tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post1495778321149545020..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Universal tendenciesNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-7495978242870673102016-10-31T09:03:49.607-07:002016-10-31T09:03:49.607-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-12775786277614678682016-10-26T07:42:32.991-07:002016-10-26T07:42:32.991-07:00@Omer:
My argument is not that typology cannot dis...@Omer:<br />My argument is not that typology cannot dispose of FL/UG claims. Of course it can, and here it does not matter what the space G possibilities looks like. If something is claimed impossible it cannot exist. 7,000 languages are more than enough (as you remind me often) to establish that some principle is wrong. However, there is another view that I think is wrong: that comparative typology shines a direct light on FL/UG. Or, to study it you must first gather a set of Gs, preferably very diverse and then see what they have in common. This induction over Gs treats FL/UG as a kind of abstraction over G properties. This, I believe, is the standard conception of UG (and, surprise, I believe that it is an abstract version of Greeneberg's conception). It is this view that I find severely wanting. It is not that one can learn a lot about FL/UG from a single language, it's that one can only learn about FL/UG by abstracting away from the variable effects that PLD has that are most responsible for making languages appear diverse. The question is how to abstract from this? IMO, PoS is an excellent way. We need others, and I think that the Culbertson and Adger attempt was an interesting one.<br /><br />A last point: one way of reading your comment is that we need typology to refine what we find using other methods. I can live with this. PoS arguments hardly ever implicate an exact mechanism. Rather it identifies a class of data that requires an FL/UG source. In other words, it isolates data that directly reflect and FL/UG source. All alone, it does not specify the exact mechanisms as many different ones may suffice. Here comparative data could be valuable for it might allow us to narrow done the specifics at play. That's hard to disagree with, so I won't.<br /><br />One last word on sanity checks: were listeners regularly to ask themselves about the PoS implications of some typological proposal the way they regularly apply a cross linguistic sanity check to proposed universals I would be a happy camper. In my experience, the issues hardly ever arise, and when they are mooted a surprising silence ensues. Tant pis.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-71596010697001336662016-10-26T07:25:33.751-07:002016-10-26T07:25:33.751-07:00@Karthik:
Though my love of PoS arguments is nearl...@Karthik:<br />Though my love of PoS arguments is nearly unbounded I don't quite go to infallibility (though Ido wish I could claim they were apodictic!). What I do think is that they are more DIRECT windows onto the structure of FL/UG than typological inductions over Gs. And this, I believe, is the opposite of the common view, which is why I try to strongly make the case for it.<br /><br />Furthermore, I believe that it is important to make this point for another reason. In the real sciences it is understood that some data bear more directly on a given mechanism than does other. This has to do with the structure of the relevant theories and the inferential steps linking them to data. PoS shines a bright light on FL/UG precisely because it abstracts away from PLD when successful. PLD distorts one view of FL/UG via its influence on the properties of particular Gs. What makes PoS so good is precisely that it abstracts from such interfering details. In other words it focuses on G properties as such and not G+PLD properties. Those interested in languages and their properties will find this kind of argument unconvincing. But that's because I think that they are only secondarily interested in FL/UG. The main interest is in language and its diversity. FL/UG are of subsidiary concern, FL/UG being an abstraction, at best an induction over different Gs.<br /><br />Last point: I could not agree with you more re the last point. All of this would be nugatory were PoS argumentation heuristically idle. One hopes it has legs and leads to other good questions, including ones that can be further elaborated and pursued typologically. That said, I would be happy were the logic of the above conceded. If your main interest is in FL/UG understand that approaching the problem mainly through comparative typology is a very indirect route, one far more indirect than PoS argumentation.<br /><br />One very last point: this does not mean to say that PoS should always lead. It may be that setting up a good one is too hard and that a typological investigation is easier and so more cost effective. That there is a direct method does not mean that indirect ones are useless or to be eschewed. Not so. However, the PRESUPPOSITION that the typological approach is the best way to study FL/UG (and this is the default view IMO) is just wrong.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-74579765628191188302016-10-26T00:41:16.862-07:002016-10-26T00:41:16.862-07:00How much does the approximation of number of param...How much does the approximation of number of parameters vary? Is there not a risk of circularity if the parameters are derived from how the Gs of the languages of the world look like, and then the space of possible Gs is approximated from this number of parameters? Or am I missing something?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14893756499898155425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-75480801742927825522016-10-25T21:27:00.824-07:002016-10-25T21:27:00.824-07:00@Norbert: I agree that it's worth reminding ou...@Norbert: I agree that it's worth reminding ourselves that this is a heuristic. And, for what it's worth, yes: the math correction means that our coverage is even smaller than you made it out to be. But whether or not this coverage is "too small" depends entirely on the structure of the space. There are certain spaces of size 2^50 for which a sample of 6000 is much more than you need in order to figure out everything about how the space is structured. (Is language that way? I don't know.)