Vox cognoscenti

The thoroughly modern well informed member of the professional classes reads Vox (I do). Not surprisingly, then, Vox has reviewed Wolfe’s book to provide discussion fodder for those that frequently eat out in groups. Unlike the NYT or The Chronicle, Vox found a linguist, John McWhorter (at Columbia) to do the explaining. The review (henceforth JMR) (here) makes three points: (i) that Wolfe really has no idea what he is talking about, (ii) that GGers are arrogant and dismissive and their work (overly) baroque, and (iii) that Everett and other critics might really have a point, though (and here JM is being fair and balanced) so does Chomsky and Everett’s critics.

The biggest problem with JMR lies with its attempts to split the difference between Chomsky and his “critics.” As I’ve noted before (and the reason I put critics in scare quotes), Everett (and Vyvyan Evans who also gets a mention) have no idea what Chomsky has been claiming and so their “critiques” have little to do with what he has actually said. They thus cannot be criticisms of Chomsky’s work and are thus of little value in assessing Chomsky’s claims.

Furthermore, it is clear that these critiques are of interest to the general public and are covered by the high brow media precisely to the extent that they show that Chomsky is wrong about the nature of language, as he understand this. Indeed, this is why part of every title to every piece covering these critiques declares that Chomsky is wrong about Universal Grammar (UG). Nobody outside a small number of linguists really cares about whether Piraha embeds sentences! All the fireworks in the high-brow press are due to what Everett’s findings mean for the Chomsky program, which is precisely nothing for it rests on a simple misunderstanding of Chomsky’s claims (see here and here for recent discussion).

The sociological significance of the expansive coverage of these “critiques” given their shoddiness is another matter. It says a lot about how much our thought leaders want to discredit Chomsky’s non-linguistic views. I would go further: I doubt that our thought leaders care much about the fine structure of the Faculty of Language. But they hope that discrediting Chomsky’s scientific/linguistic project might also serve to discredit his non-linguistic ones. However, given FoL’s remit, I won’t here develop this (pretty obvious) line of speculation. Instead I will lightly review some JMR highlights and make the (by now, I hope) obvious points. 

A. JMR describes the position that Wolfe is attacking (via Everett’s work) as follows:

Wolfe’s topic is Noam Chomsky’s proposal that all humans are born with a sentence structure blueprint programmed in their brains, invariant across the species, and that each language is but a variation upon this "universal grammar" generated by an as-yet unidentified "language organ." In other words, we are born already knowing language. (2-3)

This is a very misleading way of putting Chomsky’s claims about UG. A better analogy is that there is a biologically given recipe for constructing Gs on the basis of PLD. These Gs can (and do differ) significantly. The “blueprint” analogy suggests that all Gs have the same structures, with a tweak here or there (JRM: “few “switches” that flip in the toddler’s brain”). And this suggests that finding a language with a very different G “blueprint” (Piraha say, which JRM (reporting on Everett) writes does not allow for “the ability to nest ideas inside one another” (with an example of multiple sentential embedding as illustration)) would constitute a problem for Chomsky’s FL conception as it would fail to have a key feature of UG (“the absence proves that no universal grammar could exist”). But, as you all know, this is incorrect. It is consistent with Chomsky’s views that the “blueprints” differ. What matters is that the capacity to draw them (i.e. acquire Gs) remains the same. Put more directly, JMR suggests a Greenbergian understanding of Chomsky Universals. And that, is a big no-no![1]

Now, to be honest, I sometimes had trouble distinguishing what JMR is reporting from what JMR is endorsing. However, as the whole point of the non-debate is that what Everett criticizes is at right angles to what Chomsky claims, leaving this fuzzy severely misreports what is going on. Especially when JMR reports that Chomsky “didn’t like this,” thereby suggesting that it was the content of Everett’s claim that Chomsky objected to, rather than the logic behind it. Chomsky’s primary objection was, and still is, that even if Everett is right about Piraha, it has nothing to do with GG claims about whether recursion is built into the structure of FL/UG.

This is the important point about Everett’s research, and it must be highlighted in any informative review. Once this point is firmly and clearly made one can raise secondary issues (very secondary IMO): whether Everett’s specific claims about Piraha are empirically accurate (IMO, likely not). However, this is decidedly a secondary concern if one’s interest is the relevance of Everett’s claims to Chomsky’s claims concerning the structure of FL/UG. JMR fails to make this simple logical point. Hence, whatever its other virtues, it serves to obscure the relevant issues and so to misinform.

            B. JMR writes that the “meat of the debate” revolves around “Chomskyans belief that adaptations have arisen in the brain that serve exclusively to allow speech.” This is contrasted with views that believe that “speech merely piggybacks on equipment that already evolved to allow advanced thought.”

There are some small bones to pick with this description. Thus, the issue is not speech but linguistic knowledge more generally. But let’s put this aside. Is there really a disagreement between Chomsky and his critics about how linguistically specific FoL is? I doubt it. Or, more accurately, if there is such a disagreement Chomsky’s critics have had nothing whatsoever to say about it. Why?

The question is an interesting one and, as you all know, it is the central question animating the Minimalist Program (MP). MP takes as a research question whether FoL is entirely reducible to operations and primitives of general cognition and computation or whether there is a linguistically specific residue despite FoL’s computational operations largely overlapping with general principles of computation and cognition. 

Before addressing how would one go about resolving this debate, let me observe (again) how modest the Chomskyan claim is. It does not say that every part of FoL is linguistically specific. It does not deny that language interacts with other areas of cognition, emotion or culture. It does not assert that every detail of linguistic competence or behavior is insulated from everything else we know and do. Nope. It makes the very modest claim that there is something special about language, something that humans have qua being human and that this is interesting and investigatable.

Of course, over the years linguists have made specific proposals concerning what this something special might be and have identified properties of FoL that don’t look to be easily reducible to other cognitive, computational, emotional or cultural factors. But this is what you would expect if you took the question seriously. And you would expect those that took the opposite view (i.e there is nothing linguistically special about human linguistic facility) to show how to reduce these apparent linguistically sui generis facts to more general facts about cognition, computation or whatever. But you would be wrong. The critics almost never do this. Which suggests, that there really is no serious debate here. Debate would require both sides to address the question. So far as I can tell, critics interpret Chomsky as claiming that culture, general cognition etc. have no impact on any part of language knowledge or use. They then go on to point to cases where this appears to be false. But as Chomsky never denied this, as his claim is far more modest, these observations, like those of Everett’s concerning recursion, are beside the point. To have a debate, there must be some proposition being debated. So far as I can tell, once again this is false in this particular case. Hence no debate.

