How I spent (some of) my winter vacation in Nijmegen

I was asked how it went in Nijmegen. Let me say a word or two, with the understanding that what I say here is very much a one sided perspective.

When I left for David’s lectures I was pretty confident that the GG linguistic worldview, which I take to be hardly worth contesting, is treated with great skepticism (if not worse, ‘naivety’ and ‘contempt’ are adjectives that come to mind) in the cog-neuro (CN) of language world. One prominent voice of this skepticism is Peter Hagoort, whose views concerning GG I critically discussed here. Before leaving, I was pretty confident that neither my views nor his had changed much so I was looking forward to a good vigorous back and forth. Here are the slides I presented. They were intended to provoke, though not because I thought that they were anything but anodyne intellectually speaking. The provocation would come from the fact that the truisms I was defending are barely understood by many in the “opposition.”

The presentation had four objectives:

1.     To note that Chomsky’s views are always worth taking seriously, the main reason being that he very often right

2.     To explain why it is virtually apodictic that

a.     Part of human linguistic capacity involves having an mind/brain internal G

b.     FL exists and that it had some linguistically specific structure (aka UG is not null)

3.     That cog-neuro of language investigators should hope like hell that something like the Minimalist program is viable

4.     To dispel some common misconceptions about GG widespread in the CNospehere

This, IMO, went well. I led with (1) in order to capture the audience’s attention (which, I believe I did). However, I really wanted to make points (2) and (3) in a way that a non-linguist could appreciate. To do this I tried to make a distinction between two claims: whether mental Gs and FL/UG exists in human minds/brains and what they actually look like. The first, I argued, cannot be contentious (i.e. that humans have mental grammars in the brain is a trivial truth). The second I noted must be (e.g. whether FL/UG has bounding nodes and a subjacency principle is an empirical issue). In other words, that humans have internal Gs and that humans have an FL with some linguistically specific properties is a virtual truism. What Gs and FL/UG looks like is an empirical question that both is and should be very contentious, as are theories in any domain.

And here was the main point: one should not confuse these two claims. We can argue about what human Gs look like and how FL is constituted. We cannot seriously argue about whether they exist incarnated in a region roughly between our ears.

Why are the points in (2) virtual truisms? For the reasons that Chomsky long ago noted (as I noted in (1), he is very often right). They are simple consequences of two obvious facts.

First, the fact of linguistic creativity: it is obvious that a native speaker can produce and understand an effective infinity of linguistic structures. Most of these structures are novel in that sense that speakers have never encountered them before. Nonetheless, these sentences/phrases etc. are easily produced and understood. This can only be explained if we at least assume that speakers who do this have an internalized set of rules that are able to generate the structures produced/heard. These rules (aka Gs) must be recursive to allow for the obvious fact of linguistic creativity (the only way to specify an infinite set is recursively). So given that humans display linguistic creativity and given that this evident capacity requires something like a G, we effortlessly conclude that humans have internal Gs. And assuming we are not dualists, then these Gs are coded somehow in human brains. The question is not whether this is so, but what these Gs look like and how brains code them.

The second evident facts is that humans have FLs. Why? Because 'FL' is the name we give to the obvious capacity that humans have to acquire Gs in the reflexive effortless way they do. To repeat the mantra: nothing does language like humans do language?  So, unless you are a dualist, this must mean that there is something special about us that allows for this. As this is a cognitive capacity, then the likely locus of difference between us and them lies in our brain (though, were it the kidney, liver or left toe that would be fine with me). ‘FL’ is the name of this something special. Moreover, it’s a pretty good bet that at least some of FL is cognitively specific to language because, as anyone can see (repeat mantra here) nothing does language like we do language. Ergo, we have something special that they do not. And this something special is reflected in our brains/minds. What that special thing is and how brains embody them remain difficult empirical questions. That said, that humans have FLs with linguistically specific UG features is a truism.

