tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post7321485179421234136..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: The future of linguistics; two viewsNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-87722540281859074852021-11-26T03:27:41.655-08:002021-11-26T03:27:41.655-08:00Nice Blog.
Linguistic Experts ResourcesNice Blog.<br /><a href="https://www.acadestudio.com/resources/linguistic-experts-resources/" rel="nofollow">Linguistic Experts Resources</a>Acadestudiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16754667246630164590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-18591087982613901402017-01-19T01:56:32.433-08:002017-01-19T01:56:32.433-08:00This is nice blog. The information you provide is ...This is nice blog. The information you provide is really good. Want to see <a href="http://csit.merospark.com/fourth-semester/sociology-linguistics-cognitive-science-fourth-semester-bsc-csit-tu/" rel="nofollow">Sociology and Linguistics in Cognitive Science</a>Digvijay Chaudharyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12960107704461202365noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-34833701476275705942015-02-12T07:40:35.770-08:002015-02-12T07:40:35.770-08:00So there certainly are people out there who reject...So there certainly are people out there who reject the idea that we should have discrete combinatorial representations of syntactic structure at all. The idea is that one can make do with, in essence, a point in a high dimensional space that corresponds to the activations of an array of abstract "neural" units. So I don't buy that story (yet), because I don't see how you can do what you need syntactic structure to do using such a representation. But models based on these techniques can do quite interesting things, (speech processing, machine translation etc. ) and they can be learned automatically, and in the non-Gallistel part of neuroscience are seen as more compatible with what we know of computational neuroscience. I didn't read the target article closely enough to know whether Hagoort is that radical, but with the increased success of deep learning in the last 10 years, these views are certainly gaining traction. Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-56611212992244267662015-02-12T07:17:42.595-08:002015-02-12T07:17:42.595-08:00@Alex, I guess the point I was trying to make is t...@Alex, I guess the point I was trying to make is that the propositional nature of these objects isn't an inherent part of the object, it's rather an interpretation of the object. Hagoort's objection really seems to be that `linguaform' objects are propositional while cogsci should be using more maplike objects. But, as I pointed out, syntactic representations are not propositional qua configurations, only (possibly) qua interpretations. You're right about the `averaging trees vs spaces' issue, though - there doesn't seem to be any reason to take syntactic representations to be non-discrete.davidadgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00821774928618824698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-25714787101092551232015-02-12T06:44:01.945-08:002015-02-12T06:44:01.945-08:00@David, in mainstream linguistics the syntactic re...@David, in mainstream linguistics the syntactic representations are discrete combinatorial objects. I think these are radically different from the sorts of "vector space" representations that Hagoort is referring to. The term "dimension" has a specific technical meaning that can't be applied to trees. It is possible to map trees into vector spaces using various techniques but they have a different topology -- we can't take the average of two trees, whereas the high dimensional manifolds are smooth.<br /><br />One can consider trees where the labels aren't discrete categories but are elements of a vector space, as many people have considered over the years, most recently Socher/Manning/Ng, but that is something quite different, and I would have thought heretical to Chomskyans...Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-89516137805449179462015-02-11T10:31:55.029-08:002015-02-11T10:31:55.029-08:00I wanted to raise a related but slightly different...I wanted to raise a related but slightly different issue. Hagoort says that representations in the rest of cognitive science involve 'high dimensional geometric manifolds' rather than propositional representations. Norbert responded that the 'linguaform' nature of the syntactic representations is crucial. But I think these two views are compatible. What is a syntactic representation? As an output of the computational system it is, in fact, something that is not a million miles from a 'high dimensional geometric manifold'. Take a structure for a wh-adjunct question like 'how did he dance?'. A Merge style analysis of this has the initial (pair)-Merge position of 'how' in a different dimension from the VP, with reentrant structures (essentially curves in the structure) linking the Merge position of the adjunct with C, C with T, TP with vP, etc. There's possibly extra dimensionality, perhaps temporal, given by the cyclic nature of the object. What the representation is, as a configuration of basic units, is distinct from how it is interpreted, which is where, I think, Hagoort goes wrong. Clearly the structure is interpreted as a propositional like thing, but that's because it is interpreted as (input to) instructions to a language external system used for thinking, memory, panning etc (and everyone, I believe thinks we need propositionality for those). Similarly, it can be interpreted as (an input to) instructions to wave articulatory organs around. Hagoort is confusing the propositional meaning of syntactic structures with their form. Not that it'll probably help our case to say 'hey, we have high dimensional geometric manifolds computable too.'! davidadgerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00821774928618824698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-12193654895331532042015-02-11T06:45:58.433-08:002015-02-11T06:45:58.433-08:00@Colin:
