|
Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Students and Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
fluffyhamster
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Posts: 3292
Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Glenski
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
Posts: 12844
Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN
|
 Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 3:04 am Post subject: |
 |
|
So much for Star Trek's universal translator.
Brain? What is "brain"?  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 2:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| "There is no such thing as universal grammar." |
Is Everett really challenging Chomsky's universal grammar, or only misconstruing it?
| Quote: |
| "The rules of language are not innate but spring from necessity and circumstance." - Daniel Everett |
Chomsky�s Universal Grammar
| Quote: |
...a set of unconscious constraints that let us decide whether a sentence is correctly formed. This mental grammar is not necessarily the same for all languages. But according to Chomskyian theorists, the process by which, in any given language, certain sentences are perceived as correct while others are not, is universal and independent of meaning.
Thus, we immediately perceive that the sentence �Robert book reads the� is not correct English, even though we have a pretty good idea of what it means. Conversely, we recognize that a sentence such as �Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.� is grammatically correct English, even though it is nonsense.
A pair of dice offers a useful metaphor to explain what Chomsky means when he refers to universal grammar as a �set of constraints�. Before we throw the pair of dice, we know that the result will be a number from 2 to 12, but nobody would take a bet on its being 3.143. Similarly, a newborn baby has the potential to speak any of a number of languages, depending on what country it is born in, but it will not just speak them any way it likes: it will adopt certain preferred, innate structures. One way to describe these structures would be that they are not things that babies and children learn, but rather things that happen to them. Just as babies naturally develop arms and not wings while they are still in the womb, once they are born they naturally learn to speak, and not to chirp or neigh.
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/capsules/outil_rouge06.html |
From The Language Instinct - by Steven Pinker
| Quote: |
By calling language an instinct, Pinker means that it is not a human invention in the sense that metalworking and even writing are. While only some human cultures possess these technologies, all cultures possess language. As further evidence for the universality of language, Pinker notes that children spontaneously invent a consistent grammatical speech (a creole) even if they grow up among a mixed-culture population speaking an informal trade pidgin with no consistent rules. Deaf babies "babble" with their hands as others normally do with voice, and spontaneously invent sign languages with true grammar rather than a crude "me Tarzan, you Jane" pointing system. Language (speech) also develops in the absence of formal instruction or active attempts by parents to correct children's grammar. These signs suggest that rather than being a human invention, language is an innate human ability. Pinker also distinguishes language from humans' general reasoning ability, emphasizing that it is not simply a mark of advanced intelligence but rather a specialized "mental module". He distinguishes the linguist's notion of grammar, such as the placement of adjectives, from formal rules such as those in the American English writing style guide. He argues that because rules like "a preposition is not a proper word to end a sentence with" must be explicitly taught, they are irrelevant to actual communication and should be ignored.
Pinker attempts to trace the outlines of the language instinct by citing his own studies of language acquisition in children, and the works of many other linguists and psychologists in multiple fields, as well as numerous examples from popular culture. He notes, for instance, that specific types of brain damage cause specific impairments of language such as Broca's aphasia or Wernicke's aphasia, that specific types of grammatical construction are especially hard to understand, and that there seems to be a critical period in childhood for language development just as there is a critical period for vision development in cats. Much of the book refers to Chomsky's concept of a universal grammar, a meta-grammar into which all human languages fit. Pinker explains that a universal grammar represents specific structures in the human brain that recognize the general rules of other humans' speech, such as whether the local language places adjectives before or after nouns, and begin a specialized and very rapid learning process not explainable as reasoning from first principles or pure logic. This learning machinery exists only during a specific critical period of childhood and is then disassembled for thrift, freeing resources in an energy-hungry brain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| But that language is a human invention to solve a human problem. Other creatures can't use it for the same reason they can't use a shovel: it was invented by humans, for humans and its success is judged by humans.http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/25/daniel-everett-human-language-piraha |
Isn't that a very dated and narrow view of language? He's obviously no pet lover. By the way, here's something that may make you reevaluate the term 'bird brain':
| Quote: |
The fork-tailed drongo is a small aggressive bird that lives in Africa. ... It has an alarm call that it uses for predators. But it emits the very same alarm call, in a false way, to trick meerkats and other bird species into thinking there is cause for concern, especially while they are feeding. As the animals scurry for cover, the food is abandoned and the drongo reaps the benefit. But like the 'boy who cried wolf', the drongo's false alarm can wear thin, so it has learned to mimic the alarm of many other species, in order to continue the deception.
