May 22
bradl commented on The Sheltering Water Towers of NYC.
I thought Native Son was set in Chicago
Feb 6
bradl commented on Anne of Green Gables and Sylvia Plath Get Sexed Up.
Never judge a cover by its book
Mar 26, 2012
bradl commented on What Language Is.
@8
Saying that language is or is not unique to humans depends on how you define language. If all one means by language is a systematic mode of communication then it is correct to say that even unicellular organisms employ language.
This is not to say that all of these systems have the same expressive power or are qualitatively the same. Human language, as opposed to all other animal communication systems have, among others the following traits:
Arbitrariness: Aside from onomonopia, a word or sentence's form is independent of its meaning. This is vanishingly rare in animal communication
Discreteness: There are no 10.3333 word complete sentences. Again, not to be found in animal language. Instead animal communication is carried out in an analogue, continuous fashion.
Displacement: It is possible to make propositions about the future or the past, both impossible ones and impossibles: "If I had been Lincoln I would have stayed home and watched TV instead"
There are others. This is not to say that animal communication is less worthy than that of humans or that the human capacity for language is better. It is simply radically different. Animals are massively impressive (Read about bee navigation and you'll find that they are doing really complex math when foraging), but there are things that are proprietary to humans. These proprietary things are what linguists study.
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Saying that language is or is not unique to humans depends on how you define language. If all one means by language is a systematic mode of communication then it is correct to say that even unicellular organisms employ language.
This is not to say that all of these systems have the same expressive power or are qualitatively the same. Human language, as opposed to all other animal communication systems have, among others the following traits:
Arbitrariness: Aside from onomonopia, a word or sentence's form is independent of its meaning. This is vanishingly rare in animal communication
Discreteness: There are no 10.3333 word complete sentences. Again, not to be found in animal language. Instead animal communication is carried out in an analogue, continuous fashion.
Displacement: It is possible to make propositions about the future or the past, both impossible ones and impossibles: "If I had been Lincoln I would have stayed home and watched TV instead"
There are others. This is not to say that animal communication is less worthy than that of humans or that the human capacity for language is better. It is simply radically different. Animals are massively impressive (Read about bee navigation and you'll find that they are doing really complex math when foraging), but there are things that are proprietary to humans. These proprietary things are what linguists study.
Mar 26, 2012
bradl commented on What Language Is.
Well, I can't speak to the particular motivations for those people, but I can make a guess as someone in the field.
I don't think the misunderstandings are one-sided. The people making those claims are missing the point too. I think you're right to call them drones, not because they unthinkingly follow whatever Chomsky says but rather because they just don't do much critical thinking in general. Every field has such people and when they are loud, it makes the rest of us look bad. The bristle at the Everett's conclusion and default to the ad hominem. It might also be the case that some people understand the flaw in the reasoning yet get angry enough to act foolish. Everett's misunderstanding is a big one and not even an uncommon one. It gets me angry sometimes as well because of the hoopla surrounding it.
Also, I don't mean to say that his data are boring or even inconsequential. This is a fascinating language and well worth studying. But as in most sciences, what is consequential and exciting is so for only a niche group. I think the Piraha stuff is of this sort.
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I don't think the misunderstandings are one-sided. The people making those claims are missing the point too. I think you're right to call them drones, not because they unthinkingly follow whatever Chomsky says but rather because they just don't do much critical thinking in general. Every field has such people and when they are loud, it makes the rest of us look bad. The bristle at the Everett's conclusion and default to the ad hominem. It might also be the case that some people understand the flaw in the reasoning yet get angry enough to act foolish. Everett's misunderstanding is a big one and not even an uncommon one. It gets me angry sometimes as well because of the hoopla surrounding it.
Also, I don't mean to say that his data are boring or even inconsequential. This is a fascinating language and well worth studying. But as in most sciences, what is consequential and exciting is so for only a niche group. I think the Piraha stuff is of this sort.
Mar 26, 2012
bradl commented on What Language Is.
Everett's ostensible problem for Chomsky stems from a pretty simple misunderstanding of the claims made about language. Everett offers evidence that this language does not display certain constructions and these constructions are taken to be indicative of some fundamental properties of the human language system. Given this, he says that the speakers of this language must lack the hypothesized fundamental properties. If a language lacks thes 'fundamental' properties, then, contra Chomsky, they really aren't fundamental to begin with.