Tim took (put) the right words into my mou...@Colin:<br />Tim took (put) the right words into my mouth. I think we are all looking at the same neuro-cog object. What syntacticians and phonologists and semanticists aim to do is provide a recursive characterization of the range of possible structures. I believe that doing this will help in explaining how we navigate this domain of the possible in getting to our actual Gs and the structure of the actual sentence being uttered/produced. I even believe that as a good first hypothesis we should assume a large measure of transparency between the recursive definition the formalists supply and the algorithms deployed in real time. I personally think that the Gs used in real time are effectively the same as the Gs used to characterize the l-language. However, as you know, this is an extra assumption. It may well be that the G used is a covering grammar of G, or that G plus a bunch of non G processes are used (think Bever) or…These issues require ancillary assumptions beyond those required to triangulate on adequate recursive specifications and as of now the evidence for these ancillary assumptions is, IMO, much weaker than the evidence for the syntactic/phono/sem hypotheses. I very much hope that this will one day change. But right now, that's where we are.<br /><br />As you also know, I think that real progress has been made in some "conjunctive" areas (i.e. Ling + ?). , e.g. processing and acquisition. But even here, the progress is at the level of specific proposals for specific phenomena. We have few overarching principles to guide the work. More like Aspects style work than GB or later research. In other areas (e.g. neuro, production) things are far less well developed.<br /><br />What's this imply? That right now we should be tenacious in holding onto the linguistics we have for there accounts are well grounded empirically, are theory rich and there is a plausible route from here to what we want in the conjunctive areas. As I see it, the main problem is that people outside the linguistics "core" seem ready to throw all this out without seriously having tried to combine it with linking principles. When this has been tried (e.g. by you, Jeff, Lina, Alec, and your students) it has generated interesting and plausible stories. We need more of that and less dumping what we have good evidence for in favor of future riches we can't even begin to describe.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-70488841215276288472015-02-11T03:32:26.094-08:002015-02-11T03:32:26.094-08:00Just to add to the discussion of linking hypothese...Just to add to the discussion of linking hypotheses: there's the contention sometimes made within type logical grammar that parsing difficulty is correlated with the number of unresolved axiom links in a proof net (after each word). See for example here: http://tinyurl.com/nahzo3nAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07342391408412861663noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-71108125056698406932015-02-10T22:53:59.358-08:002015-02-10T22:53:59.358-08:00Colin wrote: Surely we want to define ourselves ba...Colin wrote: <i>Surely we want to define ourselves based on our questions rather than based on our favorite kind of data?</i><br /><br />Yes I agree with that. My phrasing above was probably misleading; by "the job of the psycho types" all I meant was something like "the thing we hope to gain by deploying psycholinguistic methods". (I was carrying over Norbert's phrase, and I would suspect that he probably meant it in roughly the same way, but he should speak for himself.) My main point was that I suspect it would be good if people who are in the habit of constructing theories on the basis of acceptability-judgement data played more of a part in formulating candidate linking theories that could be used to connect things up to other kinds of data. So I certainly don't want to suggest that people should pick only one kind of data and focus only on that.<br /><br />Put differently: whether or not one is involved in <b>collecting</b> many different kinds of data (for whatever reason), one can still think about predictions concerning many different kinds of data.Tim Hunterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11810503425508055407noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-24396290353704865832015-02-10T19:57:17.568-08:002015-02-10T19:57:17.568-08:00I do think there are computations that rely on the...I do think there are computations that rely on the output of the grammar but are not themselves part of what we consider to be the grammar -- for example, eye movement control in reading. These computations are not normally of interest to syntacticians (and possibly shouldn't be). People who study eye movements may still want to use the result of the syntacticians' work to predict where regressions will occur, though they don't work on the same representations and computations as the syntacticians.<br /><br />Even if you're interested in linguistic representations ("competence"), there's always the question of whether acceptability judgments and online measures tap into the same representations. I'm don't know if we understand the linking function between the grammar and people's acceptability judgments better or worse than we understand the linking function for reading times, but sociologically there definitely seem to be people who privilege one type of data over the other (I guess in Colin's terms it means that we're in bad shape). Showing that grammars derived from acceptability judgments do a good job of predicting reading times might help.