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/episode/2010/11/06/november-6-2010/ |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Vanica
Joined: 31 Aug 2006
Posts: 368
Location: North Carolina
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 10:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Everett claims that the language of the Amazonian tribe he lived with does not use recursion, such as subordinate clauses.
I assume that Chomsky dismisses Everett as either racist or romanticising, but cannot say for sure since Chomsky refuses to talk/write about Everett.
Everett first went to live with the tribe in order to translate the Bible into their language and convert them, but later he was converted to their way of thinking and became an atheist. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
spiral78
Joined: 05 Apr 2004
Posts: 11534
Location: On a Short Leash
|
| Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 11:16 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Vanica, it's super to see you back  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Matt_22
Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 193
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 7:29 am Post subject: |
|
|
Chomsky doesn't back his claims with research or data. Meanwhile, leading neuroscientists in the field of language acquisition have given explanations for language and language acquisition based on the scientific method.
I'll take the latter, thanks. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 7:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Matt_22 wrote: |
Chomsky doesn't back his claims with research or data. Meanwhile, leading neuroscientists in the field of language acquisition have given explanations for language and language acquisition based on the scientific method.
I'll take the latter, thanks. |
I'm curious. What in essence are you and those neuroscientists disputing about Chomsky's claims? I'm still not seeing any argument. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Matt_22
Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 193
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
| LongShiKong wrote: |
| Matt_22 wrote: |
Chomsky doesn't back his claims with research or data. Meanwhile, leading neuroscientists in the field of language acquisition have given explanations for language and language acquisition based on the scientific method.
I'll take the latter, thanks. |
I'm curious. What in essence are you and those neuroscientists disputing about Chomsky's claims? I'm still not seeing any argument. |
I'm not disputing UG, because the beauty of Chomsky's theory is that it is not falsifiable (and it's obvious that he intends to ride the idea for all that it's worth). I just think that as time goes on, the increasing amount of research in neuroscience will provide far more useful explanations than Chomsky's theories.
Take, for example, his old theory of a "Language Acquisition Device" (which he has since abandoned). While Chomsky is stumbling over rules and parameters in theory, neuroscientists have isolated several processes that have evolved in the human brain that explain our ability to use language, including corticobasal-ganglia looping, the influence of the FOXP2 protein, and the impact of mirror neurons. There are fascinating things being discovered about language acquisition and the brain, yet many extremely intelligent people are still stuck in the past discussing UG.
These aren't my argument,s but here are just a few listed critiques of UG, taken from wikipedia no less:
Since their inception, universal grammar theories have been subjected to vocal and sustained criticism. In recent years, with the advent of more sophisticated brands of computational modeling and more innovative approaches to the study of language acquisition, these criticisms have multiplied.
Geoffrey Sampson maintains that universal grammar theories are not falsifiable and are therefore pseudoscientific theory. He argues that the grammatical "rules" linguists posit are simply post-hoc observations about existing languages, rather than predictions about what is possible in a language. Similarly, Jeffrey Elman argues that the unlearnability of languages assumed by Universal Grammar is based on a too-strict, "worst-case" model of grammar, that is not in keeping with any actual grammar. In keeping with these points, James Hurford argues that the postulate of a language acquisition device (LAD) essentially amounts to the trivial claim that languages are learnt by humans, and thus, that the LAD is less a theory than an explanandum looking for theories.[6]
Sampson, Roediger, Elman and Hurford are hardly alone in suggesting that several of the basic assumptions of Universal Grammar are unfounded. Indeed, a growing number of language acquisition researchers argue that the very idea of a strict rule-based grammar in any language flies in the face of what is known about how languages are spoken and how languages evolve over time. For instance, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater have argued that the relatively fast-changing nature of language would prevent the slower-changing genetic structures from ever catching up, undermining the possibility of a genetically hard-wired universal grammar.[7] In addition, it has been suggested that people learn about probabilistic patterns of word distributions in their language, rather than hard and fast rules (see the distributional hypothesis).[8] It has also been proposed that the poverty of the stimulus problem can be largely avoided, if we assume that children employ similarity-based generalization strategies in language learning, generalizing about the usage of new words from similar words that they already know how to use.[9]
Another way of defusing the poverty of the stimulus argument is to assume that if language learners notice the absence of classes of expressions in the input, they will hypothesize a restriction (a solution closely related to Bayesian reasoning). In a similar vein, language acquisition researcher Michael Ramscar has suggested that when children erroneously expect an ungrammatical form that then never occurs, the repeated failure of expectation serves as a form of implicit negative feedback that allows them to correct their errors over time.[10] This implies that word learning is a probabilistic, error-driven process, rather than a process of fast mapping, as many nativists assume. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Vanica
Joined: 31 Aug 2006
Posts: 368
Location: North Carolina
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| spiral78 wrote: |
| Vanica, it's super to see you back |
Nice to be back!
