How did human language originate?

[untermensche]

So lets try to make sense of this.

Turing developed the basic understandings of computation and computers.

Therefore what?

What is his relationship to the human language capacity?

Mathematical proofs?

I do not have clairvoyance.

Here Chomsky takes on the so called "computational cognitive scientists" and makes them look like fools.

We were talking of Chomsky's claim for unique human capacity. Turing demonstrated a mathematical proof through which one can realize infinite organizational capacity with relational databases.

Chomsky poof

Insanity.

Wishful thinking.

What humans have, when one actually looks at the capacity, exists in no other animal.

Entirely unique to humans. And not surprising when we see what humans can do.

And if you actually watch the video you will see your silly notions go "poof".

 

[untermensche]

(To someone else here)

When you can explain the universal hierarchical nature of human language come back.

Until then you have nothing.

Hierarchical understandings cannot arise from linear presentations.

I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean.

I think that hierarchy was already part of our unconscious modeling of the world, and that it was co-opted for parsing language, likely with increasing complexity over time.

In computer programming, there is a similar problem: serializing and deserializing data structures. Serializing is placing a data structure's contents in linear order for storing on a disk or transmitting over a network, and deserializing is restoring that data structure from that serialized version.

Computer programming is not in any way equivalent to natural selection.

It is not an analogy. What can be done with computer programming is one thing. What can happen in natural selection is another.

What happens in a computer chip is one thing. What happens in a brain is something else entirely.

The absurdity of a linear presentation somehow creating a hierarchical understanding, that is passed from one individual to another, is basic evolutionary theory.

In life all one has exposure of from other people are linear presentations of language.

If all one hears are linear presentations AND what one hears is the cause of the language capacity then it would make no sense for the language capacity to work hierarchically. There would be no way for it to work hierarchically. There would be no reason we are constantly thinking with language.

All people can do is claim the language capacity does not work hierarchically.

But then you run smack into Chomsky and his mountains of evidence that says otherwise. And I am not exaggerating. It is mountains. It is every sentence over a few words, sentences with complex structure, in every language looked at.

 

[fromderinside]

We were talking of Chomsky's claim for unique human capacity. Turing demonstrated a mathematical proof through which one can realize infinite organizational capacity with relational databases.

Chomsky poof

Insanity.

Wishful thinking.

What humans have, when one actually looks at the capacity, exists in no other animal.

Entirely unique to humans. And not surprising when we see what humans can do.

And if you actually watch the video you will see your silly notions go "poof".

I dropped Scientology analog thinking five or six decades ago.

Your argument isn't an argument. It's religion for you. Praise be to Chomsky. Sorry about that.

 

[untermensche]

Insanity.

Wishful thinking.

What humans have, when one actually looks at the capacity, exists in no other animal.

Entirely unique to humans. And not surprising when we see what humans can do.

And if you actually watch the video you will see your silly notions go "poof".

I dropped Scientology analog thinking five or six decades ago.

Your argument isn't an argument. It's religion for you. Praise be to Chomsky. Sorry about that.

It is your religion of never reading a word Chomsky wrote that is the problem.

Watch the video.

It is amazing.

An eighty something old man showing a bunch of young working so-called cognitive scientists that they are completely lost.

 

[fromderinside]

Wow. Are you calling a video of a man hand waving evidence? I need data, experiment, peer review and publication in a reputable scientific journal for starters. Watching a bunch of admirers swooning isn't satisfying at all. Haven't you heard? the author of Tarzan tried that already and nothing but brain dead still hang on his 'teaching'.

 

[untermensche]

Wow. Are you calling a video of a man hand waving evidence? I need data, experiment, peer review and publication in a reputable scientific journal for starters. Watching a bunch of admirers swooning isn't satisfying at all. Haven't you heard? the author of Tarzan tried that already and nothing but brain dead still hang on his 'teaching'.

This was an audience of people Chomsky was telling to their face that their work was nonsense. It was a hostile audience. You clearly did not watch a second of it.

It is amazing.

These are so-called "computational cognitive scientists". A bunch of lost sheep going nowhere.

Numbers mean absolutely nothing when the philosophical underpinnings of the arguments making use of the numbers are irrational.

Numbers can be generated from any data.

Having numbers and nothing else gives you absolutely nothing.

You are probably a lost cause. Too old for any good anyhow.

But Chomsky will be much bigger in a hundred years than he is today. A man ahead of his time.

Just wait.

 

[fromderinside]

Oh, I'm getting it. Listen.

NATURAL LANGUAGE AND NATURAL SELECTION https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9da6/f67f79d0efd581669388e911ce89bfd47294.pdf



What’s universal grammar? Evidence rebuts Chomsky’s theory of language learning http://www.salon.com/2016/09/10/wha...chomskys-theory-of-language-learning_partner/




pfffssssssssstttttttt, sigh

 

[untermensche]

For those with an open mind.