JMR notes that dealing with the substantive question of the linguistically specificity of FoL requires getting empirically and theoretically quite technical.[2]

…without a drive-by of this rather occult framework, one can’t begin to understand the contours, tone, and current state of the debate Wolfe covers. (8)

Of course, JMR is correct. How could it be otherwise? After all, if one is arguing that the computations are linguistically sui generis then one needs to specify what these are. And, not surprisingly, these investigations can get quite technical. And JMR understands this. However, it also seems to find this offensive. Note the occult. Later on JMR says:

…from one academic generation to the next, this method [standard GG analyses:NH] of parsing language has mission-crept into a strangely complicated business, increasingly unrelated to what either laypeople or intellectuals outside of linguistics would think of as human language. It is truly one of the oddest schools of thought I am familiar with in any discipline; it intrigues me from afar, like giant squid and 12-tone classical music. (10)

Hmm. JMR clearly suggests that things have gotten too technical. A little is ok, but GGers have gone overboard. JMR seems to believe that dealing with the question about FoL’s specific fine structure should be answerable without getting too complex, without leaving the lay person behind, without technical intricacies. Imagine the reaction to a similar kind of remark if applied to any other scientific domain of inquiry. Reminds me of the Emperor’s quip to Mozart in Amadeus: Sorry Mr Mozart, too many notes!

JMR concedes that all of this extra complexity would be fine if only there was evidence for it.

The question is whether there is independent evidence that justifies assuming that speech entails these peculiar mechanisms for which there is no indication in, well, how people talk and think.

And the problem is that this independent evidence does not seem to exist; anyway, outsiders would find it peculiar how very little interest practitioners have in demonstrating such evidence. Rather, they stipulate that syntax should be this way if it is to be "interesting," if it is to be, as the literature has termed it, "robust" or "rich." Yet where does the idea that how we construct sentences must be "robust" or "rich" in the way this school approves of come from? It’s an assumption, not a finding. (13)

This is calumny. If there is one thing that linguists love to do is find empirical consequences of some piece of formal machinery. But, with this summary judgment, JMR joins the Everett/Evans camp and simply asserts that it is too much. There really are too many notes- “Split IP, Merge, phases and something called “little v”” (14). That these proposals come backed by endless empirical justification is hardly mentioned, let alone discussed. Look, I love hatchet jobs, but as JMR notes about Wolfe, even a drive-by heading to this conclusion requires more than assertion.

I suspect that JMR includes this to be able to play both sides of the fence: sure Wolfe knows nothing, but really he is somewhat right. No. He isn’t. Nor is JMR’s suggestion that there is something to Wolfe’s suspicions justified or, IMO, justifiable.

C. Then there is the linguists and their “bile” against anyone “questioning universal grammar” (16). More specifically against Everett.

On a personal note, I did not take any interest in Everett’s findings until I read the New Yorker piece, and then only because of how badly it misrepresented matters. Nor do I believe that anyone else would have noticed it much, but for the public brouhaha. Even then, had the high-brow press not used Everett’s work to denigrate my own, I would have given it a free pass. But this is not what occurred. The claim was repeatedly made that Everett’s work demonstrates that GG is wrong. Efforts to show that this is incorrect have not been greeted nearly as enthusiastically. JMR mischaracterizes the state of play. And in doing so, once again, obscures the issues at hand.

The “GGers (Chomkyans) are vitriolic” trope has become a staple of the “GG/Chomskyan linguistics is dead” meme. Why? There is one obvious reason. It allows Chomsky’s critics to shift debate from the intellectual issues and refocus them on the personal ones (i.e. to move from content to gossip). To argue against the claims GG has made requires understanding them. It also takes a lot of work because there is a lot of this kind of work out there. Saying that GGers are meanies allows one to stake the high ground without doing any of the intellectual or empirical hard work. This is not unlike political coverage one finds in the press: lots of personality gossip, very little policy analysis.

Why is JMR so sensitive? Apparently some students at some conference found what they were hearing uninteresting (18). Though, JMR notes that “most Chomkysans” are not as dismissive (19). Yet he mentions that there does exist “a current of opinion within the Chomskyan syntax orbit that considers most kinds of linguistic inquiry as beside the point” (19). So, some students are bored about anything outside their immediate interests and some linguists are dismissive. And this means what exactly? It means that GGers are vitriolic and dismissive (though most aren’t), or they could be because such dismissiveness is in the air. This is really dumb stuff, not even People Magazine level titter.

D. Towards the end, JMR notes that Everett has not really made his case concerning Piraha (25-6). Indeed, he finds the Nevins, Pesetsky and Rodrigues rebuttal “largely convincing” and believes that it is “quite plausible that Piraha is not as quirky a language as Everett proposed” (26). Here my views and JMR’s coincide. However, to repeat, JMR’s reasonable discussion mainly serves to obscure the main issue . Let me end with this (again).

JMR, like many of the other discussions in the high-brow press frame the relevant debate in terms of whether Everett is right about Piraha embedding. This presupposes that what Everett found out (or not) about Piraha is relevant to Chomsky’s claims. Because the coverage is framed as an empirical debate, when GGers dismiss Everett’s claims they can be described as having acted inappropriately. They have failed to dispassionately consider the empirical evidence, evidence which the coverage regularly reports would undermine central tenets of Chomsky’s theory of FL/UG if accurate. But this framing is wrong. There is no empirical debate because the presupposition is incorrect. What has gotten (some) GGers hot under the collar is this mis-framing. It is one thing to be shown to be wrong. It is quite another to have people debunk views that you have never held and then accuse you of being snippy because you refuse to hold those views. I don’t dismiss Everett’s views because I fear they might be right. I dismiss these views because they are logically irrelevant to the claims I am interested in (specifically whether (some kind of) recursion is a linguistically specific feature of FL) and because every time this is pointed out the critic’s feelings get hurt. That really does boil the blood.