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14864640787642051975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-80708787211463120182015-02-10T19:56:53.370-08:002015-02-10T19:56:53.370-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14864640787642051975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-83528314289917743122015-02-10T17:44:54.049-08:002015-02-10T17:44:54.049-08:00Surely we want to define ourselves based on our qu...Surely we want to define ourselves based on our questions rather than based on our favorite kind of data? If we have "acceptability judgment people" and "eye movement folks" and "brain wave types", then we're in bad shape. We want to understand the representations and computations, and surely should just pursue whatever it takes to understand them (and at whatever grain of analysis proves fruitful). There's a widespread notion, peculiar to syntax, I think, that once you move beyond a specific level of analysis and a specific type of data you stop being a syntactician and become a "psycho type". That's unfortunate. Colin Phillipshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09724709677503698323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-60489641980455722322015-02-10T12:02:51.872-08:002015-02-10T12:02:51.872-08:00I agree with Tim that the question here is not whi...I agree with Tim that the question here is not which kind of data is more important to account for - acceptability judgments are interesting to linguists and are worth explaining, if you're linguist. The question we're debating is how to interface better with people in other fields who are interested in other types of data, such as reading times, speech recognition word error rates, etc.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14864640787642051975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-36499291762739136052015-02-10T11:58:12.216-08:002015-02-10T11:58:12.216-08:00Just to clarify, in most of the many papers that u...Just to clarify, in most of the many papers that used grammar-based surprisal as a predictor of reading times, the grammar was a PCFG that wouldn't correspond to any linguist's idea of natural language syntax - again, not because of any deep theoretical commitment, just because most of them have used a piece of software that didn't implement any of the fancier syntactic devices that modern theories have. It's not that clear who's responsible, but my guess is that a piece of software existed that was as easy to plug in as the PCFG parser they used and implemented VP-shells etc, some of those papers would have used it.<br /><br />And another small comment - the Brennan paper I mentioned did not use surprisal as the linking hypothesis but node count, which I believe is less well-supported than surprisal.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14864640787642051975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-68113390091161521642015-02-10T11:54:05.403-08:002015-02-10T11:54:05.403-08:00Norbert wrote: What is confusing to me is why peop...Norbert wrote: <i>What is confusing to me is why people think that it is linguist's responsibility to provide the [linking] theory. Not that I wouldn't like to provide this were I able, but I have lots of evidence for ling theory independent of being able to provide a linking theory to OTHER kinds of data. I thought that this is what psycho types should be working on: how does memory, attention etc interact with linguistic knowledge to produce the behavioral outputs we see in real time.</i><br /><br />I certainly agree that syntacticians do not have a "responsibility" to provide a linking theory that links their favourite theories to non-acceptability-judgement behaviour in ways that make accurate predictions. That is, those favourite theories are perfectly well-supported scientific theories purely by virtue of matching the acceptability-judgement behaviour. But I think it would be helpful if there were more discussion of the <b>kinds</b> of linking theories that could be combined with syntactic theories in order to make non-acceptability-judgement predictions. Note: I'm not saying empirically accurate predictions, just predictions at all. In caricature, I guess we could say roughly that it remains the job of the "psycho types" to work out which syntax+linking theory's predictions are empirically borne out, but a precursor to that is having some options on the table, and getting some options on the table seems like a very natural thing for syntacticians to be working on (possibly in collaboration with others). (It's fun and speculative and abstract and pre-empirical, in all the ways that people like me enjoy.)<br /><br />This task of getting some options on the table seems to generally run into a sort of a brick wall because there's a tendency for outsiders to latch onto linking theories along the lines of "derivational time equals real time". For better or for worse, I think the only way we're going to get around that is for some syntax-friendly people to take the lead in getting some alternatives on the table. This is a practical matter, and acknowledging this practical matter does not entail retreating from the position that syntactic theories are perfectly well-supported scientific theories purely by virtue of matching the acceptability-judgement behaviour. And accordingly, pairing your favourite theory with a linking hypothesis, and finding that the predictions of this conjunction are not confirmed by a certain kind of non-acceptability-judgement behaviour, does not invalidate the support that your favourite theory had from acceptability-judgement behaviour. (Perhaps part of the problem is that this last point is not widely appreciated -- there's a tendency to think of these tests with linking theories as "the only real tests" -- which makes syntacticians feel like working with linking theories is going out on an extremely shaky limb?)Tim Hunterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11810503425508055407noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-46184562989896915112015-02-10T11:38:45.762-08:002015-02-10T11:38:45.762-08:00I am less convinced than you are that people are a...I am less convinced than you are that people are avoiding certain representations for deep philosophical reasons; I don't think connectionism is getting as much traction as it did 25 years ago, if that's what you're referring to.