I believe that these two points got across, though I have no idea if the morals were internalized. Some remarks in the question period led me to think that people very often confuse the whether and what question. Many seem to think that accepting the trivial truth of (2) means that you have to believe everything that Chomsky has to say about the structure of Gs and FL. I assured the audience that this was not so, although I also mentioned that given Chomsky’s track record on the details it is often a good idea to listen carefully to what he has to say about these empirical matters. I believe that this surprised some who truly believe that GGers are mindlessly in thrall to Chomsky’s every word and accept it as gospel. I pleaded guilty. Thus, I assured them that though it was true that, as a matter of cognitive policy, I always try my hardest to believe what Chomsky does, my attitudes were not widely shared and are not considered prerequisites for good standing in the GG community. Moreover, sadly, even I have trouble keeping to my methodological commitment of intellectual subservience all the time.

I next argued that Minimalism (M) is not the bogeyman that so many non-linguists (and even linguists) think it is. In fact, I noted that cog-neuro types should hope like hell that some version of the program succeeds. Why? If it does it will make studying language easier in some ways. How so?

Well if M works then there are many parts of FL, the non-linguistically proprietary ones, that can be studied in animals other than humans. After all, M is the position that FL incorporates operations that are cognitively and/or computationally general, which means that they are not exclusive to humans. This is very different from earlier views of FL where a very large part of FL consisted of what looked like language specific (and hence human specific) structure.  As it is both illegal and rude to do to us what we regularly do to mice, if most of FL resides in us but not in them then standard methods of cog-neuro inquiry will be unavailable. If however, large aprts of FL are recycled operations and principles of a-linguistic cognition and/or computation (which is what M is betting) then we can, in principle, learn a lot about FL by studying non-human brains. What we cannot learn much about are the UG parts, for, by assumption, these are special to us. However, if UG is a small part of FL, this leaves many things to potentially investigate.

Second, I noted that if M gets anywhere then it promises to address what David Poeppel describes as the parts-list problem: it provides a list of basic properties whose incarnation in brains is worth looking for. In other words, it breaks linguistic competence down to manageable units. In fact, the fecundity of this way of looking at things has been exploited by some cog-nuero types already (e.g. Pallier et. al. and Friederici & Co) in their efforts to localize language function in the brain. It turns out that looking for Merge may be more tractable than looking for Raising. So, two nice consequences for cog-neuro of language should M prove successful.

I do not think that this line of argument proved to be that persuasive, but not rally because of the Mishness of the ideas per se. I think that the main resistance comes from another idea. There is a view out there that brains cannot track the kinds of abstract structures that linguists posit (btw, this is what made David's second lecture so important). Peter Hagoort in his presentation noted that brains do not truck in “linguaforms.” He takes the Kosslyn-Pylyshyn debate over imagery to be decisive in showing that brains don’t do propositions. And if they don’t then how can they manipulate the kinds of ling structures that GG postulates. I still find Hagoort’s point to be a complete non-sequitur. Even if imagery is non-propositional (a view that I do not accept actually) it does not follow that language is. It only follows that it is different. However, the accepted view as Hagoort renders it is that brain mechanisms in humans are not in any way different in kind from those in other animals and so if their brains don’t use linguaforms then neither can ours. I am very confident that our brains do manipulate linguaforms, and I suspect that theirs do to some extent as well.

What makes a brain inimical to linguaforms? Well basically it is assumed that brains have a neural net/connectionist architecture. IMO, this is the main stumbling block: CNers take all brain function to be a species of signal detection. This is what neural nets are pretty good at doing. There is a signal in the data, it is noisy and the brains job is to extract that signal from the data. GGers don’t doubt that brains do some signal processing, but we also believe that the brain also does information processing in Gallistel’s sense. However, as Gallistel has noted, CNers are not looking for the neural correlates required to make information processing possible. The whole view of the brain as a classical computing device is unpopular in the CN world, and this will make it almost impossible to deal with most of cognition (as Randy has argued), language being just a very clear hard example of the cognitive general case.

I was asked what kind of neuro experiment could we do to detect that the kinds of ling structure I believe to exist. Note, neuro experiments, not behavioral ones.  I responded that if CNers told us the neural equivalent say of a stack or of a buffer or of embedding I could devise an experiment or two. So I asked: what are the neural analogues of these notions? There was silence. No idea.