Anyhow, I would be extremely hesitant about Everett and his Tarzan-tainted theories. Other so-called scholars who insisted that there are "primitive" cultures that have no numbers or colours in their languages have since been disproved.
I think his transformation from Bible-bumper-thumper to atheist is interesting, but I think the people he lived with are much more important, and I believe the next generation of bilingual speakers will generally refute his research. I'm reminded of a NYTimes bestseller about Hmong in California, and a later criticism written by a daughter of one of the Hmong families who grew up in the U.S.
And if the language is so simple as he claims, why did it take him so long to learn it?
I also think people who don't care for Chomsky's political activism are excited to find someone who seemingly dismisses Chomsky's theoretical work. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
|
| Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:04 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I don't know but if someone makes a non-falsifiable claim or tries to refute one, don't you expect them to at least offer something more than "The rules of language are not innate but spring from necessity and circumstance." Pinker argues that by 3.5 most children master the 3rd person singular to 90% accuracy certainly not by necessity nor by circumstance as suggested by mistakes which sometimes follow rules but not the language itself.
I don't know but I tend to side with the foreign policy critic on this one--the brain is hardwired to generate/locate patterns/rules. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Matt_22
Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 193
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 3:43 am Post subject: |
|
|
I don't have anything against Chomsky for his politics, as I actually agree with him on a lot of issues in that arena. I don't necessarily agree with Pinker's ideas either.
I just think that UG is a lazy way of tackling a topic that especially today is so open to research and data-based science. I would say that easily the majority of leading scientists in the field of language acquisition feel the same. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:26 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I don't see an argument against Pinker and Chomsky despite advancement in neural research and AI. I've asked someone on another thread who's reading Everett's book to comment. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JZer
Joined: 16 Jan 2005
Posts: 3898
Location: Pittsburgh
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 12:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
| LongShiKong wrote: |
I don't know but if someone makes a non-falsifiable claim or tries to refute one, don't you expect them to at least offer something more than "The rules of language are not innate but spring from necessity and circumstance." Pinker argues that by 3.5 most children master the 3rd person singular to 90% accuracy certainly not by necessity nor by circumstance as suggested by mistakes which sometimes follow rules but not the language itself.
I don't know but I tend to side with the foreign policy critic on this one--the brain is hardwired to generate/locate patterns/rules. |
The answer to your question is in chapter 4 "Does Plato Have a Problem".
Everett states, "There are simply no uncontroversial results establishing either of these claims. Therefore the idea that there is a special period in which an innate language acquisition device is functioning in normal humans while interesting, is far from established truth."
One argument is that there is no proof that all children learn language equally well and there is not enough research to show that adults don't learn language equally as well if they are exposed to the same conditions in which children acquire their first language.
I do believe his second point has a lot of merit. While one may not be able to acquire a native accent as an adult there are plenty of scholars and writers for whom English is their second language and who write in English better than many native speakers.
Last edited by JZer on Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:19 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
LongShiKong
Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 1082
Location: China
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 2:55 am Post subject: |
|
|
| JZer wrote: |
I do believe his second point has a lot of merit. While one may not be able to acquire a native accent as an adult there are plenty of scholars and writers for whom English is their second language and who write in English better than many native speakers. |
True enough but if circumstance and necessity were all that was needed then wouldn't intelligent, motivated adults and children learning the language routinely surpass the native infant in acquiring it? Crying won't help them when hungry, lost or hurt. And I thought we were talking about language, not accent acquisition. What infant doesn't learn it's native language? Would ELT and this website even exist if immersion were enough?
I don't know.... but do others get the sense Everett's more interested in making money than sense? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling.
Contact Dave's ESL Cafe
Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