To end: As reviews go, JMR is not the worst. But it is bad enough. And part of what makes it bad is its apparent judiciousness. It follows the standard tropes and frames the issues in the now familiar ways, albeit with a node here and there to Chomsky and GG. But, as noted, that is the problem. It really seems to be hard for many to accept that so much contention in the press can be based on a pun (GUs vs CUs) and that the whole “debate” is intellectually vapid. But that’s the way it is. Let’s hope this is the last round for the time being.

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[1] If memory serves, Stephen Jay Gould discussed a similar problem in biology with the notion blueprint. He noted that for a long time genetic inheritance was conceived in blueprint terms. This, Gould argued, led to homoncular theories of genetic information transmission (we each had a smaller version of ourselves deep down that contained the relevant genetic pattern). This made sense, he argued, if we thought in terms of blueprints. Once we shifted to thinking in terms of codes, the homunculus theory disappeared. I have no idea where Gould made this point, but it has interesting parallels in current conceptions of UG as blueprints.

[2] I’ve discussed this issue before and noted how one might go about trying to adjudicate it rationally (see here).

Universals: a consideration of Everett's full argument

I have consistently criticized Everett’s Piraha based argument against Chomsky’s conception about Universal Grammar (UG) by noting that the conclusions only follow if one understands ‘universal’ in Greenberg rather than Chomsky terms (e.g. see here).  I have recently discovered that this is correct as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. I have just read this Everett post, which indicates that my diagnosis was too hasty. There is a second part to the argument and the form is actually one of a dilemma: either you understand Chomsky’s claims about recursion as a design feature of UG in Greenbergian terms OR Chomsky’s position is effectively unfalsifiable (aka: vacuous). That’s the full argument.  I (very) critically discuss it in what follows. The conclusion is that not only does it fail to understand the logic of a CU conception of universal, it also presupposes a rather shallow Empiricist conception of science, one in which theoretical postulates are only legitimate if directly reflected in surface diagnostics. Thus, Everett’s argument gains traction only if one mistakes Chomsky Universals (CU) for Greenberg Universals (GUs), misunderstands what kind of evidence is relevant for testing CUs and/or tacitly assumes that only GUs are theoretically legit conceptions in the context of linguistic research. In short, the argument still fails, even more completely than I thought.

Let’s give ourselves a little running room by reviewing some basic material. GUs are very different from CUs. How so?

GUs concern the surface distributional properties of the linguistic objects (LO) that are the outputs of Gs. They largely focus on the string properties of these LOs.  Thus, one looks for GUs by, for example, looking at surface distributions cross linguistically. For example, one looks to see if languages are consistent in their directionality parameters (If ‘OP’ then ‘OV’). Or if there are patterns in the order in nominals of demonstratives, modifiers and numerals wrt the heads they modify (e.g. see here for some discussion).

CUs specify properties of the Faculty of Language (FL). FL is the name given to the mental machinery (whatever its fine structure) that outputs a grammar for L (G_L) given Primary Linguistic Data from language L (PLD_L). FL has two kinds of design features. The linguistically proprietary ones (which we now call UG principles) versus the domain general ones, which are part of FL but not specific to it. GGers  investigate the properties of FL by, first, investigating the properties of language particular Gs and second, via the Poverty of the Stimulus argument (POS). POS aims to fix the properties of FL by seeing what is needed to fill the gap between information provided about the structure of Gs in the PLD and the actual properties that Gs have. FL has whatever structure is required to get the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) from PLD_L to G_L for any L. Why any L? Because any kid can acquire any G when confronted with the appropriate PLD. 

Now on the face of it, GUs and CUs are very different kinds of things. GUs refer to the surface properties of G outputs. CUs refer to the properties of FL, which outputs Gs. CUs are ontologically more basic than GUs[1] but GUs are less abstract than CUs and hence epistemologically more available.

Despite the difference between GUs and CUs, GGers sometimes use string properties of the outputs of Gs to infer properties of the Gs that generate these LOs. So, for example, in Syntactic Structures Chomsky argues that human Gs are not restricted to simple finite state grammars because of the existence of sentences that allow non-local dependencies of the sort seen in sentences of the form ‘If S₁ then S₂’. Examples like this are diagnostic of the fact that the recursive Gs native speakers can acquire must be more powerful than simple FSGs and therefore that FL cannot be limited to Gs with just FSG rules.[2]  Nonetheless, though GUs might be useful in telling you something about CUs, the two universals are conceptually very different, and only confusion arises when they are run together.

All of this is old hat, and I am sorry for boring you. However, it is worth being clear about this when considering the hot topic of the week, recursion, and what it means in the context of GUs and CUs. Let’s recall Everett’s dilemma. Here is part 1:

1.     Chomsky claims that Merge is “a component of the faculty of language,” (i.e. that it is a Universal).[3]

2.     But if it is a universal then it should be part of the G of every language.

3.     Piraha does not contain Merge.

4.     Therefore Chomsky is wrong that Merge is a Universal.

This argument has quite a few weak spots. Let’s review them.

First, as regards the premises (1) and (2), the argument requires assuming that if something is part of FL, a CU, then it appears in every G that is a product of FL. For unless we assume this, it cannot be that the absence of Merge in Piraha is inconsistent with the conclusion that it is part of FL. But, the assumption that Merge is a CU does not imply that it is a GU. It simply implies that FL can construct Gs with that embody (recursive) Merge.[4] Recall, CUs describe the capacities of the LAD not its Gish outputs. FL can have the capacity to construct Merge containing Gs even if it can also construct Gs that aren’t Merge containing Gs. Having the capacity to do something does not entail that the capacity is always (or even ever) used. This is why a claim like Everett’s that argues from (3), the absence of Merge in the G of Piraha, does not argue against Merge as part of FL.

