Word Order and Noam Chomsky

[untermensche]

Most living animal life has evolved means to determine value (food, sex, warmth, safety, etc.) from other or ignorable. That observation forms the basis for my conclusion that most animal life has inherent capacity for sorting and deciding, ie logic.

There is the logical use of objects.

A bird can build a nest.

And then there is the logical use of language and ideas.

I don't think one flows from the other. The nest is a preordained goal.

What is called logic in language is sometimes just a recognition of an innate grammar. A recognition of how words must be arranged to make sense.

Boy walked to store.

Not; To walked boy store.

Word order isn't "innate grammar". Word order is a social construct as is obvious if you happen to study another language that uses a different order than the one you grew up with.

A person is not taught grammar nor do they learn grammar like somebody learns about history.

A knowledge and ability to use grammar arises naturally, it grows, just with exposure, which is always random and partial.

The "grammar" taught in school are arbitrary and unneeded rules. They were created for the sake of style not comprehension.

A person can use language just fine without them. Snobs care about it.

 

[skepticalbip]

Word order isn't "innate grammar". Word order is a social construct as is obvious if you happen to study another language that uses a different order than the one you grew up with.

A person is not taught grammar nor do they learn grammar like somebody learns about history.

A knowledge and ability to use grammar arises naturally, it grows, just with exposure, which is always random and partial.

The "grammar" taught in school are arbitrary and unneeded rules. They were created for the sake of style not comprehension.

A person can use language just fine without them. Snobs care about it.

 

[untermensche]

Word order isn't "innate grammar". Word order is a social construct as is obvious if you happen to study another language that uses a different order than the one you grew up with.

A person is not taught grammar nor do they learn grammar like somebody learns about history.

A knowledge and ability to use grammar arises naturally, it grows, just with exposure, which is always random and partial.

The "grammar" taught in school are arbitrary and unneeded rules. They were created for the sake of style not comprehension.

A person can use language just fine without them. Snobs care about it.

Your absolute ignorance of Chomsky and his work on language is noted.

 

[skepticalbip]

Would you care to actually respond to what I actually posted or are you going to just do your normal trick of making irrelevant assertions that cracked me up because they didn't address my post?

 

[Copernicus]

Logic has nothing to do with word order. Language is relevant to logic only insofar as we can express logical deductions in language. However, as untermensche has so often proven to us, we can also express illogical thoughts in language.

 

[untermensche]

Would you care to actually respond to what I actually posted or are you going to just do your normal trick of making irrelevant assertions that cracked me up because they didn't address my post?

Your "argument" was an emoticon.

If you read Chomsky you would know your point has been shown to be a naive assumption that is wrong.

The nature of language is hierarchical.

Yet the transmission and reception of language must be linear.

Chomsky has looked at word order and found that while the linear presentation may vary the hierarchical basis for the linear presentation does not.

 

[skepticalbip]

Would you care to actually respond to what I actually posted or are you going to just do your normal trick of making irrelevant assertions that cracked me up because they didn't address my post?

Your "argument" was an emoticon.
.

The laughter emoticon was in response to your non-response assertions to my post. Therefore you have now given me another good belly-laugh.... thanks.

If you read Chomsky you would know your point has been shown to be a naive assumption that is wrong.

The nature of language is hierarchical.

Yet the transmission and reception of language must be linear.

Chomsky has looked at word order and found that while the linear presentation may vary the hierarchical basis for the linear presentation does not.

Chomsky has lost a lot of credibility in the linguistic community. And then there is the fact that you could have a piss poor understanding of his theories too.

Language being hierarchical does not mean that all languages use the same word order. If they actually did then the old first generation translation software would have been damned good only being software that did transliteration. However, their output was mostly unintelligible gibberish (because of the word order). They generally transliterated the individual words correctly but didn't reorder the words so the sentences could be understood.

 

[Copernicus]

First of all, Chomsky has not really lost credibility in the linguistic community, although a lot of linguists reject his approach to linguistics. Secondly, untermensche is not saying that all languages use the same word order, AFAICT, although he is far from being an expert in linguistics or Noam Chomsky, which is hobbyhorse topic for him. Linguistic word order has nothing to do with the thread topic, which is about logic. Word order tends to fall into skewed typological patterns across languages, and linguists have come up with varying ideas on how to explain the skewed distribution. Chomsky has his own specific approach to that issue, but there is no consensus on the matter.

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky has lost a lot of credibility in the linguistic community. And then there is the fact that you could have a piss poor understanding of his theories too.

Chomsky thinks a lot of people in the field of linguistics are on the wrong track.