Assuming the evidence to be correct, this argument does not go through. Chomskyan claims about language are basically of the following type: There is a shared capacity for language among humans and that this capacity has certain properties. Chomskyans go on to try to study what those properties are. Nowhere in their claim is it suggested that every language displays every property. Such a thing would obviously false: English doesn't have the case system that Finnish does. That doesn't mean that the same underlying computation is not responsible for both languages. Everett seems to think this is what is meant though.
Rather, Chomsky makes a more interesting claim. Languages can lack whatever they want there is no lower bound to what a language can do (higher power entails lower power). What Chomsky claims is that there is an upper bound to what a language can do. There are concepts or relations that our brains are perfectly able to do generally, but language is constrained in an interesting way. One example, In English when forming a yes-no question, we front a verb-like element:
I should leave --> Should I leave
It's not necessarily the first verb-like element:
The man who must eat should leave --> Should the man who must eat leave?
but NOT: Must the man who eat should leave?
That is, it seems that language deals in hierarchical structure, not linear order. As such, Chomsky would predict that no language displays constructions that depend on counting or other linear depedencies. The fact that Everett found a language that lacks something is pretty boring. In English we can say things like Ivy's sister's friend, but the same is not possible in German. This does say anything about Germans' capacity for language.
If Everett were able to find a language that say, made yes-no questions by always moving the 3rd verb to the front, then Chomsky would be in trouble. This is logically possible, but very unlikely
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Assuming the evidence to be correct, this argument does not go through. Chomskyan claims about language are basically of the following type: There is a shared capacity for language among humans and that this capacity has certain properties. Chomskyans go on to try to study what those properties are. Nowhere in their claim is it suggested that every language displays every property. Such a thing would obviously false: English doesn't have the case system that Finnish does. That doesn't mean that the same underlying computation is not responsible for both languages. Everett seems to think this is what is meant though.
Rather, Chomsky makes a more interesting claim. Languages can lack whatever they want there is no lower bound to what a language can do (higher power entails lower power). What Chomsky claims is that there is an upper bound to what a language can do. There are concepts or relations that our brains are perfectly able to do generally, but language is constrained in an interesting way. One example, In English when forming a yes-no question, we front a verb-like element:
I should leave --> Should I leave
It's not necessarily the first verb-like element:
The man who must eat should leave --> Should the man who must eat leave?
but NOT: Must the man who eat should leave?
That is, it seems that language deals in hierarchical structure, not linear order. As such, Chomsky would predict that no language displays constructions that depend on counting or other linear depedencies. The fact that Everett found a language that lacks something is pretty boring. In English we can say things like Ivy's sister's friend, but the same is not possible in German. This does say anything about Germans' capacity for language.
If Everett were able to find a language that say, made yes-no questions by always moving the 3rd verb to the front, then Chomsky would be in trouble. This is logically possible, but very unlikely
Apr 14, 2011
bradl commented on RIP, Language Acquisition Device.
I agree with 9 and 10. It's almost as if this was an unfair/irrelevant attack on a pretty well-substantiated theory. The facts of the matter are independent from people's reaction to the article. Climate scientists and well as birthers get upset when their theories are attacked. One of course needs to take a step back and look at the force of a counter-argument relative to the force of supporting arguments in any case. For the climate change side, the supporting evidence seems to dwarf the counter-evidence, vice versa for the birther theory.
The lay public generally knows very little about linguistics, so it is a little rough for those of us who 'do' linguistics to read this naive and polemical stuff.
The lay public generally knows very little about linguistics, so it is a little rough for those of us who 'do' linguistics to read this naive and polemical stuff.
Apr 14, 2011
bradl joined My Stranger Face
Apr 14, 2011
bradl commented on RIP, Language Acquisition Device.
This article is about word order cross-linguistically. Chomsky's basic idea concerned much more than just word order. Given that, I really fail to see how this 'disproves' anything Chomskyan syntax actually purports to posit.
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Just because English does not have a single word for 'journalist who only writes' does not mean that we as an English speaking people have trouble with such a concept. We also don't have single words for 'mortgage rate', 'feral cat', 'muscle car', 'fantasy football', 'temperate rainforest', etc. But we definitely have real culturally embedded concepts of these. We do however have single words for 'subtlety', 'chastity', 'maoism' despite not having, as a culture, real concepts of what these mean.
Sure, 'journalist' means only-writing-journalist, but that doesn't mean anything significant.