Second, what is the evidence that Merge is not part of Piraha’s G? Everett points to the absence of “recursive structures” in Piraha LOs (2). What are recursive structures? I am not sure, but I can hazard a guess. But before I do so, let me note that recursion is not properly a predicate of structures but of rules. It refers to rules that can take their outputs as inputs. The recursive nature of Merge can be seen from the inductive definition in (5):

5.   a. If a is a lexical item then a is a Syntactic Object (SO)

b. If a is an SO and b is an SO then Merge(a,b) is an SO

With (5) we can build bigger and bigger SOs, the recursive “trick” residing in the inductive step (5b). So rules can be recursive. Structures, however, not so much. Why? Well they don’t get bigger and bigger. They are what they are. However, GGers standardly illustrate the fact of recursion in an L by pointing to certain kinds of structures and these kinds have come to be fairly faithful diagnostics of a recursive operation underlying the illustrative structures. Here are two examples both of which have a phrase of type A embedded in another one of type A.

6.     S within an S: e.g. John thinks that Bill left in which the sentence Bill left is contained within the larger sentence John thinks that Bill left.

7.     A nominal within a nominal: e.g.  John saw a picture of a picture where the nominal a picture is contained within the larger nominal a picture of a picture.

Everett follows convention and assumes that structures of this sort are diagnostic of recursive rules. We might call them reliable witnesses (RW) for recursive rules. Thus (6)/(7) are RWs for the claim that the rule for S/nominal “expansion” can apply repeatedly (without bound) to their outputs.

Let’s say this is right. It does not imply that the absence of RWs implies the absence of recursive rules. As it is often said: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Merge may be applying even though we can find no RWs diagnostic of this fact in Piraha.

Moreover, Everett’s post notes this. As it says: “…the superficial appearance of lacking recursion does not mean that the language culd not be derived from a recursive process like Merge. And this is correct” (2-3). Yes it is. Merge is sufficient to generate the structures of Piraha. So, given this, how can we know that Piraha does not employ a Merge like operation?

So far as I can tell, the argument that it doesn’t is based on the assumption that unless one has RWs for some property X one cannot assume that X is a characteristic of G. So absent visible “recursive structures” we cannot assume that Merge obtains in the G that generates these structures. Why?  Because Merge is capable of generating unboundedly big (long and deep) structures, and we have no RWs indicating that the rule is being recursively applied. But, and this I really don’t get; the fact that Merge could be used to generate “recursive structures” does not imply that in any given G it must so apply. So how exactly does the absence of RWs for recursive rule application in Piraha (note, I am here tentatively conceding that Everett’s factual claims might be right (which is likely incorrect, for they are likely wrong)) show that Merge is not part of a Piraha G? Maybe Piraha Gs can generate unboundedly large phrases but then applies some filters to the outputs to limit what surfaces overtly (this in fact appears to be Everett’s analysis).[5] In this sort of scenario, the Merge rule is recursive and can generate unboundedly large SOs but the interfaces (to use minimalist jargon) filters these out preventing the generated structures from converging. On this scenario, Piraha Gs are like English or Braizilain Portuguese or … Gs, but for the filters.

Now, I am not saying that this is correct. I really don’t know and I leave the relevant discussions to those that do.[6] But, it seems reasonable and if this is indeed what the right G analysis for Piraha is, then it too contains a recursive rule (aka, Merge) though because of the filters it does not generate RWs (i.e. the whole Piraha G does not output “recursive structures”).

Everett’s post rejects this kind of retort. Why? Because such “universals cannot be seen, except by the appropriate theoretician” (4). In other words, they are not surface visible, in contrast to GUs, which are. So, the claim is that unless you have a RW for a rule/operation/process you cannot postulate that rule/operation/process exists within that G. So, absence of positive evidence for (recursive) Merge within Piraha is evidence against (recursive) Merge being part of Piraha G. That’s the argument. The question is why anyone should accept this principle?

More exactly, why in the case of studying Gs should we assume that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, rather than, for example, evidence that more than Merge is involved is yielding the surface patterns attested. This is what we do in any other domain of inquiry. The fact that planes fly does not mean that we throw out gravity. The fact that balls stop rolling does not mean that we dumb inertia, the fact that there are complex living systems does not mean that entropy doesn’t exist. So why should the absence of RWs for recursive Merge in Piraha imply that Piraha does not contain Merge as an operation?

In fact, there is a good argument that it does. It is that many many other Gs have  RWs for recursive Merge (a point that Everett accepts). So, why not assume that Piraha Gs do too? This is surely the simplest conclusion (viz. that Piraha Gs are just like other Gs fundamentally) if it is possible to make this assumption and still “capture” the data that Everett notes.  The argument must be that this kind of reply is somehow illicit. What could license the conclusion that it is?

I can only think of one: that universals just are summaries of surface patterns. If so, then  without  surface patterns that are RWs for recursion in a given G means that there are no recursive rules in that G for there is nothing to “summarize.” All G generalizations must be surface “true.” The assumption is that it is scientifically illicit to postulate some operation/principle/process whose surface effects are “hidden” by other processes. The problem then with considering a theory according to which Merge applies in Piraha but its effects are blocked so that there are no RW-like “recursive structures” to reliably diagnose that it is there is that such an assumption is unscientific!

Note that this methodological principle applied in the real sciences would be considered laughable. Most of 19^th century astronomy was dedicated to showing that gravitation regulates planetary motion despite the fact that planets do not appear to move in accord with the inverse square law. The assumption was made that some other mass was present and it was responsible for the deviant appearances. That’s how we discovered Neptune (see here for a great discussion). So unless one is a methodological dualist, there is little reason to accept Everett’s presupposed methodological principle.

It is worth noting that an Empiricist is likely to endorse this kind of methodological principle and be attracted to a Greenberg conception of universals. If universals are just summaries of surface patterns then absent the pattern there is no universal at play.

Importantly, adopting this principle runs against all of modern GG, not just the most recent minimalist bit. Scratch any linguist and s/he will note that you can learn a lot about language A by studying language B. In particular, modern comparative linguistics within GG assumes this as a basic operating principle. It is based on the idea that Gs are largely similar and that what is hard to see within the G of language A might be pretty easy to observe in that of language B. This, for example, is why we often conclude that Irish complementizer agreement tells us something about how WH movement operates in English, despite there being very little (no?) overt evidence for C to C movement in English. Everett’s arguments presuppose that all of this reasoning is fallacious. His is not merely an argument against Merge, but a broadside on virtually all of the cross-linguistic work within GG for the last 30+ years.