Moreover, it became pretty clear that this question never arises. Gallistel, it seems, is entirely correct. The CN community has given up on the project of trying to find how general computational properties are incarnated. But given that every theory of parsing/production that I know of is cast in a classical computational idiom, it is not surprising that GG stuff and brain stuff have problems making contact. CN studies brains in action. It cannot yet study what brains contain (i.e. what kinds of hard disks the brain contains and how info is coded on them). Until we can study this (and don’t hold your breath) CN can study language to the degree that it can study how linguistic knowledge is used. But all theories of how ling knowledge is used requires the arsenal of general computational concepts that Gallistel has identified. Unfortunately, current CN is simply not looking for how the brain embodies these, and so it is no surprise that making language and the brains sciences fruitfully meet is very hard. However, it's not language that's the problem! It is hard for CN to give the neural correlates of the mechanisms that explain how ants find their way home so the problem is not a problem of language and the brain, but cognition and the brain.

So, how did it go? I believe that I got some CNers to understand what GG does and dispelled some myths. Yes, our data is fine, no, we believe in meaning, yes Gs exist as does FL with some UG touches, no, everything is not in the signal… However, I also came away thinking that Gallistel’s critique is much more serious than I had believed before. The problem is that CN has put aside the idea that brains are information processing systems and sees them as fancy signal detection devices. And, until this idea is put aside and CN finds the neural analogues of classical computational concepts, mapping ling structure to neural mechanisms will be virtually impossible, not because they are linguistic but because they are cognitive. There is no current way to link linguistic concepts to brain primitives because brain primitives cannot do any kind of cognition at all (sensation yes, perception, partly, but cognition, nada). 

Where does that leave us? We can still look for parts of the brain that correlate with doing languagy things (what David Poeppel calls the map problem (see next post)), but if the aim is to relate brain and linguistic mechanisms, this is a long way off if we cannot find the kinds of computational structures and operations that Gallistel has been urging CN to look for.

So how did it go? Well, not bad. Nijmegen is nice. The weather was good. The food served was delicious and, let me say this loud and clear, I really enjoyed the time I spent talking with the CNers, especially Peter Hagoort. He likes a good argument and is really fun to disagree with (and that is easy to do given how wrong he is about things linguistic). So, it was fun. It may even have been productive. However, I doubt the lectures, excellent though they were, will mark a sea-change in ling-neuro interactions. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it. We shall see.

The future of linguistics; two views

Addendum: I would like to apologize for systematically mis-spelling Peter Hagoort's name. Before I revised the post below, I called him 'Hargoort.' This was not due to malice (someone called 'Norbert' is not really into the name mocking business) but because I cannot spell. Sorry.

Peter Hagoort and I are both worrying about the future of linguistics (see here). [1] We both lament the fact that linguistics once played “a central role in cognitive science” but that “studies in language relevant topics are no longer strongly influences by the developments in linguistics.” This is unfortunate, according to Hagoort, because “linguists could help cognitive (neuro)scientists to be more advanced in their thinking about the representational structures in the human mind.” He is right, of course, but why he thinks this is very unclear given what he actually proposes, as I show below.

I too lament these sad happenings. Moreover, I am saddened because I have seen that consistent collaboration between GGers and psychologists, computationalists and neuroscientists is not only possible but also very fruitful. Nor is it that hard, really. I know this because I live in a department that does this every day and all the time. Of course doing good work is always difficult, but doing good work that combines a decent knowledge of what linguists have discovered with techniques and insights from other near-by disciplines (psych, CS, neuroscience) is quite doable. It is even fun.

Unfortunately, Hargoort’s piece makes clear, he has no idea that this is the case. He appears to believe that linguists have very little to offer him. I suspect that this might indeed be true for the kinds of questions he seems interested in. But I would conclude from this that he is missing out some really interesting questions. Or, to be more charitable: what is sad about cognitive neuroscience of the Hagoort variety is that it has stopped investigating the kinds of questions that knowing something about linguistics would help answer. Why is this?  Hagoort’s diagnosis of linguistics’ fall from cogneuro grace offers an explanation. He identifies three main problems with linguistics of the generative variety. I will review them and comment seriatim.