My understanding of Chomsky's ideas is pretty good, not total. I know his conclusions on some matters but not all of his arguments.

Language being hierarchical does not mean that all languages use the same word order.

It means the order must me learned, like the labels must be learned.

But the order is a superficial aspect of language.

And there are only a small set of possible word orders that can be comprehended.

 

[Copernicus]

The posts have been imported from this thread: https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?14185-Poll-Sense-of-logic

 

[Speakpigeon]

Thanks for moving this out of my thread on logic.

And I think it's an interesting topic!

And the "language snob" I am tend to agree with UM, here.

Our language skills develop through exposure to things, usually but not necessarily human, using language to interact with us with love and tenderness when we're young and more rudely later.

We don't have a sense of language per se, like I think we have a sense of logic, I would assume, but we must have the native capabilities, that develop very fast after birth to become fully functional as we grow up, capabilities that allow us to learn a language from interactions with our environment, just as we have the general capability to learn to play football or music or do science. It's a "social skill", so to speak.

So, obviously, yes, the kind of formal grammar we find in books is not necessary to speak a language provided you have full exposure to competent speakers. I learnt my English essentially listening to the BBC for a few years and my English is better in many respect than most people here.
EB

 

[bilby]

Thanks for moving this out of my thread on logic.

And I think it's an interesting topic!

And the "language snob" I am tend to agree with UM, here.

Our language skills develop through exposure to things, usually but not necessarily human, using language to interact with us with love and tenderness when we're young and more rudely later.

We don't have a sense of language per se, like I think we have a sense of logic, I would assume, but we must have the native capabilities, that develop very fast after birth to become fully functional as we grow up, capabilities that allow us to learn a language from interactions with our environment, just as we have the general capability to learn to play football or music or do science. It's a "social skill", so to speak.

So, obviously, yes, the kind of formal grammar we find in books is not necessary to speak a language provided you have full exposure to competent speakers. I learnt my English essentially listening to the BBC for a few years and my English is better in many respect than most people here.
EB

*Respects

 

[untermensche]

Thanks for moving this out of my thread on logic.

And I think it's an interesting topic!

And the "language snob" I am tend to agree with UM, here.

Our language skills develop through exposure to things, usually but not necessarily human, using language to interact with us with love and tenderness when we're young and more rudely later.

We don't have a sense of language per se, like I think we have a sense of logic, I would assume, but we must have the native capabilities, that develop very fast after birth to become fully functional as we grow up, capabilities that allow us to learn a language from interactions with our environment, just as we have the general capability to learn to play football or music or do science. It's a "social skill", so to speak.

So, obviously, yes, the kind of formal grammar we find in books is not necessary to speak a language provided you have full exposure to competent speakers. I learnt my English essentially listening to the BBC for a few years and my English is better in many respect than most people here.
EB

According to Chomsky we have a genetic language capacity.

We will naturally grow an internal language with only an exposure to language.

Like the visual system needs stimulation to develop the language capacity also needs stimulation to develop.

Chomsky does not see language as something learned with the cognitive processes. They tried that with gorillas and chimps and it failed. A few labels learned, like a dog can learn a few words, but no language.

Language is something that just naturally develops without struggle, if there is exposure.

If there is exposure to two languages they will both grow in the individual.

And Chomsky believes this capacity arose very quickly not very long ago. At most about 200,000 years ago. Possibly as soon as 100,000 years ago. He may even think sooner is possible.

And he believes the capacity arose due to the genetic change in one individual and because of it's survival advantage it led to the elimination of all individuals without this genetic capacity.

He believes the capacity predates language. Language begins to develop once there are enough individuals with the capacity.

Before that all there was was communication with gesture and sound. But that is what birds and lions do. It is not language.

 

[Copernicus]

First of all, linguists are pretty much in agreement with Chomsky that much of the language capacity is instinctive in human beings, just as other forms of behavior are instinctive in humans and other animals. That is not really in dispute anymore.

Here's the thing, though. Noam Chomsky is not a developmental psychologist. He has done no significant research in that field, although many of his students have. And he has some very specific ideas about the nature of the language instinct that are controversial among linguists and developmental psychologists.

I once audited a seminar taught by the CMU develpmental psychologist,  Brian MacWhinney, on the subject of innateness in language back in the 1980s. (I have also taught a few courses in the subject.) He made a very important point at the beginning of his seminar. It was that the language instinct was no longer in dispute among scholars. It wasn't innateness that was the question. The question was: "What was actually innate and what was not?" Much of his course material had to do with disputing some of Chomsky's more controversial claims about the facts of language development. And that is generally true--there is a significant divide between linguists coming out of Chomsky-dominated linguistics departments and psychological researchers who actually study linguistic behavior in language learners. Chomsky's ideas have not led to a lot of productive insights.

