Books Knock-Knock Knocking on Chomsky's Rep
Late summer looks to be a rough time for Dr. Chomsky. Veteran journalist/novelist Tom Wolfe has a book coming out at the end of August.The Kingdom of Speech mounts a frontal assault on Chomsky the man. Unfortunately it also goes after Darwin, and Chomsky’s defenders can dismiss Wolfe’s well aimed shots by pointing out all the bad potshots aimed at “Charlie” Darwin.Then, a month later, anthropologist Chris Knight publishes hisDecoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics. Knight has written the sounder book, though I suspect it will be lucky to get one-tenth of the publicity. Maybe Yale University Press can ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - July 31, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Hasn't Got a Clue
< div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > < p > When I was first tipped to a coming paper about orangutans and the evolution of language, I thought I should ignore it, but I see the < em > New York Times < /em > has given it a plug under the headline, “ < a href="http://nyti.ms/2aQdrxG" > An Orangutan ’s Mimicry Offers Clues to Language’s Origins < /a > . ” So I want to take a moment to say the report offers no clues. The basic news has been around for some time: an orangutan has, without training, developed an ability to make some human sounds (see e.g. < a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s103...
Source: Babel's Dawn - July 29, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
I Plan to Steal-Marry Some of These Ideas
This is my final post on Morten Christiansen & Nick Chater’s new book, Creating Language.
I’m a fellow of wide interests, but on this blog I try to be single minded and ask So what? of every thing I report. So what does this or that bit of news have to tell us about the origins of language? Mainly, C&C’s new book argues in favor of the position I took a few years back in my own book about how language began (Babel’s Dawn). Our ancestors became community minded enough to be willing to share knowledge, and turned to using their babbling sounds in a meaningful way. Others were able to repeat and use the same ...
Source: Babel's Dawn - May 16, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Meaning Comes First
Note: This post continues a discussion of the book Creating Language by Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater. For previous posts see here, here and here.
Books are a time for making yourself clear, so I have to shake my head a bit as I find myself wondering about an author’s fundamentals. For instance, Christiansen and Chater never say so directly, and I can hardly believe it, but they seem to go along with the Chomskyan view that form comes before meaning. Traditional scholars assumed that the form of a sentence reflected the speaker’s meaning and rhetorical touches. Then Chomsky came along and imagined a sente...
Source: Babel's Dawn - May 8, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Can Languages Evolve?
Note: This post continues a discussion of the book Creating Language by Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater. For previous posts see here and here.
The authors turn generative grammar on its head by asserting that language evolves to fit the brain rather than vice-versa. It is an appealing idea, but how literally are we to take this word evolution? How many features of biological evolution are visible in linguistic change?
Traits: Biological specimens are complex with a number of different traits. Languages too have many traits: pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary being three obvious ones. Without different traits,...
Source: Babel's Dawn - April 30, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
How Did Speaking Become Easy?
Note: This post continues a discussion of the book Creating Language by Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater. For an introduction to the book see here.
Here’s how the pendulum swings:
The original question about language origins, back when such speculation was taboo in respectable circles, asked how people had ever come to agree on the meaning of a particular word. The question assumed language was a cultural artifact.
The question became more respectable when it was turned around to ask how humans ever evolved the ability to use language. Now the assumption was that language was a biological product.
Then the pendu...
Source: Babel's Dawn - April 23, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
A New Theory in Town?
Over the years this blog has reported a fair amount about the collaboration of Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater, a pair of enterprising researchers determined to challenge the Cartesian theories of Chomsky et al. Let me summarize a few old posts:
The Richness of the Stimulus: Discussed the two authors paper on how language is shaped by the brain. Echoing some ideas that I first encountered in Deacon’s work, they argued that instead of evolving brains that could use language, we evolved languages that were adapted to our brains.
Language Adapted to Us: Continuing the previous discussion, the authors suggest th...
Source: Babel's Dawn - April 19, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Occam ’s Razor v. Noam Chomsky
< div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > < p > < a class="asset-img-link" href="http://www.babelsdawn.com/.a/6a00d83452aeca69e201b7c8287f95970b-pi" style="display: inline;" > < img alt="William of Ockham" border="0" class="asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d83452aeca69e201b7c8287f95970b image-full img-responsive" src="http://www.babelsdawn.com/.a/6a00d83452aeca69e201b7c8287f95970b-800wi" title="William of Ockham" > < /img > < /a > < /p > < p > Here ’s a puzzle for you: Study the four sentences below and provide a rule that explains (a) why the first 3 are correct while the last one (marked with an *) is incorrect, and (b...
