tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post2124202054630378861..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Going PostalNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger114125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-2969974104347811352013-03-18T19:42:57.934-07:002013-03-18T19:42:57.934-07:00I have no problem with what you say right above, b...I have no problem with what you say right above, but the infinitude article still looks like an overreaction (to an arguably real problem) to me.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-48076094693479153532013-03-18T19:07:59.159-07:002013-03-18T19:07:59.159-07:00I think in most of his publications that are relev...I think in most of his publications that are relevant to the topic Pullum "admits" that it is possible [in principle] to infer structure from behaviour. So far we just do not know enough to rule out that the internal structure is very different from the one suggested by Chomsky [as far as Chomsky's proposals are specific enough to be dis/confirmable] In fact the stronest claims challenging that we can infer structure from behaviour I am aware of are from Chomsky and McGilvray. And if we take their extreme internalism seriously it makes certainly sense to claim that studying behaviour in order to learn something about the nature of language is a interesting as 'recording what's going on outside the window' would be for a physicist.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-51703626323370010542013-03-17T14:49:10.478-07:002013-03-17T14:49:10.478-07:00Postal would know what he's talking about with...Postal would know what he's talking about with generative grammar, but so do various other people and they don't necessarily say the same thing (I don't know what P might have told you). I tend to find Culicover & Jackendoff's (2005) views congenial.<br /><br />The MonkeyMath and Infinity claim papers seem contradictory to me, the former does seem to admit inference of structure from behavior, the latter to reject the most obvious one. Perhaps they got carried away in their campaign against overstated claims (which I generally approve of)?AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-31128157813019355592013-03-16T18:51:48.700-07:002013-03-16T18:51:48.700-07:00Thank you for this. I am interpreting the 2010 Pul...Thank you for this. I am interpreting the 2010 Pullum&Scholz paper rather differently and we also seem to disagree on what generative grammars are [I base my opinion on what Paul Postal tells me and we probably can agree that he knows what he's talking about].<br /><br />I would like to direct your attention to this 2006 paper of Pullum & Rogers<br />[ http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/MonkeyMath.pdf ] . They clearly state:<br /><br />"Our goal in this paper is to provide an introduction to some interesting proper subclasses of the finite-state class, with particular attention to their possible relevance to the problem of characterizing the capabilities of language-learning mechanisms. We survey a sequence of these classes, strictly increasing in language-theoretic complexity, discuss the characteristics of the classes both in terms of their formal properties and in terms of the kinds of cognitive capabilities they correspond to, and suggest contrasting patterns which could serve to distinguish the adjacent classes in language learning experiments." [p.1]<br /><br />This indicates to me the opposite of what you claim, namely that the kind of grammar an organism can learn allows us to draw conclusions about the learning mechanism that is used. It is also in line with the work on language acquisition/poverty of the stimulus argument Pullum & Scholz have done for a long time. The only thing I can imagine Pullum denies is that at this point we can have confidence what exactly the mechanism is that allows humans to acquire language [in this context also see Scholz, Barbara C. and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2006) Irrational nativist exuberance. In Robert Stainton (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science, 59-80. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Now saying that currently we do not have enough evidence to rule out possible alternative to Chomsky's nativism is neither ruling out this kind of nativism nor claiming the evidence we can gather from 'function'/behaviour is irrelevant or eternally insufficient to draw conclusions about structure.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-9996362242122529412013-03-15T19:28:01.776-07:002013-03-15T19:28:01.776-07:00I haven't managed to find a suitable Pullum qu...I haven't managed to find a suitable Pullum quote (yet), but reviewing Pullum & Scholz on the infinitude claim was relevant, I think, because this article seems to be a somewhat confusing conflation of two issues:<br /> a) is it adequately motivated to describe any languages, such as English or Greek, as having an infinite number of sentences?<br /> b) must all languages have an infinite number of sentences?