 

[lpetrich]

What’s universal grammar? Evidence rebuts Chomsky’s theory of language learning http://www.salon.com/2016/09/10/wha...chomskys-theory-of-language-learning_partner/

Titled link: What’s universal grammar? Evidence rebuts Chomsky’s theory of language learning - Salon.com

The earliest incarnations of universal grammar in the 1960s took the underlying structure of “standard average European” languages as their starting point — the ones spoken by most of the linguists working on them. Thus, the universal grammar program operated on chunks of language, such as noun phrases (“The nice dogs”) and verb phrases (“like cats”).

Fairly soon, however, linguistic comparisons among multiple languages began rolling in that did not fit with this neat schema. Some native Australian languages, such as Warlpiri, had grammatical elements scattered all over the sentence — noun and verb phrases that were not “neatly packaged” so that they could be plugged into Chomsky’s universal grammar — and some sentences had no verb phrase at all.

Noam Chomsky's explorations of the structure of language started with English, as if English is the only language that one ever needs to look at. Looking at WALS Online - The World Atlas of Language Structures reveals a *lot* of variation.

Also note  Standard Average European, listing many features that modern European languages share that are not as common outside of Europe, and 2008-05-27.8724094854 (on SAE)

In the new usage-based approach (which includes ideas from functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar), children are not born with a universal, dedicated tool for learning grammar. Instead they inherit the mental equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: a set of general-purpose tools — such as categorization, the reading of communicative intentions and analogy making, with which children build grammatical categories and rules from the language they hear around them.

For instance, English-speaking children understand “The cat ate the rabbit,” and by analogy they also understand “The goat tickled the fairy.” They generalize from hearing one example to another. After enough examples of this kind, they might even be able to guess who did what to whom in the sentence “The gazzer mibbed the toma,” even though some of the words are literally nonsensical. The grammar must be something they discern beyond the words themselves, given that the sentences share little in common at the word level.

 

[untermensche]

Titled link: What’s universal grammar? Evidence rebuts Chomsky’s theory of language learning - Salon.com

The earliest incarnations of universal grammar in the 1960s took the underlying structure of “standard average European” languages as their starting point — the ones spoken by most of the linguists working on them. Thus, the universal grammar program operated on chunks of language, such as noun phrases (“The nice dogs”) and verb phrases (“like cats”).

Fairly soon, however, linguistic comparisons among multiple languages began rolling in that did not fit with this neat schema. Some native Australian languages, such as Warlpiri, had grammatical elements scattered all over the sentence — noun and verb phrases that were not “neatly packaged” so that they could be plugged into Chomsky’s universal grammar — and some sentences had no verb phrase at all.

Noam Chomsky's explorations of the structure of language started with English, as if English is the only language that one ever needs to look at. Looking at WALS Online - The World Atlas of Language Structures reveals a *lot* of variation.

Also note  Standard Average European, listing many features that modern European languages share that are not as common outside of Europe, and 2008-05-27.8724094854 (on SAE)

In the new usage-based approach (which includes ideas from functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar), children are not born with a universal, dedicated tool for learning grammar. Instead they inherit the mental equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: a set of general-purpose tools — such as categorization, the reading of communicative intentions and analogy making, with which children build grammatical categories and rules from the language they hear around them.

For instance, English-speaking children understand “The cat ate the rabbit,” and by analogy they also understand “The goat tickled the fairy.” They generalize from hearing one example to another. After enough examples of this kind, they might even be able to guess who did what to whom in the sentence “The gazzer mibbed the toma,” even though some of the words are literally nonsensical. The grammar must be something they discern beyond the words themselves, given that the sentences share little in common at the word level.

This is Chomsky's reply. He shows the absurdity of those arguments.

None of his critics can stand up to his refutations.

That article is disinformation. Fake news. Like so much out there.



I wonder which critic of Chomsky will be the first to actually watch this? I've posted it several times. Not one ever has.

 

[bilby]

None of his critics can stand up to his refutations.

Amen!

Let us praise his infallible glory!

[/science]

 

[untermensche]

None of his critics can stand up to his refutations.

Amen!

Let us praise his infallible glory!

[/science]

On one tiny subject he has more to say than any living person. He of course is not the last word, but the work being done now is going nowhere and will never go anywhere. His work will last and will be built on in the future.

He is a genius, a rare individual.

But he is most known for his political work, which makes him as close to a saint as any other human to exist.

 

[fromderinside]

...and the children ran to Jim Jones and asked for the Kool Aide which Jim provided claiming "this is the way" .......