Thankfully, the argument is really bad. It either rests on a confusion between GUs and CUs or rests on bogus (dualist) methodological principles. Before ending, however, one more point.

Everett likes to say that a CU conception of universals is unfalsifiable. In particular, that a CU view of universals robs these universals of any “predictive power” (5). But this too is false.  Let’s go back to Piraha.

Say you take recursion to be a property of FL then what would you conclude if you ran into speakers that spoke a language without RWs for that universal? You would conclude that they could learn a language where that universal has clear overt RWs. So, assume (again only for the sake of discussion) that you find a Piraha speaker sans recursive G. Assuming that recursion is part of FL you predict that such speakers could acquire Gs that are clearly recursive. In other words, you would predict that Piraha kids would acquire, to take an example at random, Brazilian Portuguese just like non-Piraha kids do. And, as we know, they do! So, taking recursion to be a property of FL makes a prediction about the kinds of Gs LADs can/do acquire. And these predictions seem to be correct. So, postulating CUs does have empirical consequences and it does make predictions, it’s just that it does not make predictions about whether CUs will be surface visible in every L (i.e. provide RWs in every L) and there is no good reason that they should.

Everett complains in this post that people reject his arguments because they confuse GUs and CUs and that this is incorrect (i.e. they don’t make this confusion). However, it is clear that there is lots of other confusion and lots of methodological dualism and lots of failure to recognize the kinds of “predictions” a CU based understanding of universals does make. Both prongs of the dilemma that the argument against CUs rests on collapse on pretty cursory inspection. There is no there there.

Let me end with one more observation, one I have made before. That recursion is part of FL is not reasonably debatable. What kind of recursion there is, and how it operates is very debatable. The fact is not debatable because it is easy to see its effects all around you. It’s what Chomsky called linguistic productivity (LP). LP, as Chomsky has noted repeatedly, requires that linguistic competence involve knowledge of a G with recursive rules. Moreover, that any child can acquire any language implies that every child comes equipped to the language acquisition task with the capacity to acquire a recursive G. This means that the capacity to acquire a recursive G (i.e. to have an operation like Merge) must be part of every human FL.  This is a near truism and, as Chomsky (and many others, including moi) have endlessly repeated, it is not really contestable. But there is a lot that is contestable. What kind of rules/operations do Gs contain (e.g. FSGs, PSGs, TGs, MPs?)? Are these rules/operations linguistically proprietary (i.e. part of UG or not?)? How do Gs interact with other cognitive systems, etc.? These are all very hard and interesting empirical questions which are and should be vigorously debated (and believe me, they are). The real problem with Everett’s criticism is that it has wasted a lot of time by confusing the trivial issues with the substantive ones. That’s the real problem with the Piraha “debate.” It’s been a complete waste of time.

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[1] By this I mean that whereas you are contingently a speaker of English and English is contingently SVO it is biologically necessary that you are equipped with an FL. So, Norbert is only accidentally a speaker of English (and so has a G_English) and it is only contingently the case that English is SVO (it could have been SOV as it once was). But it is biologically necessary that I have an FL. In this sense it is more basic.

[2] Actually, they are diagnostic on the assumption that they depict one instance of an unbounded number of sentences of the same type. If one only allows finite substitutions in the S positions then a more modest FSG can do the required work.

[3] Quote from 202 Science paper with Fitch and Hauser.

[4] I henceforth drop the bracketed modifier.

[5] Thanks to Alec Marantz for bringing this to my attention.

[6] This point has already been made By Nevins, Pesestsky and Rodrigues in their excellent paper.

The Tom Bartlett puzzle

Tom Bartlett (TB) is fascinated by Chomsky, but in a very strange way. TB has written about him in the Chronicle twice (here1 and here2). Both times he has misrepresented the intellectual issues at hand. Both times, IMO, he has failed to be a useful popularizer of scientific/intellectual matters. Given how important I believe good popularization to be, I want to spend some time going over TB’s two papers and show how they get things wrong.  After doing this I will speculate as to why TB seems so consistently off the mark and whether there is anything that can be done about this. Here goes.

As you might know, Chomsky is by any standards an intellectual. He has made important (I would say revolutionary) contributions to linguistics, cognitive science and philosophy. He has also written extensively on political/historical themes and has vigorously criticized Western media and academics for their coverage of these issues. He is well known both within academics and without, being one of the world’s foremost public intellectuals. This dual status, scientist and social critic, fascinates TB.

Nor is TB alone. Many have wondered about the relation between Chomsky the linguist/scientist and Chomsky the public intellectual. TB dates this fascination to a Paul Robinson review in the NYT in 1979 that first introduced “the Chomsky problem” (TCP) (here2:1). Robinson describes TCP as follows: it is “the problem of an opinionated historian inhabiting the same skin as the brilliant and subtle linguist.” 

Off hand, it is hard to see how this is any more a problem than the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time. After all, why should indulging in either enterprise preclude doing the other?  True, this is not that common nowadays given our obsession with specialization and the technical demands that many disciplines place on their practitioners, but it is hardly unheard of, especially among quite talented people (of which all agree Chomsky should be included). Newton wrote on Physics, mathematics, theology and alchemy (more pages on the last two than the first two). He also ran the government mint. Descartes also wrote on many topics, as did Hume and Leibniz.  In the modern period, Russell and Einstein were known to discourse on a wide variety of subject matters as well beside their particular domains of technical expertise. So, the capacity to break out of one’s zone of specialization is hardly unheard of.  So what’s the problem?

So far as I can tell it is not that Chomsky does more than one thing, but that his views seem to be very influential in more than one domain, domains that bridge the two cultures divide moreover. His technical writings in linguistics, cog sci and philosophy are very widely read, as are his more popular political works. In other words, he seems to be a recognized expert in many domains and this both raises admiration and suspicion (especially, I would guess, among those whose work he critically discusses). At the very least, identifying this as a “problem” suggests that there is something slightly illicit going on. Indeed, the quote that TB takes from Robinson’s NYT piece suggests what the problem is. Recall the quote: it is “the problem of an opinionated historian inhabiting the same skin as the brilliant and subtle linguist” (here2:1). The quote contrasts “opinionated” with “brilliant and subtle” (the natural reading I think). The clear implication is that qua historian Chomsky is neither subtle nor brilliant, just opinionated.[1] Thus the problem is how someone so gifted in one domain can be so ham-handed in the other.[2]

Now, it is not my intention to go into Chomsky’s politics. This is not FoL’s remit and I so I won’t go there here.  However, I am interested in the logic of the TCP, because only by clarifying its logic we will understand why people like TB cover GG the way that they do and why this coverage is both misleading and, IMO, worse than worthless. So what’s the logic?