<br /><br />Apparently offering 'no' to both, as far as I can see, for reasons that I find persuasive for (b) but not for (a), and what interests me most about (a) is their discussion of the 'seductive' (sec 4.1) hold that the infinitude claim seems to hold on the minds of linguists. The obvious-to-me way to get the infinitude claim for English, German, Greek etc. is a behavior-to-structure inference: from the apparent forms of the behavior (e.g. my proton-creation chant) it seems plausible to hypothesize a mechanism in/aspect of structure of the mind that can produce structures of unbounded size (a mathematical property of the hypothesized mechanism), and it also seems plausible to identify what this thing 'ideally produces' as the language (English, German, etc), since the known limitations (boredom, mortality, all the Gamma-Ray-Bursts that we can expect from the upcoming collision with Andromeda, the heat-death of the universe, etc. etc.) are clearly extra-linguistic.<br /><br />P&S go off on various excursions, such as various ways of describing grammars that are 'non-generative' according to them, but not non-generative according to early Chomsky as I understand it, but the fact that they don't entertain the possibility that most linguists still buy the infinitude claim (for languages for which the usual kinds of arguments for it actually go thru) via the obvious behavior-to-form-of-mechanism inference suggests strongly to me that they don't accept this kind of argument.<br /><br />& they appear to have a lot of respectable philosophical company in this respect.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-59070519868464714532013-03-15T14:58:09.034-07:002013-03-15T14:58:09.034-07:00So, to claim to be a Chomskian you have to say wha...So, to claim to be a Chomskian you have to say what the dates are of the work you agree with and find helpful (1955-1971 would be mine for linguistics per se, but I like some of the more general stuff he said in the 80s as well). I think that convincing philosophers is in a way more important that convincing linguists, because linguists are more interested in finding patterns in linguistic data than anything else, and mostly don't worry about any deeper implications that might exist in what they do.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-69583200508682044452013-03-15T03:06:44.143-07:002013-03-15T03:06:44.143-07:00Thanks I's appreciate if you could find a Pull...Thanks I's appreciate if you could find a Pullum quote. Devitt is a philosopher so some here may discount what he says but Pullum certainly counts as linguist, and one of the best...<br /><br />Now when Chomsky writes in 1995 "languages have no rules in anything like the familiar sense" I would assume he must mean by 'familiar sense' what his audience has at this point become familiar with from his work; most notably his 1980 book 'Rules and Representations" where he writes: <br /><br />"The fundamental idea is that surface structures are formed through the interaction of at least two distinct types of rules: base rules, which generate abstract phrase structure representations and transformational rules, which move elements and otherwise rearrange structures to give surface structure" (Chomsky, 1980, p. 144)<br /><br />it would be too much to type out the explanations he gives but he specifically claims "the transformational mapping to S-structure can be reduced to (possibly multiple applications of] a single general rule: 'Move Alpha'" [ibid. p. 145]<br /><br />These where the rules Chomsky's audience had been familiar with in 1995. Given that in 1995 he also eliminated D-structure there certainly would be no use for a transformational rule that maps D-structure to S-structure. From the foregoing I would conclude that, whatever Merge is it cannot be regarded as a rule in Chomsky's terminology. that does not mean that you [and possibly a host of others] have applied the term 'rule' to Merge. Like for example: Baker, M. (2003). The Atoms of Language: The Mind's Hidden Rules of Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<br /><br />But at one point i have to ask: when people differ in very fundamental claims from what Chomsky himself has clearly and unambiguously said - based on what do they call themselves Chomskyan? This is a problem that does not just apply to the issues we discussed regarding apparent incoherence but to a host of other commitments. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-74319152410803066232013-03-14T19:17:07.541-07:002013-03-14T19:17:07.541-07:00I view parameters as a degenerate case of language...I view parameters as a degenerate case of language-particular rules, where the specification is reduced to 'uyes'or 'no'. 'Merge' could also be regarded as a 'universal rule' aka 'principle'; there are a lot more possibilities in this space than people usually bother to investigate. For example lists of bounding nodes, which occasionally appeared in the GB period, are midway in complexity between traditional 'rules' and 'parameters'.<br /><br />While you're waiting for me to find a suitable Pullum selection (or realize that I've been internally misrepresenting him), Michael Devitt's "Linguistic is Not Psychology" (2003) I take to be a representative sample of evidence that there are still many people who don't buy any kind of behavior-to-structure inference. Perhaps I'm misreading this, and misunderstanding similar, earlier, things by Sterelny and Soames.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-26768915084361142082013-03-14T17:18:35.438-07:002013-03-14T17:18:35.438-07:00Christina BehmeMarch 14, 2013 at 4:55 PM