<br /><br />I don't know if it's the responsibility of linguists or psychologists to come up with better linking functions between representations and behavioral data. There's a continuum between those two disciplines; experimental psychologists who work on language and four other higher cognition domains are probably not going to be in a position to do it, and the same goes for linguists who spend most of their time conducting fieldwork in the Amazon. People in adjacent points on this continuum need to be talking to each other, and the linking hypotheses will gradually emerge. There has been some progress in this area in the last decade, in particular with respect to surprisal in sentence processing. Most of the evaluation has been on reading times, though there are some neuro examples as well, e.g. from Asaf Bachrach's dissertation (2008) or Jon Brennan's work (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20472279) in fMRI, or this recent ERP paper by Stefan Frank, who I believe works in Hagoort's group: http://www.stefanfrank.info/pubs/BL2015.pdf<br /><br />For this work to be possible, there need to be computational implementations of the grammars that are being evaluated. Perhaps theoretical syntax papers should include a computational implementation of a grammar that includes the paper's contribution; at any rate, I don't know if it's realistic to expect a psychologist to delve into the details of a syntactic theory, and potentially make decisions that were left unspecified in the theoretical paper, to be able to use its results. Sociologically, we will never reach this point unless this kind of work is valued, emphasized in linguists' training and used to inform the development of syntactic theory.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14864640787642051975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-7560640405096115772015-02-10T10:54:39.403-08:002015-02-10T10:54:39.403-08:00@Dan:
I largely agree with your conclusions. Let m...@Dan:<br />I largely agree with your conclusions. Let me elaborate a touch.<br /><br />" it's often unclear whether two theories even make any different testable predictions for the kind of data the cognitive scientists or computer scientists care about."<br /><br />Correct. I've said this repeatedly. Take ANY of the standard GG models and over a very large range (in fact, over almost all phenomena opt interest to cog-neuro types, any model will serve. <br /><br />"People would get interested if grammars with Larsonian VP-shells predicted reading times better than grammars without them, or improved parser accuracy, or accounted for some commonly accepted and quantifiable set of syntactic judgments."<br /><br />Right. The problem of getting linguistic ideas to give you use-of-gramar data is that there linking hypotheses are so weak. We used to have the DTC, but it was concluded (perhaps very hastily as discussions by Colin and Alec Marantz show (they argue that the arguments against the DTC were pretty bad and that this is really the central assumption still)). But after that was disposed of, the conclusion was that linking grammatical knowledge to manifestations of use of that knowledge is impossible. This strikes me as entirely too pessimistic. At least in child acquisition and processing there are some models exploiting grammatical knowledge of pretty much the GG variety that are making interesting headway (Colin and Jeff do this all the time in my own dept). Things are rougher in neuro, but even here some recent work is intriguing. I've discussed Dehaen's experiments on Merge, but there is also some new stuff by Poeppel that tries to find the right linking theories. What is confusing to me is why people think that it is linguist's responsibility to provide the lignin theory. Not that I wouldn't like to provide this were I able, but I have lots of evidence for ling theory independent of being able to provide a linking theory to OTHER kinds of data. I thought that this is what psycho types should be working on: how does memory, attention etc interact with linguistic knowledge to produce the behavioral outputs we see in real time.<br /><br />"Even when some predictions can be wrested out of the theories and tested, it's unclear whether the results of those tests ever feed back into syntactic theory"<br /><br />Yes: the reason is the weak linking theories. They are always, IMO, less well motivated than the syntax they embed. This noted, I think that the stuff by Hunter, Pietroski, Lidz, and Halberda has had an impact on some thinking in semantics, and it may have more in the future.