Source: Babel's Dawn - March 22, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Occam’s Razor v. Noam Chomsky
Here’s a puzzle for you: Study the four sentences below and provide a rule that explains (a) why the first 3 are correct while the last one (marked with an *) is incorrect, and (b) why sometimes the reflexive pronoun (ending in –self/-selves) appears before its referent (underlined) and sometimes after:
Pete shot himself in the foot.
Speaking for himself at last, John proposed to Priscilla.
The picture of himself on the post office wall disturbed John quite a bit.
*Joan told me herself hates chocolate.
Shouldn’t that first sentence be as easy to explain as Pete shot Joe in the foot?
Maybe so, but generative...
Source: Babel's Dawn - March 22, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Have Linguists Been Barking Up the Wrong Tree?
Inquiring into language’s origins can seem like a quixotic adventure, but it does bump you into the heart of the classical humanist question of what makes a human human. Two issues in particular stand out:
How much of language is cultural and how much inborn? This is a variant on the widespread dispute about nature or nurture, but it provides a specific focus. It does not seem unreasonable to think the question might have an answer.
Why is language so different from other animal communications? Animal signals are nothing like sentences, either in semantics, syntax, or vocabulary. Other animals do not discuss topics t...
Source: Babel's Dawn - March 16, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Lingo Lango, Jingy Jong Jango
I cannot imagine anybody who reads this blog not enjoying Gaston Dorren’s book Lingo: Around Europe in 60 Languages. Yes, sixty languages are a lot to cover, but each one is discussed quite briefly, making only one or two points about the language before moving on. The text takes less than 300 pages, so each language gets the equivalent of a blog post’s worth of discussion. You won’t learn Basque this way, but you will learn that Basque does not have subjects and objects (although speakers can still distinguish between the doer and the doee). The book is full of interesting nuggets doled out in witty prose. Most of t...
Source: Babel's Dawn - February 29, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
How Does Language Work
In my previous post I proposed a definition of language: a human artifact used for contemplating or communicating topics as though they were perceptions.
How would something like that work? Perception works by shifting attention. Language works the same way.
I have been inspired to make these posts because I read through the new book by Berwick & Chomsky summarizing their long held views of language. For them, the most important thing about language is that its sentences can run on forever. To account for this, they imagine an endlessly recursive process, i.e., a machine that can go on stringing words together with...
Source: Babel's Dawn - February 12, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
What Is Language?
Don’t Be Silly
I have recently plowed through the new book by Berwick & Chomsky summarizing their long held views of language. One point they never tire of mentioning is what they call language’s Basic Property, complete with capital letters: “language is a finite computational system yielding an infinity of expressions.” For the moment, I’m going to accept that claim, because the important thing to notice is not whether the definition is true or false but that it is ridiculous.
Let’s list a few other “computational systems” that have the same property:
Vision is a finite computational system yield...
Source: Babel's Dawn - January 30, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
Chomsky on Why Only Us
If you attended any of Chomsky's recent presentations on language, you probably heard him joke about the pile of books on the origin of language despite the fact that almost nothing is known about the subject. So I was surprised to see that 2016 has begun with the launching of a book about the evolution of language (Why Only Us: language and evolution) written by Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky. Fans of generative grammar need not worry, however, for nothing has changed and there is nothing new here.
Chomsky still says that language consists of a process, called Merge, of sticking concepts together. This process still b...
Source: Babel's Dawn - January 26, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
John Holm
I noticed an obituary in the NY Times for John Holm, an expert on Pidgins and Creoles. During the past 40 years creole languages have been reconsidered. They were long considered gibberish forms of languages used by slaves and their descendants. Now they are generally viewed as true languages, the invention of people born into a world without access to a mother tongue. As such, they are of particular interest to this blog because they offer proof that languages are a natural by-product of living in a human community. Even if you kidnap people, carry them across the ocean, and force them to live with people who share no com...
Source: Babel's Dawn - January 3, 2016 Category: Speech Therapy Authors: Blair Source Type: blogs