Many of Chomsky's claims about innateness are based on  linguistic typology--so-called "language universals". However, it is worth noting that Noam Chomsky is also not a specialist in language typology. As with developmental psychology, he read a lot, but he never did any original research in the subject. Just as Chomsky's ideas about phonological universals came primarily from other sources, e.g.  Roman Jakobson via Jakobson's student  Morris Halle, his "word order" universals came from  Joseph Greenberg and his school of researchers. Chomsky has always tended to jump to the conclusion that the skewed patterns we see in typological universals had something to do with the acquisition of psychological "grammars" that defined native speaker intuitions in mature speakers. And that is where the problem with his approach to innateness lay. There are quite a few alternative ways to explain those skewed patterns that have nothing to do with grammatical intuitions or language acquisition. So there is also something of a gap between language typologists and followers of Chomsky's school of generative linguistics.

The major problem with studies in language universals is that linguistic diversity is very rapidly declining, but what we know of typological distribution is based on a relatively recent snapshot of the thousands of languages that still exist or that we have records of. We simply don't know how skewed that record is, given the way in which languages change over time. Hypothetically, if there were to be a global pandemic, and the only survivors to come out of it were speakers of Malagasy, then all of the features of Malagasy would instantly be considered language universals. From the perspective of modern typology, Malagasy has a relatively rare type of word order (Verb-object-subject), but that would suddenly be the basic pattern for human language. In the absence of the real explanation for the ubiquity of Malagasy word order, a student of Chomsky's school would be tempted to explain VOS word order as a function of innate grammar development rather than other circumstances. IOW, not all language universals can be attributed to Chomsky's theory of innateness, yet that is the predisposition of armchair generative linguists like him.

 

[untermensche]

There is not universal agreement that a language capacity exists.

Some see language as a totally learned behavior.

Made possible by cognitive processes but not with a specific language capacity.

Chomsky turned linguistics from a meaningless study of surface appearance and ornamentation to a social science.

He is the person who moved linguistics onto a scientific course.

But he is the beginning, not the end.

 

[Speakpigeon]

According to Chomsky we have a genetic language capacity.

We will naturally grow an internal language with only an exposure to language.

Like the visual system needs stimulation to develop the language capacity also needs stimulation to develop.

To say that we have "a genetic language capacity" is not to say very much. If language is the result of our general mental capacities together with exposure to a linguistic community then our linguistic capacity has indeed a genetic basis. Big deal.

That it has a genetic basis is pretty much a given. The brain must be our most sensitive organ. There are more ways for the brain to go wrong than for any of our other organs. And bad DNA is definitely one of the possible causes for our brain to go wrong. So, I would say that anything the brain does has a genetic basis.

So, that we must have "a genetic language capacity" is not the question.

Rather, the question is whether we would have a specific capacity to acquire language, one that would be somehow appart from our other mental capacities, like we have eyes entirely dedicated to visual perception. Well, I think that is now certainly saying quite a lot because it's immediately much, much less obvious as the previous proposition was and also much harder, if not impossible, to prove.

Chomsky does not see language as something learned with the cognitive processes. They tried that with gorillas and chimps and it failed. A few labels learned, like a dog can learn a few words, but no language.

Gorillas and chimps couldn't be made to play football or chess. Do you think that this shows that human beings have two very specific capacities, one to play football and one to play chess?

Language is something that just naturally develops without struggle, if there is exposure.

If there is exposure to two languages they will both grow in the individual.

Sure, but we seem to have many skills that develop this way. You would need to find some other reason, one that would be specific to language. We have eyes and ears because the perception of images and sounds are both very specific and could not be both processed by the same organ. It's not clear to me that language would need a specific process, appart from our general mental capabilities.

And Chomsky believes this capacity arose very quickly not very long ago. At most about 200,000 years ago. Possibly as soon as 100,000 years ago. He may even think sooner is possible.

And he believes the capacity arose due to the genetic change in one individual and because of it's survival advantage it led to the elimination of all individuals without this genetic capacity.

He believes the capacity predates language. Language begins to develop once there are enough individuals with the capacity.

So if this first individual with a language capacity survived and prospered because of it without using it for language it wouldn't be a capacity specific to language. This sounds more like a general capacity that turned out later as also providing a linguistic capacity. Which seems to me the more plausible option.