 

[untermensche]

...and the children ran to Jim Jones and asked for the Kool Aide which Jim provided claiming "this is the way" .......

Give me a break.

Have you ever even seen Chomsky?

As mild and uncharismatic as a person can be.

He is not leading some flock more than any other researcher.

He has his work and others have theirs.

He fully understands that his work is not considered valid by many.

He does not fret, or cry out, or care.

He says that is science. Ideas are tested. Nothing to care about.

But when he criticizes work by so-called scientists directly he makes rational arguments and nothing else. There is no hand waving or theatrics.

One needs to watch the video to know this.

It is amazing.

 

[bilby]

...and the children ran to Jim Jones and asked for the Kool Aide which Jim provided claiming "this is the way" .......

Give me a break.

Have you ever even seen Chomsky?

As mild and uncharismatic as a person can be.

He is not leading some flock more than any other researcher.

He has his work and others have theirs.

He fully understands that his work is not considered valid by many.

He does not fret, or cry out, or care.

He says that is science. Ideas are tested. Nothing to care about.

But when he criticizes work by so-called scientists directly he makes rational arguments and nothing else. There is no hand waving or theatrics.

One needs to watch the video to know this.

It is amazing.

And yet his followers always seem to come across as brainwashed cultists, who will brook no criticism, however mild, of their glorious leader.

It is amazing.

 

[untermensche]

And yet his followers always seem to come across as brainwashed cultists, who will brook no criticism, however mild, of their glorious leader.

It is amazing.

I suppose that type exists. I've never met one in Chomsky's case.

What I see mostly is people who know absolutely nothing about Chomsky's work thinking they can criticize it.

I have offered argument after argument.

Not any emotion.

 

[bilby]

And yet his followers always seem to come across as brainwashed cultists, who will brook no criticism, however mild, of their glorious leader.

It is amazing.

I suppose that type exists. I've never met one in Chomsky's case.

Have you checked in your mirror?

On one tiny subject he has more to say than any living person. He of course is not the last word, but the work being done now is going nowhere and will never go anywhere. His work will last and will be built on in the future.

He is a genius, a rare individual.

But he is most known for his political work, which makes him as close to a saint as any other human to exist.

What I see mostly is people who know absolutely nothing about Chomsky's work thinking they can criticize it.

I have offered argument after argument.

Not any emotion.

"has more to say than any living person"; "He is a genius, a rare individual."; "...as close to a saint as any other human to exist."

Nope, no emotion at all.

 

[untermensche]

I suppose that type exists. I've never met one in Chomsky's case.

Have you checked in your mirror?

On one tiny subject he has more to say than any living person. He of course is not the last word, but the work being done now is going nowhere and will never go anywhere. His work will last and will be built on in the future.

He is a genius, a rare individual.

But he is most known for his political work, which makes him as close to a saint as any other human to exist.

What I see mostly is people who know absolutely nothing about Chomsky's work thinking they can criticize it.

I have offered argument after argument.

Not any emotion.

"has more to say than any living person"; "He is a genius, a rare individual."; "...as close to a saint as any other human to exist."

Nope, no emotion at all.

The many arguments I have made in regard to language.

No emotion. Just logical argument.

I am not claiming to be without emotion.

 

[fromderinside]

So how do you interpret so many examples found countering the ideas of universal grammar and that such is the result of a single mutation which is unchanging over time?

My take is politically satisfying self evident bull shit is like a spoon full of sugar, it helps the fraud go down and the economy grow if we only accept there is a universal grammar and tax cuts for the rich economy improving mechanisms.

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky Was Right, NYU Researchers Find: We Do Have a “Grammar” in Our Head

A team of neuroscientists has found new support for MIT linguist Noam Chomsky’s decades-old theory that we possess an “internal grammar” that allows us to comprehend even nonsensical phrases.

http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/december/chomsky-was-right-nyu-researchers-find-we-do-have-a-grammar-in-our-head.html

The most critical attribute of human language is its unbounded combinatorial nature: smaller elements can be combined into larger structures on the basis of a grammatical system, resulting in a hierarchy of linguistic units, such as words, phrases and sentences. Mentally parsing and representing such structures, however, poses challenges for speech comprehension. In speech, hierarchical linguistic structures do not have boundaries that are clearly defined by acoustic cues and must therefore be internally and incrementally constructed during comprehension. We found that, during listening to connected speech, cortical activity of different timescales concurrently tracked the time course of abstract linguistic structures at different hierarchical levels, such as words, phrases and sentences. Notably, the neural tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures was dissociated from the encoding of acoustic cues and from the predictability of incoming words. Our results indicate that a hierarchy of neural processing timescales underlies grammar-based internal construction of hierarchical linguistic structure

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v19/n1/full/nn.4186.html