I am look...Christina BehmeMarch 14, 2013 at 4:55 PM<br />I am looking forward to the Pullum reference. But your talk about the psychological reality of grammar rules confuses me. Chomsky has denied such reality explicitly back in 1995:<br /><br />"...languages have no rules in anything like the familiar sense, and no theoretically significant grammatical constructions except as taxonomic artifacts. There are universal principles and a finite array of options as to how they apply (parameters), but no language- particular rules and no grammatical constructions of the traditional sort within or across languages" (Chomsky, 1995, p. 5-6).<br /><br />I am not aware of Chomsky having re-introduced 'rules' after 1995 - are you? So if languages have no rules the non-existent rules can have no psychological reality and if Pullum denies psychological reality of grammar rules he is in agreement with Chomsky. If you mean 'psychological reality of language' I think you pretty much have to be a Platonist to deny that [though there is dispute about HOW MUCH DETAIL you can infer] and if you mean "psychological reality of cognitive structures implicated in linguistic knowledge", I think even Platonists accept that.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-27572560322499812322013-03-14T16:55:00.658-07:002013-03-14T16:55:00.658-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-57144665355692459672013-03-14T15:32:42.207-07:002013-03-14T15:32:42.207-07:00I didn't say *I* had any problems with Yang...I didn't say *I* had any problems with Yang's work (but I know there are people who do - I won't speculate about why). I'll try to dig up a specific Pullum reference, but anyone who has problems with the psychological reality of grammar rules (in general, not with respect to some specific proposal such as transformations or 'Move'), which iirc includes Pullum (and Gazdar) is denying the possibility of inferring something about structure from 'function' (I think I should have said 'behavior').AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-41738814370915584992013-03-14T10:44:55.266-07:002013-03-14T10:44:55.266-07:00You say: "But the essential step of deciding ...You say: "But the essential step of deciding that you can infer something about structure from function is critical, and not everyone is willing to make it, even now. (eg Geoff Pullum, as far as I can tell.)"<br /><br />I would find it pretty surprising to learn that there are still people seriously questioning that you can infer something about structure from function - certainly i have never read Pullum claiming that - would you have a reference where he says something that could be interpreted that way?<br /><br />I also did not mean to say YOU have to read [or comment on] Yang's post. But he has done this kind of work for some time and similar work has been done by 'empiricists' for even longer. There is certainly some controversy about how the results of this work should be interpreted and it also emphasizes the BIO of biolinguistics. So it certainly could provide ample of stuff for discussion [which in my opinion does not only has to be based on 'having problems with Yang's work'] - or so i would have thought... Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-87287778611606644642013-03-14T02:57:44.475-07:002013-03-14T02:57:44.475-07:00Yang's posting is about relatively new work - ...Yang's posting is about relatively new work - I'd prefer to learn more about it before asking questions, & I don't have any problems with Norbert's How to Study Brains, in principle at least (tho I don't understand why people are obsessed with binarity, and why Norbert wants to produce all structure-sharing by movement). But the essential step of deciding that you can infer something about structure from function is critical, and not everyone is willing to make it, even now. (eg Geoff Pullum, as far as I can tell.)<br /><br />But all of these 100 comments on threads like this one are by the same handful of people - the vast majority of working linguists appear to be absent. So a few linguists care, but not many.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-90508063672052601882013-03-13T19:18:51.358-07:002013-03-13T19:18:51.358-07:00@Avery: It seems there is some misunderstanding ab...@Avery: It seems there is some misunderstanding about two points. First there had been a debate about 'knowledge' of language that resulted in Chomsky changing his terminology to 'cognizing'. It had to do with the fact that some philosophers mistook Chomsky's usage of 'knowledge' for the philosophical usage of 'Knowledge'. But from what I can tell this confusion has been pretty much cleared up long time ago - and mainly because Chomsky has been quite clear about what he meant and didn't mean regarding having a system of rules and following rules vs. having explicit knowledge of these rules. <br /><br />The issue that has not been resolved is whether knowledge [or cognizing] is a two place relationship between Language L and a person who has knowledge of L [as on this blog Paul Postal and Jan Koster have claimed] or