First, Hagoort believes that the sorts of representations that GGers truck in are just not right for the brain. In other words, he believes that cogneuro has shown that brains cannot support the kinds of mental representations that linguists have argued for. As Hagoort puts it: “language-like structures do not embody the basic machinery of cognition” (2). How does he know? His authority is Paul Churchland who believes that “human neuronal machinery differs from that of other animals in various small degrees but not in fundamental kind. ” The conclusion is that the language like representations that GGers typically use to explain linguistic data are not brain-structure compatible.

Unfotunately, Hagoort does little more than baldly state this conclusion in this short piece.[2] However, the argument he points to is really quite bad. Let’s assume that Hargoort is right and that non-linguistic cognition (he illustrates with the imagery debate between Kosslyn and Pylyshyn) does not use language like structures in executing its functions (I personally find this unlikely, but let’s assume it for the sake of argument). Does Hagoort really believe that linguistic behavior does not exploit “language-like structures” (what Hargoort calls “linguaform”)? Does Hagoort really believe that not even sentences have sentential structure? If he does believe this, then I await the dropping of the second shoe. Which one? The one containing the linguaformless reanalyses of the myriad linguistic phenomena that have been described using linguaforms. To my knowledge this has never been seriously attempted. Paul Churchland has never suggested how this might be done, nor has Hagoort so far as I know. The reason is that sentences have structure, as 60 years of linguistic research has established, and so far as we can tell, the structure that phrases and sentences have (and linguistic sounds and words and meanings) are unlike the structures that scenes and non-linguistic sounds and smells have. And as linguistics has shown over the last 60 years of research, these structural features are important in describing and explaining a large array of linguistic phenomena. So, if linguists have been wrong about the assumption that “linguiforms” are implicated in the description and explanation of these patterns, then there is a big empirical problem waiting to be tackled: to reanalyze (viz. re-describe and re-explain) these very well studied and attested linguistic data in non-“linguaform” terms. Hagoort does not mention this project in his short speech. However, if he is serious in his claims, this is what he must show us how to do. I very much doubt that he will be able to do it. In fact, I know he won’t.

Let me go further still. As I never tire of mentioning, GG has discovered a lot about natural language structure, both its universal properties and its range of variation. GGers don’t understand everything, but there is wide consensus in the profession that sentences have proposition-like structure and that the rules of grammar exploit this structure. This is not controversial. And if it is not, then however much our brains resemble those of other animals, the fact that humans do manipulate “linguaforms” implies that humans have some mental/neural capacities for doing so, even if other animals do not.[3] Moreover, if this is right, then Hagoort’s finger is pointing in the wrong direction. The problem is not with linguistics, but with the cognuero of language. It has decided to stop looking at the facts, something that we can all agree is not a good sign of scientific health within the cogneuro of language.

So Hagoort is ready to ignore what GG has discovered without feeling any obligation to account for this “body of doctrine.” How come? He actually provides two reasons for this neglect (though he doesn’t put it this way).

The first reason he provides is that linguists are a contentious lot who not only (i) don’t agree with one another (there is “no agreed upon taxonomy of the central linguistic phenomena”) but (ii) have also “turned their backs to the developments in cognitive (neuro) science and alienated themselves from what is going on I adjacent fields of research” (2).  I somewhat sympathize with these two points. A bit, not a lot.  Let me say why.

Let’s address (i): Contrary to the accepted wisdom, linguistics has been a fairly conservative discipline with later work largely preserving the insights of earlier research and then building on these. This may be hard to see if you are outsider. Linguists, like all scientists, are proud and fractious and argumentative. There exists a bad habit of pronouncing revolutions every decade or so. However, despite some changes in theory, GG revolutions have preserved most of the structures of the ancien regimes. This is typical for a domain of inquiry that has gained some scientific traction, and it is what has taken place in GG as well. However, independently of this, there is something more relevant to Hagoort’s concerns. For the purposes of most of what goes on in cogneuro, it really doesn’t matter what vintage theory one adopts.

Let me be blunter. I love Minimalist investigations, but for most of what is studied in language acquisition, language processing and production, and neurolinguistics it really doesn’t matter whether you adopt the latest technology or the newest fangled concepts. You can do good work in all of these areas using GB models, LFG models, HPSG and GPSG models, Aspects models, and RG models. For many (most?) of the types of questions being posed in these domains all these models describe things in effectively the same way, make essentially the same distinctions and adopt more or less the same technology.

