Word Order and Noam Chomsky

[untermensche]

All human languages have to comply with this constraint of a linear delivery.

Yes I have said this several times. But only in communication. Not in thought.

It is not necessary to think linearly. You don't have to think in complete sentences. You can think with a word here and a picture there and a memory there. Think of several things at the same time. Thinking is not necessarily a linear operation. Although a person can think linearly, think in complete sentences if they choose. It is not necessary and a waste of time however.

But when language is communicated it must be communicated in a linear fashion.

But Chomsky contends the language capacity works hierarchically and communication occurs in a linear manner based off the hierarchy. And there are a few ways of arranging the same hierarchical array into a linear array. So the variations seen in the linear order of two different languages do not exist when looking at the languages hierarchically.

human thought is also structured

It does not have to be. Thoughts can whirl around and contain many elements that are not language.

This is creative thought as opposed to thought reduced to communication. The key word being "reduced".

All birds broadly share the same mental capacity.

Source?

We already have a thinking capability.

I have said this several times.

Chomsky sees the language capacity as a thinking capacity that was able to be used for language. He proposes that humans were just using sound for communication, not language, prior to this capacity. Like the way dogs use sound for communication.

The thinking capacity was also the capacity that allowed the creation and understanding of mathematics.

It is called the language capacity when it is the service of either producing or understanding human language.

Also, vision is a perception. Language is not.

Please!

I never came close to saying they were the same exact capacity. Only that you need a capacity to have vision and you need a capacity to have language.

No, gorillas and chimps don't have our mental capability by a long shot.

Again, source?

They lack language. They have memory and the ability to manipulate objects. The ability to recognize themselves.

They have communication with sound and gesture.

But they do not have a language capacity.

How would you behave if you never had any exposure to a language?

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yes I have said this several times (...) How would you behave if you never had any exposure to a language?

Thanks for this very civilised conversation. I'm sure we could all do it.

Obviously we remain both unconvinced by the arguments of the other side but I think we've said everything we had to say so there's no need to belabour our points.

Thanks,
EB

 

[untermensche]

Chomsky is the beginning of a scientific outlook in linguistics. The beginning.

He is not the end.

A great part of the field has moved away from him.

I just see this as a natural way to do science. Explore all avenues when little is known.

In the end I believe a lot of thinking will return to his ideas.

 

[Copernicus]

I read a book Breaking The Mayan Code about figuring out the Mayan language. 'There was an academic who had position and influence. He stifled alternative approaches and destroyed careers. It wasn't until he died that real progress was made.

Copernicus, may I ask what your background is?

I have a Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics from Ohio State University (1973). Several of my teachers were 1st generation students of Noam Chomsky. First job as an assistant professor of linguistics at Columbia University/Barnard College, where I taught a wide variety of courses in syntax, semantics, language acquisition, and phonology in both the graduate and undergraduate programs. After 8 years with the Columbia Corporation, I spent a few years at Hofstra University while working in Natural Language Processing and computational linguistics. My career until 1987 was primarily academic, but after that I went to work in industry at Boeing Research and Technology as an AI researcher, where I worked on a wide variety of projects that spanned everything from text processing to robotics. Now retired.

FTR, I admire untermensche's efforts to understand Chomsky, but he really should have had formal training in linguistic theory to have sufficient background to understand what he was reading and studying. There is a lot of specialized knowledge and historical background that is necessary for a proper understanding of what Chomsky achieved. Untermensche gets some things right, but he also mixes it with a lot of confusion and misunderstanding.

The field of linguistics is far more varied and complex than just Noam Chomsky's school of formal generative linguistics. For one thing, Chomsky takes a very psychological approach to linguistic theory, so he tends to ignore a number of branches that ought to be given more attention--linguistic typology, historical linguistics, diachronic linguistics (i.e. study of language change), sociolinguistics, etc. A linguistic system can be approached from two different perspectives--the psychological aspect of that system in an individual or the social aspect in a speech community. Chomsky tends to focus on just the psychological aspect and neglects social phenomena. Hence, he has very little to say about linguistic discourse theory, which involves a communicative exchange among multiple speakers.

Thanks. What are the general practical applications of linguistics and can you recommend a basic general text?

Those are both tough questions, but for different reasons. I haven't taught an introduction to linguistics since 1987, so my knowledge of the best introductory texts at the present time is too limited to make a recommendation. Of the ones that I've seen, not much seems to have changed, but I haven't found any that strike me as insightful introductions. Were I to teach the course today, I would either use a variety of more concise materials in lieu of a textbook or just write the textbook myself. The standard syllabus covers largely the same introductory subject matter: Introduction, Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Next Steps. So you could probably go to any introductory course on the web and find a relatively decent introduction. UCLA, Stanford, Berkeley, University of Texas (Austin), Ohio State, University of Chicago--these are some of the better known schools for linguistics.

Practical applications are all over the place, because language is at the heart of the human experience. Linguistics can be a great help to majors in just about every field of study. I always had a very diverse set of majors in my introductory courses. In the latter half of my career, I branched out into AI research and used my skills on a wide variety of projects that included robotics, technical writing, text analysis, and secure information detection.

The problem with linguistics has always been that it overlapped with so many different subjects. It is possibly the most interdisciplinary subject in any academic program. Hence, it is difficult to keep a department going at a university. Different departments want to hire a linguist that specializes in just their particular interest--the English Department, the Philosophy Department, the Anthropology Department, the Psychology Department, the Mathematics Department, etc. So the easiest thing for a university to do is to try to build the major up as an interdisciplinary program with a specialization in some more traditional subject. Hence, there are universities with no linguistics department per se or with a very limited set of courses in a weak department. That's why I recommended looking at introductory materials from the above schools.

If you want to learn more about the subject, I recommend going to the web site for the Linguistic Society of America. In particular, look at the page on What is Linguistics?.