<br /><br />But all of this is specifically about the question of whether lack-of-crosslinguistic-attestation is dispositive. There is something related, but separate, about which I know we disagree: how necessary is it to look at what <strong>*is*</strong> attested in other languages, even if one is ultimately interested in the mental infrastructure. I feel confident saying that it's very necessary, simply judging by the history. I don't think it's really disputable that some principles, proposed on the basis of English (and closely related languages), have turned out to be wrong when confronted with facts from a broader set of languages. Here's a few examples: the purported relation between A-movement and case; the Activity Condition; the impossibility of A-movement out of finite clauses; the idea that finiteness is linked to tense in particular (as opposed to aspect, or even person or location; see Ritter & Wiltschko on Halkomelem and Blackfoot); the idea that Spec,TP has anything to do with agreement (an interestingly persistent misapprehension); the idea that the presence or absence of agreement is intrinsically linked to finiteness (or tense, for that matter); etc. And note, these are just from the particular area that I work in – I'm sure that people who work in other areas could make equally good lists from their respective necks of the woods.<br /><br />Let me be clear: I think there is <em>tons</em> we can learn from a single language, and most of it stands up to scrutiny (or needs very minor tweaking) when confronted with the broader crosslinguistic picture. But some of it doesn't. Perhaps not for any deep, principled reason (i.e., it could have been otherwise) – but that's just how things have turned out (at least from where I sit).<br /><br />So, no, I don't really trust results that have not been vetted by at least a basic crosslinguistic sanity-check. The good news is, most people listening to a talk or reading a paper do this implicitly; they think about how this would work in (other) languages that they know something about. And if there's a problem, they bring it up. That is, after all, how we know that all of the principles I listed above are false :-)Omerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06157677977442589563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-43997610915241749142016-10-25T19:53:02.189-07:002016-10-25T19:53:02.189-07:00>> PoS arguments really do, if successful, s...>> PoS arguments really do, if successful, shed direct light on FL/UG<br /><br />Norbert, it seems to me you are saying that there is something nearly infallible about PoS arguments, which is not true of "heuristics". I very much like PoS arguments, personally, but it is not clear that they necessarily shed light on FL/UG.<br /><br />If we go back to Zeno’s paradoxes, which seemed like unassailable arguments for a couple of millennia, then many would argue in retrospect, that they didn’t really shed any light on reality, but really, they now shed light on our collective ignorance (of calculus).<br /><br />This is what makes me uncomfortable when anyone starts using PoS arguments as proofs, instead of interesting starting points for future inquiry. I am not sure whether they necessarily shed light on FL/UG or whether they reveal our collective ignorance. But, PoS arguments do make for interesting further questions, which for me is the real reason to follow them.karthik durvasulahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14541529987768107005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-2793891220300871832016-10-25T13:00:46.301-07:002016-10-25T13:00:46.301-07:00I agree with the math too. But that makes the samp...I agree with the math too. But that makes the sample even smaller. So, heuristic it is. A good one? Not bad, and as I think one always uses what one can and does the best with it one can, I have no problems with it. But, I think it is worth noting how tendentious it is as a probe for FL/UG. The unquestioned assumption is that this is the best (form some, only) way to investigate FL/UG. I thought that highlighting its weaknesses was a public service. Hope you agree. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-88385636798787467202016-10-25T11:11:56.409-07:002016-10-25T11:11:56.409-07:00I agree that something that's absent from the ...I agree that something that's absent from the 6000-7000 languages we see is not in principle guaranteed to be ruled out by our mental capacities (be they linguistic or otherwise). This is a methodological heuristic, and I think it's one that has served us well. I personally find this heuristic to be much more reasonable than the one that underlies work in the artificial grammar paradigm – namely, that how adults treat novel linguistic data is relevant to how children do so.<br /><br />(And I agree with the first commenter regarding the math: 2^50 is 1,125,899,906,842,624.)<br /><br />Omerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06157677977442589563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-35849565639930355642016-10-25T10:36:14.521-07:002016-10-25T10:36:14.521-07:00Yes. Logically this is possible. The range of Gs w...Yes. Logically this is possible. The range of Gs we see might be a small subset of those FL allows and so generalizing from properties of those we see to those FL allows is potentially risky. Hence, inferring FL structures from typological generalizations, though common and reasonable, is hardly trivial. IMO, this problem does not infect other kinds of inferences to the structure of FL in the same way or degree (e.g. inference from PoS reasoning).Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-4434460301528046192016-10-25T09:32:26.047-07:002016-10-25T09:32:26.047-07:00Are you saying that the FoL may allow Gs that have...Are you saying that the FoL may allow Gs that have/lack certain properties that none of the languages we have access to actually instantiate?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07765373355210375175noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-40809564923735610142016-10-25T00:00:03.037-07:002016-10-25T00:00:03.037-07:00Are not all parameters binary? In that case would ...Are not all parameters binary? In that case would not the number of possible Gs be 2^50, (i.e., more than 10^15)?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14893756499898155425noreply@blogger.com