I’m not making this up. I really do know this to be true for I have seen this at work in my own department. There may be questions for which the differences between these various approaches matter (though I am pretty skeptical about this as I consider many of these as notational variants rather than differing theories), but for most everything I have personally witnessed, this has not been the case. This indicates that contrary to what Hargoort reports, there is a huge overlapping consensus in GG about the basic structure of natural language. That he has failed to note this, IMO, suggests that he has not really taken a serious look at the matter (or asked anyone).  Of course, life would be nicer were there less pushing and pulling within linguistics (well maybe, I like the contention myself), but that’s what intro texts are for and by now there are endless numbers of these in linguistics that Hargoort could easily consult. What he will find is that they contain more or less the same things. And they are more than sufficient for many of the things he might want to investigate, or that’s my guess.

Hagoort’ claim (ii) is that linguists ignore what is going on in cogneuro. Is this correct? Some do, some don’t. As I noted, my own department is very intellectually promiscuous, with syntacticians, phonologists and semanticists mixing freely and gaily with psycho, computational and neuro types on all sorts of projects. However, let’s again assume that Hagoort is right. The real question is intellectually speaking, who needs who more? I would contend that though checking in with your intellectual neighbors is always a good thing to do, it is currently possible (note the italicized adjective please) to do fine work in syntax while ignoring what is happening in the cogneuro of language. The opposite, I would contend, is not the case.  Why? Because to study the cogneuro of X you need to know something about X. Nobody doing the cogneuro of vision would think that ignoring what we know about visual perception is a good idea. So why does Hagoort think that not knowing anything about linguistic structure is ok for the study of the cogneuro of language? All agree that the cogneuro of language aims to study those parts of the brain that allow for the use and acquisition of language. Wouldn’t knowing something about the thing being used/acquired be useful? I would think so. Does Hagoort?

This is not apparent from his remarks, and that is a problem. Imagine you were working on the cogneuro of vision, and say that the people who work on visual perception were rude and obstreperous, would it be scientifically rational to conclude that its ok to ignore their work when working on the cogneuro of vision? I would guess not. Their results are important for your work. So even if it might be hard to get what you need from a bunch of uncivilized heathens, it doesn’t make getting what you need any less critical.  So even if Hagoort is right about the lack of interest among linguists for cogneuro, that’s not a very good reason to not claw your way to their results (is it Peter?).

This said, let me admonish my fellow linguists: If a cogneuro person comes and asks you for some linguistic instruction BE NICE!! In fact be VERY, VERY NICE!!! (psst: it appears that they bruise easily).

So, IMO, the first two reasons that Hagoort provides are very weak. Let’s turn to his third for, if accurate, it could explain why Hargoort thinks that work in linguistics can a safely ignored. The third problem he identifies concerns the methodological standards for evidence evaluation in linguistics. He believes that current linguistic methods for data collection and evaluation are seriously sub-par. More specifically, our common practice is filled with “weak quantitative standards” and consists of nothing more than “running sentences in your head and consulting a colleague.” I assume that Hagoort further believes that such sloppiness invalidates the empirical bases of much GG research.[4]

Sadly, this is just wrong. There has been a lot of back and forth on these issues over the last five years and it is pretty clear that Gibson and Federenko’s worries are (at best) misplaced. In fact, Jon Sprouse and Diogo Almeida have eviscerated these claims (see here, here, here and here). They have shown that the data that GGers use in everyday practice is very robust and that there is nothing lacking in the informal methods deployed. How do we know this? It can be gleaned from the fact that using more conventional statistical methods beloved of all psychologists and neurosceintists yield effectively the same results. Thus, the linguistic data that GG linguists have collected in their informal way (consulting their intuitions and asking a few friends) are extremely robust, indeed more robust than those typically found in psych and cogneuro (something that Sprouse and Almeida also demonstrate). Hagoort does not appear to know about this literature.[5] Too bad.[6]

In light of his (as we have seen, quite faulty) diagnosis, Hagoort offers some remedies. They range from the irrelevant, to the anodyne to the misinformed to the misguided. The irrelevant is to do “proper experimental research,” (i.e. do what Sprouse and Almeida show linguists already do). The anodyne is to talk more to neuroscientists. This is fine advice, the kind of thing that deans say when they want to look like they are saying something stimulating but really have nothing to say. The misinformed is to work more on language phenomena and less on “top heavy theory.” The misguided is to “embed linguistic theory in “a broader framework of human communication.”  Let me address each in turn and then stop.