It seems much more likely for example that we developed something like a long-term planning capacity and that would have been immediately an advantage over the competition, for example over the Neanderthals. And, plausibly, this capacity morphed over time into a general mental capacity, including language, in parallel with the growth of human groups and the development of our social skills for example.

And somewhat like Picasso and Chomsky much later, people began to develop their imagination using this general capacity.

Why would that not be enough for developing languages?
EB

 

[skepticalbip]

Chomsky has lost a lot of credibility in the linguistic community. And then there is the fact that you could have a piss poor understanding of his theories too.

Chomsky thinks a lot of people in the field of linguistics are on the wrong track.

My understanding of Chomsky's ideas is pretty good, not total. I know his conclusions on some matters but not all of his arguments.

Language being hierarchical does not mean that all languages use the same word order.

It means the order must me learned, like the labels must be learned.

But the order is a superficial aspect of language.

And there are only a small set of possible word orders that can be comprehended.

Exactly. So we agree, word order is not "innate grammar" but is a social construct.

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky thinks a lot of people in the field of linguistics are on the wrong track.

My understanding of Chomsky's ideas is pretty good, not total. I know his conclusions on some matters but not all of his arguments.



It means the order must me learned, like the labels must be learned.

But the order is a superficial aspect of language.

And there are only a small set of possible word orders that can be comprehended.

Exactly. So we agree, word order is not "innate grammar" but is a social construct.

Only within a few variations.

You have to learn which variation is used.

The choice of which variation to use is a social choice, a random contingency, not a social construct.

 

[untermensche]

To say that we have "a genetic language capacity" is not to say very much.

To explain why languages that developed in isolation from one another are so similar requires invoking an underlying language capacity.

A capacity that allows the creation of similar expressions of language.

Like building a similar nest requires an underlying nest building capacity.

That it has a genetic basis is pretty much a given.

That there is a specific language capacity is not a given.

There are even some who deny it.

Gorillas and chimps couldn't be made to play football or chess. Do you think that this shows that human beings have two very specific capacities, one to play football and one to play chess?

My position is the ability for two people to play chess only exists because of the language capacity.

If some organism cannot learn a language, if it is not human, it cannot play chess.

Chomsky's position is mathematics exists because of the language capacity.

Sure, but we seem to have many skills that develop this way.

Yes, like walking.

There must be a walking capacity to allow a human to walk.

A walking capacity is an incredibly complicated capacity. The cerebellum that has fine control over movement is incredibly complex.

There must be a visual capacity to allow a human to see. Again a very complicated capacity. Most of the cerebrum is devoted to this capacity.

And there must be a capacity to allow the complexity of language.

Ultimately in the absence of language the idea of cognition is difficult to understand.

There are the spatial capacities, the ability to deal with objects in space, either seen or imagined.

But the language capacity may be the capacity that allows advanced cognition beyond a chimp.

It probably is that the language capacity allows for advanced cognitive capacities as opposed to advanced cognitive capacities creating a language capacity.

So if this first individual with a language capacity survived and prospered because of it without using it for language it wouldn't be a capacity specific to language.

Definitely.

Chomsky thinks it really is a thinking capacity. A capacity that allows for better thinking. Due to it's nature that allows for better thinking and the nature of pre-humans that were already using sound for communication it was able to be utilized as a language capacity. Soon those with it could communicate to a degree with language. The labels and concepts would be limited at first. This was a great advantage and a way to easily spot a person without the capacity. This is how those with the capacity came to completely eliminate those without it. Like humans wiped out the Neanderthal.

The thinking capacity that allows for language is likely the mathematical capacity as well.

The musical capacity as well.

It is a general capacity that can be used for a few things.

But it is called the language capacity when discussing language. It is probably the same capacity used when a person solves a mathematical problem.

 

[steve_bank]

We learn by observation, mimic, and trial and error through our genetic based capacities. Nothing new here, it is stating the obvious. Through written and spoken language we store and communicate knowledge.
Now I possibly see why untermenche has such a hard time understanding arguments, not being able to write complete paragraphs, and not being able to see his own errors. He rejects learning.

Of course grammar and syntax are arbitrary Captain Obvious. Spanish and English are very different in form. Language evolves. The Oxford dictionary periodically updates as new words and usage evolve. Language is dynamic. Codified language makes for widespread ease of communications. China has multiple dialects, some people can not effectively communicate across dialects. Cantonese and Mandarins are close but still problematic. I had Mandarin in college.

China mandated a simplified common Chinese language and symbols to be taught in schools.

Ni hau undermenche, bu ke chi. Ni wei junguo sha ma? Ola el pendejo undermenche, como esta?