tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post7531716608954027180..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Three pieces to look atNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-77114510257871371372016-01-27T12:36:03.079-08:002016-01-27T12:36:03.079-08:00That's very interesting. Jeff Heinz and me hav...That's very interesting. Jeff Heinz and me have argued recently that syntax and phonology are suprisingly similar on a formal level. The basic difference is that phonology operates over strings with tiers, whereas syntax operates over trees with tiers. However, the syntactic tree tiers include string tiers, so in a certain (loose) sense phonology is a fragment of syntax.<br /><br />This result still does not give you a clear directionality for acquisition since all three options are equally viable: 1) learning syntax involves learning string tiers, which are then co-opted for phonology; 2) learning phonology involves learning string tiers, which are then generalized to trees for syntax; 3) both types of tiers are gradually learned in parallel. However, the formal result does at least give a clear point of contact between syntax and phonology.<br /><br />The <a href="http://thomasgraf.net/doc/talks/glow2015_slides.pdf" rel="nofollow">slides from our GLOW talk</a> give a more complete picture of the technical details.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07629445838597321588noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-86947880726390156842016-01-26T01:33:00.296-08:002016-01-26T01:33:00.296-08:00But what I'm really dying to know is, how did ...But what I'm really dying to know is, how did your debate with Hagoort go?Peter Svenoniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09436844670309091617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-66072749257972361612016-01-25T14:12:14.182-08:002016-01-25T14:12:14.182-08:00It seems as though syntax has to come early no mat...It seems as though syntax has to come early no matter what phonology is doing.<br /><br />Note that Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) has functioned perfectly well for life in the village for decades despite lacking distinctive phonological features, so its vocabulary is presumably not tiny. I suppose it shouldn't be hard for a child to learn a couple thousand nonphonological signs, especially using compounds (e.g. "chicken"+"small_round_object" means 'egg' in ABSL); you could have thousands of words built from hundreds of roots. Their iconicity makes them easy to remember and allows a lot of variation (e.g. 'tea' in ABSL looks like drinking tea from a cup, regardless of how many fingers are used). <br /><br />It might not be possible for a spoken language without distinctive phonological features to build up such a big vocabulary (as Hockett suggested). One factor is that the articulators in spoken language are less versatile than the ones used in sign language. I think it would be hard to produce hundreds of distinct vocalizations without them either being easily confused or else being systematized in terms of something like phonemes.<br /><br />The second difference, I think, is that more of what we tend to talk about has a characteristic visual aspect than a characteristic sound. I'm just guessing but it seems that vocalizations are going to be less iconic for most of what we want to talk about, making them more abstract, and hence prone to conventionalization. The conventionalization again leads to something like phonemes and/or distinctive features. <br />Peter Svenoniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09436844670309091617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-49945164457282534982016-01-25T12:29:57.856-08:002016-01-25T12:29:57.856-08:00I don't know that we can say phonology only ar...I don't know that we can say phonology only arises once there is a syntax, at least not in the acquisition of a language that already has phonology.<br /><br />But a possible reason why syntax <i>does</i> grease the skids of phonology is that very few (if any) of the things we can pronounce, in the adult language, are syntactically simplex. It doesn't much matter whether you are a Distributed Morphologist (bracketing paradox!), or a Spanning enthusiast – though I suppose Anderson himself would disagree with both camps – the consensus is that the idea of 'words' as syntactic atoms is a fallacy.<br /><br />When you say <i>The dog jumped</i>, there are at least three "pieces" to <i>jumped</i> (a root, a verbalized, and a tense suffix), and likely more. Same goes for 'dog' (root and nominalizer, and maybe more). Maybe <i>the</i> is simplex, but that doesn't much matter for the argument.<br /><br />We know that a lot of the action that informs phonology (e.g. information about allophonic alternations) comes from morphological alternations. If it takes syntax to build morphologically complex units (which is conceit both for DM and for Spanning), then you have a reason why the two might be linked in this way.<br /><br />Omerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06157677977442589563noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-25967136890504728192016-01-25T07:39:02.145-08:002016-01-25T07:39:02.145-08:00Agree on the relevance. Seems that the two systems...Agree on the relevance. Seems that the two systems are independent (not surprising) and that one doesn't "need" a large vocab to get a syntax going (we also knew this given young kids have a syntax with a pretty small vocab). It also looks like once you have a syntax then a phonology arises, and this is interesting. Wonder what drives this or if it is just a coincidence that this is the direction. COuld one have started with a vocab+phono and then gotten a syntax? Or is this the necessary direction. Interesting. Thoughts?Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-32135738921808601622016-01-25T06:49:29.713-08:002016-01-25T06:49:29.713-08:00Sandler et al 2011 (NLLT) and Sandler 2014 (here: ...Sandler et al 2011 (NLLT) and Sandler 2014 (here: http://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlyd/article/view/2950) argue that Al-Sayyid Bedouin sign language, a newly emergent sign language, *is* a language (it has a lexicon and syntax) but *doesn't* have a combinatoric phonological system. They argue that it has a signature phonetics, though, and that a phonological system is in the process of emerging. Their claim might be generally consistent with what Anderson says about being restricted in terms of vocabulary size, and it might be easier for a sign language to develop a large-ish nonphonologically organized vocabulary than for a spoken language, but it seems pretty relevant.Peter Svenoniushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09436844670309091617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-39787797194752660372016-01-25T05:53:44.233-08:002016-01-25T05:53:44.233-08:00I agree. The demural at the end was intended to po...I agree. The demural at the end was intended to point to this. Where I think he is right is where he echoes Goodman and others who have noted that induction means nothing until one specifies a similarity metric and that for most things of interest we have no idea what this is. The Popperian stuff is, well, IMO, not worth much. After saying we conjecture and refute the details become thin. I think for D these words stand in for a mystery, roughly what he says at the end. I think here he is right. What he points to in the CS and Bayes community is the hubris. It's all just learning drom the past and projecting to the future yada yada yada. No it isn't. What is it? Right now we deeply don't know. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-20239833375262127012016-01-25T05:47:54.806-08:002016-01-25T05:47:54.806-08:00I largely agree with the paragraphs you selected f...I largely agree with the paragraphs you selected from the Deutsch piece, but the overall argument seems like one that shouldn’t be endorsed. If we assume for the sake of argument that AGI is possible and we just haven’t figured out how to do it yet, then it seems far more likely (to me, FWIW), that we’ll get there using induction plus the right selection of built-in biases than using whatever exactly Popperian epistemology turns out to be. There’s a certain irony in Deutsch’s invocation of the universality of computation. Pretty much any process by which you form beliefs on the basis of data can be understood in broadly Bayesian terms. Is the suggestion then that AI researchers should be looking for algorithms that have no Bayesian interpretation but do have a Popperian one? I can’t think what that would mean or how to go about doing it. If Deutsch has any ideas about it he appears to be keeping them to himself.Alex Drummondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04676457657606185543noreply@blogger.com