TB refocuses the discussion by permuting “the Chomsky problem” into “the Chomsky puzzle.” What’s the puzzle? How does celebrity (or “the crime of charisma” (here2:8)) affect the dissemination of scientific/intellectual ideas? Or, to put this another way, how do Chomsky’s writings in two disparate domains (linguistics and politics) function to make his ideas in both more influential than they should be in either? TB quotes the execrable Wolfe piece (see here) to make clear what he takes the puzzle/problem of the “celebrity scientist” to be. Here is the Wolfe quote that TB uses to frame the discussion (here2:2):[3]

Chomsky’s politics enhanced his reputation as a great linguist, and his reputation as a great linguist enhanced his reputation as a political solon, and his reputation as a political solon inflated his reputation from great linguist to all-around genius, and the genius inflated the solon into a veritable Voltaire, and the veritable Voltaire inflated the genius of all geniuses into a philosophical giant ... Noam Chomsky.

So, the problem is the illicit advancement of questionable ideas in domain B in virtue of substantial kudos arising from authoring popular/influential ideas in domain A.

This dynamic is hardly limited to Chomsky. But the problem/puzzle is particularly poignant TB suggests in the Chomsky case because of the vicious/virtuous circle of mutually reinforcing influence and the inflated reputational gravitas that emerges. The problem then is one in which size matters: Chomsky’s trading in these two reputation markets has made him the Warren Buffet of intellectual capital and that creates a potential problem as it serves to crowd out ideas that are not his.  TB (and Wolfe) sees this as a problem.

Now, I concede that were this so, then it could be a problem. I for one often get upset when “experts” in one domain pontificate as “experts” in others. And I do consider it an important responsibility of intellectuals to carefully demarcate when they are basing their views on expert knowledge and when they are not. In a scientistic age, like the one we live in, this is something that scientists should be very careful about.[4]  However, making such a charge stick requires quite a bit of work and TB does none of it (nor do Wolfe nor Knight (who I will return to)). What kind of work?

Well let’s consider some possible reasons for why some idea might gain great influence. One important route to prominence is that the ideas possess a large dose of truth and make sense of deep and interesting questions. So, Newton and Galileo’s ideas gained purchase because they were largely right. Ditto for Einstein and Bohr. The influence of these ideas was legit because they were largely right. And these ideas were, happily, very influential. There is no Newton/Einstein/Bohr problem/puzzle for we attribute the notoriety/influence of their ideas to the fact that they were largely accurate. This suggests that one ingredient of an “X problem” is that the ideas are more influential than they should be.  So, to demonstrate that there is a Chomsky problem/puzzle we first must show that those ideas of Chomsky’s that are widespread do not deserve to be so widespread and that their influence can only be attributed to the illicit mixing of different spheres which had they been kept separate would have mitigated the reach of these false though influential ideas. In other words, in order to have a problem/puzzle we must show that a position is popular because of the blinding charisma of the person advocating it rather than its truth.

If this is correct, then it is also clear what anyone interested in the Chomsky problem/puzzle must do: the Chomsky critic must first demonstrate that the influential ideas are false (or trivial or uninteresting). For unless this is demonstrated it is always possible that the ideas are deservedly influential and then we don’t have a problem/puzzle to explain. One might therefore expect that Chomsky puzzlers would spend a lot of time arguing (and arguing is quite different from asserting) that the Chomsky ideas they are upset with are false or boring or trivial. Moreover, one might expect these puzzlers to obey some argumentative ground rules: Any decent criticism requires criticizing what someone actually says, not what you want her/him to say and any decent criticism requires offering the best interpretation of someone’s ideas (exercise what philosophers like to call the principle of charity).

But if you expected this of Chomsky puzzlers you would be sorely disappointed. TB for one has consistently failed to do either. He has twice covered the Chomsky-Everett “debate” and has twice failed to even remotely convey the fact that Everett’s empirical claims even if completely accurate are logically incapable of upending Chomsky’s views for the simple reason that whether or not Piraha has recursion in no way bears on the question of whether or not the faculty of language (FL) does, which, as Chomsky makes clear, is what he is arguing for.

I want to emphasize this: one cannot beat Chomsky over the head with Everett’s putative results if his results in no way bear on Chomsky’s claims. And if this is so, then discussing whether or not Everett is actually correct concerning the G of Piraha distorts the discussion. How so? Well focusing on whether Everett is right about Piraha serves to distract attention from the fact that whether he is right or not is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, viz. whether recursion is a basic feature of FL/UG. So, not only are TB’s pieces uninformative, they actually leaves anyone who reads them with less appreciation of the basic issues at stake. The issue TB worries to death is whether Everett is right about Piraha. But the issue that everyone cares about is whether Chomsky is right about recursion being part of FL. As Everett’s claims in no way bear on Chomsky’s, pretending that they do distorts the intellectual landscape.

Now, you might object, Chomsky has been obscure in making this logical point. But you would be wrong. In fact, TB’s pieces are replete with quotes from Chomsky and his papers in which he makes it absolutely clear that for him recursion is a feature of FL, the capacity for language. Here is TB quoting from Chomsky in the 2002 Science paper (my bold, NH):

“In particular, animal communication systems lack the rich expressive and open-ended power of human language (based on humans' capacity for recursion)," the authors wrote. Elsewhere in the paper, the authors wrote that the faculty of human language "at minimum" contains recursion. They also deemed it the "only uniquely human component of the faculty of language.” (here1:3)

Here is a quote from Chomsky in which he makes the point, via an analogy with bipedalism, that he is interested in the capacity not the output of that capacity.