if knowledge of language is being in a certain brain-state. To use Norbert's example, on this view knowledge of language is comparable to having a headache: knowing I have a headache and having a headache is the same thing, so it does not make sense to speak about my knowledge of my headache [though a doctor can gain some 3rd person knowledge about it]. This is a very different issue from the one that has been resolved. And given that neither Paul Postal nor Jan Koster are some obscure philosophers who know next to nothing about linguistics, it would seem sensible for Chomsky to take their concerns seriously and address them, if he can. Given that there is also unclarity among the undoubtedly very knowledge people who have contributed here, it is sensible to assume there is at least some unclarity among reviewers for journals or grand-proposals and if Chomsky could clear up this unclarity it certainly does not seem like a waste of his time - given that he deeply cares about the field.<br /><br />The second point is that i am really surprised you would think linguists do not care about the things we have been discussing here. Take a look at the comments sections under each blog. Norbert is certainly providing an excellent service for us and covering a wide variety of topics. Yet his "How to Study Brains" has zero comments [something I found very surprising because I was looking forward to watching the linguistics experts debate this very interesting topic]. Charles Yang has contributed a very interesting post "Learning Fast and Slow I: How Children Learn Words..." which has 2 comments. In comparison "Going Postal" has 100 comments. No one was forced to post anything here, so i would assume people are interested in this topic and I am not sure why you would draw the conclusion that linguists do not care about if what Chomsky writes is incoherent. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-62601828988561915562013-03-13T16:09:30.341-07:002013-03-13T16:09:30.341-07:00To say a bit more about my inflammatory statement ...To say a bit more about my inflammatory statement "[most linguists don't care] whether all or even any of them do or don't make sense or add up to a consistent whole under some other discipline's conventional interpretation of what the words he uses are supposed to mean" carries a qualification about other disciplines' interpretations of the words; this is crucial because obviously nobody would be any kind of Chomskian if nothing C said made any sense to them, but most linguists are not intellectually concerned at all the problems that people have who seem unable to help themselves as interpreting the term 'rule' as something that is in some sense written down in their minds and consciously consulted in order to be 'followed' (not a rare disorder amongst philosophers; the egregious PM Baker and GP Hacker would be amongst the noiser sufferers, iirc).<br /><br />Chomsky and others have tried to combat this by inventing the word 'cognize', but it clearly made no difference at all. I think it's very unlikely that Chomsky could sort things out by writing a clearer book, even if he decided that he absolutely had to do it.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-83578953855647180612013-03-12T12:43:54.160-07:002013-03-12T12:43:54.160-07:00Nest building is not a good example of what we are...Nest building is not a good example of what we are talking about because it is instinctive behavior, under internal stimulus control. Human representations result from free, voluntary acts of creation.<br />I wonder, at this point if it is appropriate to use Norbert's blog for this exchange. If you want to continue, please use email.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-67213560704768265442013-03-12T11:27:54.333-07:002013-03-12T11:27:54.333-07:00I certainly don't want to defend Chomskyan ext...I certainly don't want to defend Chomskyan extreme internalism. On the other hand I think t is not quite correct to think other animals do not create any external representations. Look at the nest building excesses some birds go through to impress mates etc. Also some limited 'mental time traveling' seems possible that allows e.g., squirrels and jays to 'remember' where they cached food. But I agree all these examples are at best a very faint image of what we have done. <br /><br />My guess is probably some innate mental capacity [call it M] allowed us to go far beyond what other animals do in creating external representation ER. But then these ER fed back into M and you get some kind of self-enforcing cycle going. That could explain why there are really no sharp divides between human and non human cognition, yet still you get a trait like language that is unique in the animal kingdom. At least it does not sound immediately crazy to me...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-69737112131572582642013-03-12T07:49:13.708-07:002013-03-12T07:49:13.708-07:00Cultural objects only exist as such in relation to...Cultural objects only exist as such in relation to a certain type of mind with its inner resources ("derived intentionality"). This is true for all external representations, from Lascaux to Rembrandt, and for all tools, from hammers to computers, etc. Far from being an afterthought, externalization was one of the key innovations that made us human. If you like computer metaphors: it turned us from isolated "machines" into members of a distributed network. See, among others, the papers and books by Merlin Donald, like: http://psycserver.psyc.queensu.ca/donaldm/Exographic.Rev.2010.pdf.