers and see which ones 'take'. A child that wilfully persisted with combinations that didn't take would be a much less adept language learner than one that knows which recombinations to discard. So the UG probably works more like a set of attractors in the chaotic environment that is actual discourse, than like a Five Year Plan.

I reckon it's enough for the UG theory to say that things ultimately tend in a particular direction, not that every single pidgin will have creolised in a certain number or generations - if a language is moving in the expected direction but more slowly than others then there is probably some reason why, like a low number of speakers or the continued influence of the pidgin speakers on the younger generation.

That's what I think too! I don't have a problem with using Chomsky in a pragmatic way - seeing his theory as an idealisation rather than an description of what is going on.

But I really think that this is not Chomsky's view (see the poverty of stimulus argument). He has a very hard core cognitive theory behind his linguistics. Actually I think I prefer the more extreme Chomskyan linguisticists such as the generative semanticists partly because they dissolve this rather outlandish cognitive theory. But then I know next to nothing about real human languages even if I can follow the abstract arguments.

 

[Knotted]

It enables the inner voice ... dichotomistic > the tale of Helen Keller

That does sort of kill Wittgenstein's private language argument.

 

[Knotted]

That does sort of kill Wittgenstein's private language argument.

Or maybe it doesn't on second thought. Anyway that's another argument for another time and in any case I'm not going to argue with myself in public.

 

[Jonti]

I think Wittgenstein's private language argument is more concerned with the nature of the perceived world, what it can't be like.

I mean, he's not really saying that one cannot talk to oneself (if one has an abstract grammatical system of signifiers etc). The implication is more that the world really is shared.

 

[dash_two]

You may as well ask what the use of your eyes are when it is dark - we still have eyes when it is dark. A child who is born and lives in a lightless cave will have eyes. We still have an innate universal grammar even when surounded by pidgin speakers.

This might sound outrageous, but if it isn't Chomsky's theory then I can't see what Chomsky's theory is.

A child born in a lightless cave will certainly have eyes, but the visual areas of the brain will not develop normally. (They will develop to some extent because the fetal retina generates patterns which play a role in the early wiring-up of the visual cortex, among other reasons.) We know this through experiments in which animals are reared in selectively impoverished visual environments.

Universal Grammar is the theory of the initial state of the language faculty. That state consists of a number of parameters, whose combinations of possible settings determine the range of human languages. Acquiring the syntax of a language requires that these parameters are set into a particular pattern through experience of that language. This is an active process on the part of the child.

The child seeks patterns in the language heard around him/her and then tries out rules to account for them, that is, the child experiments with different parameter settings. There is some evidence to support this. Young children can and do produce utterances which don't yet follow the grammar of the adult language, but which are consistent with UG.

Let's consider the position of the child surrounded by adult pidgin speakers and advance a hypothesis of our own. Pidgin languages have highly impoverished grammar. A single isolated child among adult pidgin speakers will therefore not have a good model onto which its own language faculty can map UG parameters. But a community of children among pidgin speakers will hear each others' hypothesis-testing utterances. Because these are more likely to be consistent with UG than the pidgin tongue, the children can work out their own more grammatically-rich language among themselves.