tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post3515130988456699234..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: Brains with languageNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-52398028479602351732015-10-13T03:11:17.707-07:002015-10-13T03:11:17.707-07:00This Frontiers paper published today on the brain ...This Frontiers paper published today on the brain dynamics of linguistic computation might be of interest: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01515/fullElliot Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05912787912621615746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-18439788861282564432015-09-03T19:08:38.499-07:002015-09-03T19:08:38.499-07:00Now seems to be an appopriate time to leave a link...Now seems to be an appopriate time to leave a link to this <a href="http://www.xkcd.com/1453/" rel="nofollow">XKCD comic</a> on the blog. :pAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14613154152690142744noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-61888089787765332902015-09-03T12:04:31.217-07:002015-09-03T12:04:31.217-07:00Though this is being very persnickety, it is worth...Though this is being very persnickety, it is worth noting that what they mean by deep structure and what linguists mean by it are entirely unrelated. They use this as a shorthand for some abstract structure. Linguists use it as the syntactic realization of thematic information. I actually found the (mis)use of this technical term in a paper about language quite annoying. But this is a small point.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-77620838993501483722015-09-03T11:05:44.911-07:002015-09-03T11:05:44.911-07:00First line of the abstract from this paper: "...First line of the abstract from this paper: "The ability to extract deep structures from auditory sequences is a fundamental prerequisite of language acquisition".<br /><br />Two problems. (1) it's a false statement - have they never heard of sign language? (2) "the ability to extract deep structures" from the environment is a fundamental prerequisite for language acquisition, maybe, but so are a ton of other things - basic sensory processing of some kind, long term memory, motor control over some kind of effector, etc. What we're interested is not how people extract patterns but how people generate them. Chomsky once said that if they taught chimpanzees or gorillas to use sign language the way humans do that it wouldn’t matter – what is interesting is that humans spontaneously acquire language, without (and often in spite of) explicit instruction. This kind of empiricist dogma in cog neuro really bothers me – everyone focuses on getting something from the environment rather than the intrinsic dynamics of the system.<br /><br />Other quibbles with their experimental interpretation, of course. The best they can say is that humans have verbal working memory and monkeys don’t. BIG WHOOP.William Matchinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14694924777230753361noreply@blogger.com