"To take an analogy, if a tribe were found where people don’t stand upright, though of course they could, that would tell us nothing about human bipedalism." (Here2:4)

Note that Chomsky repeatedly says very explicitly that the notion he is interested in is a feature of the FL, the faculty of language, and as a result the observation that some particular language (e.g. Piraha) fails to incorporate recursion in its particular G is not relevant to the claim that humans have the capacity for recursion (anymore than some persons never walking is evidence that humans are not bipedal).  In fact, we know that Piraha speaker FLs do contain the capacity for recursion as they can acquire Gs that are indisputably recursive. So, not only is the inference from lack of recursion in Piraha G to lack of recursion in FL (UG) illogical, the more general contention that Piraha FLs are not recursive is simply false. The upshot is that nothing Everett has to say about Piraha bears on his criticism of Chomsky’s views of recursion or Universal Grammar. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Bubkis. Gar nicht. Rien. Zero.

This is the central point about the alleged debate over recursion and it is one that TB repeatedly obfuscates. He spends lots of time reviewing claims concerning whether Piraha Gs are recursive. He reports Everett’s claims and notes that Nevins, Pesetsky and Rodrigues have made counter claims (which I would put good money on are correct, btw) and Gibson’s (an Everett co-author) claims that there is not yet sufficient evidence to decide. He also carefully follows the gossip surrounding the “debate” and ruminates at length about what could make linguists so contentious and so “fierce” (here2:4).[5] He considers Chomsky’s status in the discipline and muses over the “problem of a field in which the forceful personality of its founder and the field itself grew upward together and became deeply entwined” (here2:9). However, all of this musing is effectively little more than gossip mongering bereft of any intellectual value or potential insight given that it is entirely based on the premise that Chomsky’s outsized influence is due not to the correctness of his views but to some structural defect of the discipline or some illicit charisma that Chomsky possesses. And as the only evidence even tentatively proffered for the falsity of Chomsky’s main views concerning the recursive nature of FL are Everett’s “findings” the fact that his findings are irrelevant make the whole discussion completely worthless. The sad fact is that TB’s two articles are poster children for really bad science journalism. They not only fail to illuminate the issues (which frankly are easy for a lay person to understand if outlined) but they make them more confusing than they were before TB got his hands on them. As a science journalist TB’s efforts are a failure (meets roughly National Inquirer standards) and the Chronicle, if it cares about accurate enlightening reporting, should consider putting someone else on the beat.

If all of this is right then we have no current reason for thinking that there is a Chomsky problem/puzzle for the critics and musers like Wolfe and TB have not even begun to show that Chomsky’s most influential ideas are illicitly influential. Nor, will they ever be able to do so for the ideas that they criticize Chomsky for holding are almost certainly correct. Let me very briefly explain.

As I have repeatedly argued in detail (e.g. here), it’s morally certain that FL and UG exist and that recursion is a feature of FL. Why? Because the existence of FL with UG features, one of which is recursion, is based on three very simple easily observable facts:

1.     Species specificity: Nothing talks like humans talk, not even sorta kinda.

2.     Linguistic creativity: “a mature native speaker can produce a new sentence on the appropriate occasion, and other speakers can understand it immediately, though it is equally new to them’ (Chomsky, Current Issues: 7). In other words, a native speaker of a given L has command over a discrete (and for all practical and theoretical purposes) infinity of differently interpreted linguistic expressions.

3.     Plato’s Problem: Any human child can acquire any language with native proficiency if placed in the appropriate speech community.

These three simple observable facts support Chomsky’s basic claim that humans have a species specific capacity to acquire Gs that are recursive. As I’ve noted before, that an FL with such properties exists in humans is not really open to debate. What is debatable is the fine detail of Gs, FL and UG, and these details have been endlessly debated. As regards details, Chomsky’s views have not been uncritically accepted. In fact, I think it is fair to say that most of his specific proposals have been extremely controversial within linguistics even if the conclusion that humans as such have FLs with UG touches capable of acquiring recursive Gs is not.  TB, and many others, seem to have difficulty distinguishing two different questions: (i) whether there exists a UGish FL and (ii) what specific structure a UGish FL contains. That such an FL exists is trivially true. What it’s fine structure is, well that is highly contentious, and rightly so.

So to return to the main point: why are Chomsky’s central claims so influential? Because they correctly identify a worthwhile project and outline the form of a reasonable solution. He has basically stated an interesting problem correctly. We don’t need magical charisma or theological attraction to explain why so many find these particular views attractive. Indeed, IMO, the problem is to explain how anyone could deny these conclusions given the truisms on which they are based.

So what are we left with? There is no Chomsky problem/puzzle. But there is a TB puzzle. It is the following: How come so many people find it hard to understand what Chomsky’s point is and why do they find his conclusions drawn from truisms so contentious?  Damn if I know. But let me speculate.

Here is some personal gossip: I spent several hours with both TB and Knight (the other author TB reviews in Here2) explaining these issues. I am pretty sure that there was a point where they understood what I was saying. However, they still wrote junk. Why? Let me discuss Knight and TB in turn.

As regards Knight, I cannot say that I finished his book. He, like Wolfe, knows nothing about modern GG and so his scathing criticisms are silly (though TB, not surprisingly, finds it a “compelling read” (here2:6)). His book is a psycho babble thesis to the effect that modern formal linguistics and the many distinctions Chomsky has made (e.g. competence vs performance) all stem from Chomsky’s trying to reconcile his acceptance of military money to do basic GG research in the 60s and 70s with his abhorrence of the US war machine and the US invasion and destruction of Vietnam.  To resolve this cognitive dissonance (i.e. taking the money and hating the war/military), Chomsky developed his view that the study of language concerns not how language is actually used (performance) but how language is possible at all (competence). That’s Knight’s story. IMO, it is dumb. But even if correct, it says nothing whatsoever about whether the distinctions Chomsky came up with to resolve his cognitive strain are true, useful, and insightful. How ideas arise in someone’s mind tells us nothing about whether these ideas are worthwhile and true. However, Knight’s story is that all of modern GG rests on Chomsky’s mental strain from trying to reconcile these two conflicting parts of his persona and therefore modern GG is just a convoluted messy intellectual hash. That’s the story and it is not worth a minute of your time. The story is laced with tendentious criticisms of the current GG enterprise, but as Knight knows absolutely nothing about any of the technical work it is impossible to take seriously. Even if GG were rotten to the core, Knight could not possibly know that it is.[6] He just doesn’t know enough to know.  BTW, I know that he knows nothing, for, to repeat, I talked to him for about 2-3 hours (over coffee in Bethesda).