<br />Dogs, and even chimps, don't create external representations whatsoever and therefore hardly have a mental life beyond their own skulls. I am afraid that Chomsky wants us to see ourselves like dogs and chimps in this respect!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-35271053174520116292013-03-12T04:56:25.193-07:002013-03-12T04:56:25.193-07:00Thanks for this. Now here is one problem: there st...Thanks for this. Now here is one problem: there still seems something internal that allows us but not say dogs the internalization of cultural objects. For most of our history dogs have been around and been exposed [especially in tribal societies] to a great deal of the same culture as kids growing up in these cultures. Yet dogs do not learn language. So something must be internal. From this one does not have to draw the crazy conclusion - that culture or even worse 'externalization' plays no role and everything of interest is 'in the head'- but clearly something is in the head. <br /><br />Also, by now it has been shown that dogs are capable of learning a considerable amount of words and seem to do so by 'fast mapping' which has been claimed to be unique to humans. At the moment there is way to less work done on the issue but it seems at least possible that dogs could acquire enough of lexicon to get to a 'toy language' - but there seems no sign yet that they actually do that. Again, far too little is known but my hunch is the difference making difference is in the brain. Do you think i am wrong about that? If so why?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-44840564502595619772013-03-11T17:41:57.118-07:002013-03-11T17:41:57.118-07:00Everything? Who believes that? The fundamental pro...Everything? Who believes that? The fundamental problem? Yup, me!Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-18597231814184174522013-03-11T17:13:58.906-07:002013-03-11T17:13:58.906-07:00@Christina&Norbert, will have to delay on repl...@Christina&Norbert, will have to delay on replying properly to this because my house phone-line internet has ceased to work for reasons as yet unknown, so time is limited. I will however stick with the claim that individual linguists care more about what makes sense to them than what is in accord with a text written by somebody else, & the 'magic of science' is that groups of people doing this (and communicating with each other about their results and interpretations) sometimes at least seem able to converge on ideas that really work better than what is gotten by trying to find the correct interpretation of previous writings. This is something we didn't know 400 years ago.<br /><br />& I don't think Chomsky 'made linguistics a science'; it was a somewhat confused immature science before he started working, and then became a hopefully somewhat less confused and immature science thereafter. But I don't think he got everything right. AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-83139129471323045542013-03-11T16:34:22.717-07:002013-03-11T16:34:22.717-07:00I agree that the archeological record is hard to i...I agree that the archeological record is hard to interpret. As for the lexicon, that's practically the only thing we are sure of that it is unique to language. Bad news for biolinguistics because it is not an individual, internal state but an external, cultural collection. You can internalize such cultural objects, like songs, but that does not change their ontological status as cultural objects. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-31683706047817343782013-03-11T12:36:13.923-07:002013-03-11T12:36:13.923-07:00To clear up a potential misunderstanding: I did no...To clear up a potential misunderstanding: I did not mean 'Merge' by Chomsky style mutation but merely an event that could have provided the difference making difference. I am so far not aware of any description of Merge that is detailed and consistent enough to evaluate exactly what supposedly has evolved. On the one hand Chomsky stresses how 'easy' it would have been for this very 'simple' mechanism to come into being. But then it is reliably just very vaguely described: "You got an operation that enables you to take mental objects [or concepts of some sort], already constructed, and make bigger mental objects out of them. That's Merge. (Chomsky, 2012, pp. 13). Well on Tomasello's account we have mechanisms that put things together and he tells me a lot more about what these things are. So I do not know what the simple Merge would add here. Now when i actually look at publications by syntacticians who try to account for linguistic phenomena using Merge suddenly the simplicity has vanished.I see operations at a complexity that remind me of the allegedly eliminated parameters of a gone by era. I am not enough of a syntactician to appreciate how Merge has simplified earlier accounts. But i am enough of a biologist to know that something that operates at such a level of complexity cannot have 'poofed' into existence via a single mutation that was immediately stable enough to spread through a population and never changed in the billion transmissions it had into every single human living right now. Norbert seems quite happy to invoke 'miracles' but as scientist i prefer the number of miracles required for an acceptable account to be zero.