<br /><br />As a political matter, I agree that the best thing to do is to solve their problems, or show that there are problems that are interesting to solve that use Gs of the GG type. Again, I am sanguine here as this is already being done in dribs and drabs. The problem is that psycho types don't join in because they really don't understand what a linking theory is nor do they know much about language. Those that do, do good work. But this is a small number of people. Why don't they use GG insights? Partially because it takes work to know this stuff, partially because, IMO, they are in the thrall of a perverse phil of science and mind. How to change this? Well I hope by doing good work that combines them will make a difference, but it is hard to appreciate this work if you know nothing and have nutty general views. And the latter I don't know how to change, though speaking nicely to them doesn't seem to work. <br />Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-74907773736671866952015-02-10T09:54:18.636-08:002015-02-10T09:54:18.636-08:00It is unfortunate that most of the discussion here...It is unfortunate that most of the discussion here has focused on the reliability of acceptability judgments. We can't know for sure, but my hunch it that cognitive neuroscientists wouldn't suddenly express deep interest in minimalist syntax if all of the judgments in syntax papers had "p < 0.05" next to them. In my opinion the biggest gulf between theoretical linguists and cognitive scientists (or computer scientists) is the evaluation metric that's used to decide between competing representations. Some decisions seem to be based on aesthetic principles (e.g. dislike of traces, dislike of functional heads, preference for binary branching), rather than empirical arguments; it's often unclear whether two theories even make any different testable predictions for the kind of data the cognitive scientists or computer scientists care about. People would get interested if grammars with Larsonian VP-shells predicted reading times better than grammars without them, or improved parser accuracy, or accounted for some commonly accepted and quantifiable set of syntactic judgments. Even when some predictions can be wrested out of the theories and tested, it's unclear whether the results of those tests ever feed back into syntactic theory. John Hale's work and the papers that Colin mentioned are great examples of attempts to derive empirical predictions from representational theories, but they're the exception rather than the norm. As Tim pointed out there are questions about the linking function between the linguists' representations and the empirical data; given the complexity of contemporary syntactic theories, the only realistic way to get scientists outside the field interested is if linguists did the work to try to solve these problems and show them that the representations they care about are useful.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14864640787642051975noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-44652344116126837662015-02-10T08:46:25.504-08:002015-02-10T08:46:25.504-08:00@Dan
You may be right. However, it's not like ...@Dan<br />You may be right. However, it's not like the other concessive strategy has made much headway. One way of thinking of my strategy is that I define a pole that more reasonable arguers can distance themselves from. So in my own immodest way I help the reasonable gain a hearing and make a case. Look, I'm no Norbert, he goes too far, but….<br /><br />Let me a bit more serious for a moment. There is no reasonable opposition to the question that S&A address: to wit, that wholesale skepticism about linguistics is reasonable based due to flawed methods of data collection. This GLOBAL skepticism is dumb and cannot be argued against, only ridiculed. The reasonable position, moreover, is not contentious. Sure there are more and less careful methods of data collection and you use the more careful ones when they are useful to use. Ok, with that pablum out of the way, the argument proceeds case by case. This is a truism, not an insight.<br /><br />However, there is a push by certain quarters of the cogneuro world to think that their standards of investigation are the gold standard and anything not conforming to it is crap. I believe that this has roots in two related conceptions. First, it is based on the the idea that the reason current work in cog-neuro is so insightful is that we just don't have the right data. IMO, this is exactly backwards: what we don't have are the right questions because we have such poor theories. Cog-neuro is data rich and conceptually poor. However, what these guys have learned how to do is run experiments. Many of these are pointless, IMO but they are always elegantly crafted. This is what they want to export to linguistics. We can become just as intellectually barren as they are. CAVEAT: this does not apply to everything in cog-neuro, but it also does not apply to nothing, indeed, quite a bit. So, I think that the obsession with data collection (and yes I think it is an obsession) is badly misplaced.<br /><br />Furthermore, the roots of the obsession are in a very bad idea of how science works (there is not method, no standards no inviolable methodological principles…). I happen to believe that this vision stems from a certain philosophical conception (Empiricism, as if I had to tell you) and that this is a very bad way to think of things. It is also mainly there for bullying purposes. I don't know about you, but often when I am told about the right way to collect data there is a kind of condescending sneer to the tone of the instruction. And I don't like it. But more importantly, it is just wrong-headed. However, the pious tone arises from what I consider to be a deep misunderstanding. And here is what I fear: being concessive and reasonable means buying into this general picture and that doing this already gives the game away. <br /><br />So, yes I am shrill and yes I am pugnacious, at lest about certain issues. However, given that the other approach has not, form what I can see, been particularly successful, then it is not counter-productive. Moreover, it is based on a set of different tastes as regards the scientific enterprise. Disputes about taste are the only ones really wroth having, IMO. But they are seldom gentle. That's at lead how I see things. But thx for the comment. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-71558686804129301632015-02-10T08:25:39.922-08:002015-02-10T08:25:39.922-08:00@Norbert I thought that might be your strategy. Li...@Norbert I thought that might be your strategy. Like Cristina, I fear that it may be having the opposite effect of what you intend: reinforcing the perception that linguists are methodologically backward. Even supposing that you're right about the 'correct' methodology (and supposing that that description makes sense), I think you're losing the rhetorical battle when you approach it this way. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02931454422811040918noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-46647125928406133832015-02-10T07:13:58.344-08:002015-02-10T07:13:58.344-08:00"The only way to get someone like this into t..."The only way to get someone like this into thinking differently is to shock their sensibilities." <br />If it were me I'd ask the Dr. Phil question: How has this been working for you so far? [e.g. how many psychologists or neuro types have you shocked into paying attention to you?] If you do not like the status quo [and judging by your massive effort creating and maintaining this blog you don't] then maybe, just maybe, it might be worth your while trying some less off-putting approach. But, hey, no need to listen to a type-writing monkey :)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03443435257902276459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-78459079521524536832015-02-10T06:39:58.157-08:002015-02-10T06:39:58.157-08:00@Dan
" Even if you're right that Sprouse...@Dan<br /><br />" Even if you're right that Sprouse & Almeida showed once and for all that this is rarely necessary – a claim that could certainly be debated by thoughtful people on both sides – talking this way is a guaranteed way to ensure that your opinion will be dismissed out-of-hand by people who come from disciplines where the design, conduct, and statistical analysis of controlled experiments is considered one of the most basic aspects of the scientific method."<br /><br />I doubt that it is the harsh rhetoric that will put them off, but you may be right. S&A's value lies in showing that a certain kind of global skepticism about linguistic data is misplaced and ill-founded. The stats inclines will reject this on hygienic grounds. Psychologists are trained to understand data as stat massaged experiments. They will reflexively be drawn to the Hagoort point without thinking. The only way to get someone like this into thinking differently is to shock their sensibilities. Or that's what I think. So, the way I put things may make people angry, but it will likely get them to pay attention. Politeness and concessiveness is guaranteed to lead nowhere. So, who am I addressing? Well given that I doubt many psycho types read FoL my main audience is linguists and some psycho-ling types. But if some errant psychologist or neuro type does read this, then I hope that what I say will shock their sensibilities. Not because what I say is wrong, but because the way I say it will grab their attention and make them want to fight back. Once engaged we have a chance of airing the issues. Until engaged, the predominant culture prevails, even if there is no intellectual justification for it. Hope this helps.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-54867915251720646372015-02-10T06:32:04.633-08:002015-02-10T06:32:04.633-08:00@Shravan
I think we do agree, more or less. We lik...@Shravan<br />I think we do agree, more or less. We likely have differences of detail rather than differences of principle. However, I believe that you generalize from your rational beliefs to others whose ambitions are far less generous. There really are people who think that Generative Grammar has been a tremendous failure and that there is no reason to consider what has been found as relevant to anything in cogneuro. And one of the expressed reasons for this view is that GG is built on suspect data. This view cannot be allowed to stand, nor, IMO, can even suggestions of this view be allowed to stand. That's why I cam out hammer and tongue against Hagoort's (I'm not close enough to call him 'Peter') views.<br /><br />I sympathize with your experience wrt subtle judgments. This does occur. However, what often also happens is that over time the data clears up. How? By looking at similar phenomena in other languages where the judgments are much clearer (often due to morphosyntactic indicators of the relevant phenomenon). So, just as in other sciences where the first data is massaged into clarity by later refinements of the experiments, so too in linguistics, much of the time. Also, much of the time, at least where theory has been most successful, the data are pretty clear from the outset and have continued as such. Think Islands, ECP effects, binding, Crossover, control. Here the data has not been particularly fuzzy, though, of course, there are controversies at the margins. IMO, the problem with linguistics has not been a data problem but a theory problem. Much of what we have called theory is pretty low level. Indeed, I think that this is the main problem in cogneuro as a whole. We are data rich and theory poor. And all of this going and froing about the quality of the data misses the real problem: we have rather shallow understanding of the relevant cogneuro mechanisms at play. And this, to repeat, is a problem of ideas, not a problem of data. <br /><br />Stats for linguists? Sure, why not. Many of our students at UMD already do this. Stats is the kind of thing any educated person today should understand a little of, but largely not to be mislead. From the little I see, it is incredibly hard to apply this stuff well. A good amount of the time it is misapplied. And when it is dressed up in fancy notation (something stats is very good at) it becomes harder rather than easier to see how misleading the data claims might be. That said it is a fine technology and sure we should learn how to use it WHEN AND WHERE USEFUL. Recall your example above that you are sure (sort of) that Hagoort would deem unacceptable without stats back up.