Now TB: I spent about an hour on the phone with him discussing the Wolfe piece. I really wanted him to zero in on the point that the Everett criticism was irrelevant even if everything Everett claimed was correct. I believe that TB understood this point. However, here2 does not reflect this. Why not? Because if he were to write this the rest of the article would be pointless. Recall, there is no Chomsky problem/puzzle if Chomsky is basically right. So, in order to discuss the gossipy crap it is necessary for TB to make it (at least) seem like the Chomsky-Everett debate is a real one. TB does this by concentrating on claims and counter-claims about whether Everett has made his case concerning recursion in Piraha G. The conceit that TB develops is that the GG enterprise and Chomsky’s views stand or fall on whether Piraha has recursion, and that this is still an open question in that all the relevant data has not yet come in.[7] But this, to repeat, is deeply misleading and (I say this knowing that it is a serious charge) deeply dishonest. TB knows better for we spent over an hour discussing it and he got the point. Indeed, he repeated it to me endlessly. But if this is the main point and TB constantly obscures it by focusing on the accuracy of Everett’s claims about Piraha, I can only conclude that this is not a point that TB wishes to clarify. Why not? Because the rest of the piece would have been silly if indeed Everett and Piraha are irrelevant to the Chomsky-GG enterprise. There would have been a story here, but a boring one: how magazines catering to the smart set hijacked simple minded logical errors to generate gossip about a famous person. Should sound familiar. These kinds of magazines already exist though the smart set shies away from them when encountered at the checkout line (they tend not to appear at Whole Foods).  And that’s the solution to the TB problem, I believe: nothing, certainly not logic or ethics, should stand in the way of a good gossipy story that will garner a high brow readership.

I am pretty sure I know how TB will respond to this charge. He will say that his piece annoyed both me and Everett and so it cannot be so bad. But this is false. The problem with TB’s reporting is that it sacrifices ideas for entertainment. It is not intended to enlighten but to titillate, to generate hits, to purvey gossip and to speculate about the mental state and character of individuals. It is misinformed, unenlightening and deeply dishonest. 

Near the start of here2, TB asks of Wolfe’s piece whether what he does is “any way to treat arguably the most important intellectual alive” (here2:2). That is the wrong question. The right one is whether anyone deserves this kind of treatment. The goal of science popularization and science journalism is to educate the non-expert in interesting new ideas. On this measure, TB and the Chronicle have failed. His writing obfuscates the issues and revels in the gossip and shallow exploration of personalities. The Chronicle together and Harper’s are purveyors of infotainment. The “thinking” person’s People magazine. What a waste.

Let me end with the hardest question: what can we do about this? I suspect not much. I would urge everyone who can to discuss how junky this stuff is at every opportunity. People will ask and you should clearly state how stupid the Wolfe, TB, Knight stuff is.  Not wrong, stupid!  Second, especially talk to fellow academics. They are the prime audience for this sort of junk. But otherwise, I suspect we cannot do a whole lot. Chomsky sells. He does GG. So discrediting his views on GG will sell.

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[1] For a prize of nothing, guess which academic discipline Robinson inhabits. Hint: some now call it ‘herstory.’

[2] As I note below, this is not exactly the puzzle TB addresses, but it helps to start here, as TB himself does in here2.

[3] TB describes this as Wolfe’s “crack at explaining” Chomsky’s “bifurcated persona” (here2:1). But this is clearly incorrect. There is no explanation of any “persona” here. Rather it describes a social dynamic of illicit intellectual influence peddling.

[4] I should add that I don’t believe that Chomsky does this. He does not use his expertise in linguistics to leverage his political views. In fact, so far as I can tell, with the exception of noting how the agentless passive often creeps into political discourse there is nothing remotely “linguistic” about Chomsky’s political writing.

[5] I have a personal bone to pick with TB. He mentions my “predictably” scathing comments on Wolfe’s Harper’s piece noting that I refer to it as sludge. However, TB never mentions why I take it to be sludge, rather than, say, simply common place recycled junk. I argued that what makes Wolfe’s piece particularly heinous is the garbage tone of his comments about Chomsky the person. IMO, Wolfe’s tropes border on the anti-semitic, and so not only is his piece factually and logically ignorant (based as they are on yet another misunderstanding of the irrelevance of Everett’s findings), it is also a disgusting form of character assassination. I should add that TB seems to find that Wolfe’s “barreling narrative” is full of “patented Wolfeian exuberance” though it “does breeze past a few niceties.” TB clearly enjoys this crap (as does the NYT reviewer here). and is far more sympathetic to Wolfe’s take on events than those of the “fierce” members of Chomsky’s “truth squad” (Wolfe’s term quoted by TB) who, are clearly sour party poopers if not unthinking acolytes of a Chomskian godhead. Sheesh! Who would have guessed that being interested in getting the facts and argument right could be seen as a vice. Of course, for Wolfe (and, IMO, TB as well) it probably is if it stands in the way of an entertaining story.

[6] The same holds for Wolfe, who (in here2:9) “ acknowledges that he’s no expert.” TB quites as him as follows: “I don’t know enough about linguistics to make a judgment myself and claim any validity.” Were only such modesty more evident on the page! At any rate, this self judgment is completely accurate.

[7] Curiously, it seems that Everett now seems to think he has not yet done shown that Piraha Gs have no recursion. At least Gibson doesn’t think so if TB quotes him accurately. Note that if this is correct it really is impossible to see what the fuss is about even on Everett’s and TB’s own terms, which, to repeat, are, logically speaking, the wrong way of understanding the issues. On their terms the issue should go away unless it can be conclusively shown that Piraha has no recursion. But they have not shown this. The conclusion is obvious: no there there squared! Even if accurate it irrelevant and thre no reason to yet think that it accurate. Shoddy, shoddy, shoddy.