<br /><br />Regarding extreme gradualism: Dawkins had addressed this problem decades ago by using a neat analogy: if you read that a biblical tribe crossed a desert in 30 years and you know the size of the desert you can assume either [i] they traveled the entire time at a steady speed of 10feet/day. Or you assume [ii] they walked a few days, set up camp, stayed there some time, walked a few days set up a new camp, etc. In both cases you make gradual progress but no one would assume [i] was what they actually did. So even the most militant gradualist assumes that evolution is like [ii]: times with virtually no change and intervalls with +/- significant change. Saltationists like Chomsky on the other hand assume you sit 29 years and 364 days on one side of the desert and then at the last day you cross it by taking one giant leap. - Analogies are of course imperfect and sometimes we have saltations but even then they still need to be passed on to offspring etc.<br /><br />Also note that it is not entirely clear that a detectable change in technology [the 'sudden leap' in the archeological record] is a reliable indicator for an increase in overall intelligence and/or the arrival of linguistic abilities. By analogy, comparing the “archeological record” of human technology of the 17th and 20th century a scientist of the 44th century might conclude that our species underwent a dramatic increase in intelligence or acquired new linguistic abilities during this time period. But we have little reason to believe that such changes took place. <br /><br />Now you make an interesting point at the end. you say: <br />The real decisive step, in my view, is the development of human agency, which includes consciousness and the ability to GIVE functions to things, without having to wait for slow natural selection. In the case of language, agency brought us the invention of the lexicon (a form of external, collective memory) and ACCESS to Merge, in order to use it as a tool to expand the inventory of basic lexical elements. <br /><br />So you see the invention of the lexicon as an entirely external process? And do you think it is stored exclusively or mostly in what you call 'external collective memory'?<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-44801991703744273892013-03-11T07:39:04.862-07:002013-03-11T07:39:04.862-07:00I think it's very likely true that Chomsky doe...I think it's very likely true that Chomsky doesn't currently view a person's linguistic competence as an abstraction over their performance systems (if this is understood to mean that the latter are somehow “more real” or “more fundamental” than the former). Ad Neeleman and Hans van de Koot <a href="http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7mTjmBeG_KAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA183&ots=rt9xvuPg6T&sig=sAvqehEPSaL-0o3sv6bCj3J3SSo#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">recently defended</a> a conception of the competence/performance distinction along these lines and they seem to take this to be a non-standard characterization of it.<br /><br />I personally doubt that Chomsky took this view of competence even in <i>Aspects</i>, since for someone who has certain philosophical tendencies which I darkly suspect Chomsky of having, this would get the causal and explanatory priorities backwards. It's because I have linguistic competence that I'm able to produce and understand sentences, not vice versa. This could be denied by analogy with philosophical theories of knowledge according to which knowing that X reduces to having a certain set of abilities. My hunch is that Chomsky doesn't have much sympathy with that kind of theory.Alex Drummondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04676457657606185543noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-8308234355137744292013-03-11T04:21:56.449-07:002013-03-11T04:21:56.449-07:00I don't want to get into a broad debate about ...I don't want to get into a broad debate about what's unique about humans. Extreme gradualism in evolution is less self-evident these days than it used to be. Even a gradualist has to account for the fact that language appeared rather suddenly and recently in the record. That being said, I believe that a sudden Merge mutation would be insufficient. A non-linguistic zombie could "have" Merge, too, after all. The real decisive step, in my view, is the development of human agency, which includes consciousness and the ability to GIVE functions to things, without having to wait for slow natural selection. In the case of language, agency brought us the invention of the lexicon (a form of external, collective memory) and ACCESS to Merge, in order to use it as a tool to expand the inventory of basic lexical elements. WIthout agentive access, Merge is worthless for the purpose of language.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13780460212414690121noreply@blogger.com