<br /><br />So, I think we are on the same page. I don't think we are ALL on this page. Let's hope that everyone comes to join us very soon. Then we can put this heated yet not particularly deep discussion to rest.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-31758572605663526102015-02-09T23:10:49.443-08:002015-02-09T23:10:49.443-08:00Norbert, I don't think the distance between yo...Norbert, I don't think the distance between your ideas and mine are too great. I am with you (and Colin) that every single intuition-based judgement we make to build syntactic theories does not necessarily need an experiment. I mean, even Ted (or Peter) would not say that we need to do an experiment to decide that "boy the came" is unacceptable/ungrammatical in English. (Although I *am* guessing here.)<br /><br />In my own case, I started out wanting to be a syntactician, and what happened to me was that the theoretically interesting moments (when one position could be distinguished from another) invariably were about some very delicate judgements. What led me to quit was that whoever had more tenure got to decide what was OK and what was not. I think that Ted and you and Colin would both agree that in such cases, we are better off getting some objective data, although I admit that even that is hard (when we design an experiment, we often unconsciously--or not--bias it to come out in our favor). But it's better than nothing and better than brandishing around one's personal sensitivity to the construction at hand to deliver a judgement. That's how I read Peter's comments.<br /><br />Anyway, the reason I jumped into this fray was actually something different. My original point can be stated quite provocatively. Peter wrote: " Do proper experimental research (including the use of inferential statistics) according to the quality standards in the rest of cognitive science." It is not my impression that the quality standards in psycholinguistics and cognitive science are particularly high. I often ask myself why we even bother to do experiments; the results are always going to prove the experimenter right, right? It's a waste of taxpayer money. How often does an experimenter write a paper says, folks, I got this wrong in my previous paper? So I started out turning away from intuition-based linguistics, and now here I am, ready to turn away from psycholinguistics (not really).<br /><br />I think Peter's point (not taken literally) is laudable: we should do more empirically grounded work in linguistics proper, empirical work of the sort I'm talking about above (i.e., where things get tricky and the potential for bias is high).<br /><br />What I really wanted to get across is that we can do better than the standard empirically grounded disciplines have done, by making statistics a serious part of the core curriculum of linguistics proper. The reason that many experimental researchers in (psycho)linguistics dismiss statistics as beside the point (by their actions or their words) is that they don't have much contact with what's at stake when you engage in statistical inference. It's very similar to the way that linguists' work is dissed by non-linguists. The less you know, the more contemptuous you are of the unknown. Just like non-linguists just don't understand why syntacticians think they have finely tuned judgements; it takes serious training to come up with accurate judgements. It's the same with statistics (mutatis mutandis).<br /><br />Anyway, I just wanted to put this out there because I feel that people just don't acknowledge the problems in psycholx. But I'm not worried; nobody is going to die if one rating comes out one way or another. The same problems are unfolding in medicine, where the consequences are much greater.Shravan Vasishthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453158922142934436noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-47039557248784253462015-02-09T23:09:29.085-08:002015-02-09T23:09:29.085-08:00Norbert, I can see where you're coming from in...Norbert, I can see where you're coming from in this post, and I'm a regular user of both generative grammars and intuition data myself. But a brief comment on the rhetoric: I don't know if your intention is to galvanize linguists who already adopt the theoretical concepts and methods you're defending, or to persuade others who are skeptical of their value. If it's the former, ok. If the latter, then describing controlled experiments and statistical analysis as "obsessive" and "anal retentive" is extremely counter-productive. Even if you're right that Sprouse & Almeida showed once and for all that this is rarely necessary – a claim that could certainly be debated by thoughtful people on both sides – talking this way is a guaranteed way to ensure that your opinion will be dismissed out-of-hand by people who come from disciplines where the design, conduct, and statistical analysis of controlled experiments is considered one of the most basic aspects of the scientific method.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02931454422811040918noreply@blogger.com