The irrelevant should speak for itself. If Sprouse and Alemeida are right (which I assure you they are; read the papers) then there is nothing wrong with the data that GGers use. That said, there is nothing inherently wrong (though it is more time consuming and expensive though and no more accurate) with using more obsessive methods when greater care is called for. My colleagues in acquisition, processing and production use these all the time. Sprouse has also used them when the data as conventionally gathered has failed to be clear cut. As linguistics develops and the questions it asks become more and more refined it would surprise me were we forced to the anal retentive more careful methods that Hagoort prizes. There is nothing wrong with using these methods where useful, but there is nothing good about using them when they are not (and to repeat they are far less efficient). It all depends, like most things.

The anodyone should also be self-evident. Indeed, in some areas (e.g. phonology and morphology) cogneuro techniques promise to enrich linguistic methods of investigation. But even in those areas where this is less currently obvious (e.g. syntax, semantics) I think that having linguists talk to neuroscientists will help focus the latter’s attention onto more interesting issues and may help sharpen GGers explanatory skills. So, in addition to it just being good to be catholic in one’s interests, it might even be mutually beneficial.

The third suggestion above is actually quite funny. Clearly Hagoort doesn't talk to many linguists or read what they write or go to their talks. Most current work is language based and very descriptive. I’ve discussed this before, lamenting the fact that theoretical work is so rarely prized or pursued (see here). Hagoort has already gotten his wish. All he has to do is talk to some linguists to realize that this desire is easily met.

The last point is the one to worry about, and it is the one that perhaps shows why Hagoort is really unhappy with current linguistics. He understands language basically from a communication perspective. He wants linguists to investigate language use, rather than language capacity. Here we should resist his advice. Or we should resist the implication that the communicative use of language is the important problem while liming the contours of human linguistic capacity is at best secondary. From where I sit, Hagoort has it exactly backwards. Language use presupposes knowledge of language. Thus, the former is a far more complicated topic than the latter. And all things being equal, studying simple things is a better route to scientific success than studying more complicated ones. At any rate, the best thing linguists who are interested in how language is used to communicate can do is keep describing how Gs are built and what they can do.

That’s what I think. I believe that Hagoort believes the exact opposite. He is of the opinion that communication is primary while grammatical competence is secondary, and here, I believe that he is wrong. He gives no arguments or reasons for this view and until he does, this very bad advice should be ignored. Work on communication if you want to, but understanding how it works will require competence theories of the GG variety. It won’t replace them.

Ok, this has been far too long a post. Hagoort is right. Linguistics has gone into the shadows. It is no longer the Queen of the Cognitive Neuro-Sciences. But this demotion is less for intellectual than socio-political reasons, as I’ve argued extensively on FoL.  I am told that among cogneuro types, Hagoort is relatively friendly to linguistics.  He thinks it worth his time to advise us. Others just ignore us. If Hagoort is indeed our friend, then it will be a long time before linguistics makes it back to the center of the cogneuro stage. This does not mean that good work combining neuro and GG cannot be pursued. But it does mean that for the nonce this will not be received enthusiastically by the cogneuro community. That is too bad; Sociologically (and economically) for linguistics, intellectually for the cogneuro of language.

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[1] Actually entered my e-mail. Thx Tal and William.

[2] This is not to fault him, for this was an address, I believe and like all good addresses, brevity is the soul of wit.

[3] Some readers may have captured a whiff of the methodological dualism discussed here and here.

[4] He refers to Gibson and Federenko’s 2010 TICS paper and this is what it argues.

[5] Those interested in a good review of the issues can look at Colin Phillips’ slides here.

[6] There is a certain kind of cargo-cult quality to the obsession with the careful statistical vetting of data. I suspect that Hargoort insists on this because it really looks scientific. You know the lab coats, the button boxes, the RSVP presentation really looks professional. Maybe we should add ‘sciency’ to Colbert’s ‘truthy’ to describe what is at issue sociologically.