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Absolutely love this guy!
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 7:25 pm    Post subject: Absolutely love this guy! Reply with quote

Steven Pinker - great popular books. Interesting scholarly works too.

Discuss!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-B_ONJIEcE
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 11:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Never heard of him. I can't get youtube so I looked him up on Wikipedia. Fascinating. Gotta get one of his books.
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Shroob



Joined: 02 Aug 2010
Posts: 1339

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 11:35 pm    Post subject: Re: Absolutely love this guy! Reply with quote

Sashadroogie wrote:
Steven Pinker - great popular books. Interesting scholarly works too.

Discuss!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-B_ONJIEcE


An interesting video, I could only watch the first 10 minutes due to other commitments but I've downloaded it and will watch it all later. I've also just finished, 'The Language Instinct' (a number of themes are shared between the book and the Youtube video) and found that to be interesting.

Are there any books you'd recommend to novice linguists?
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Blingcosa



Joined: 17 May 2008
Posts: 146
Location: Guangdong

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 4:52 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:

Never heard of him. I can't get youtube so I looked him up on Wikipedia. Fascinating. Gotta get one of his books.


Are you in China, John? You can watch him on YouKu.

Yes, interesting
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 5:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Other books for novice linguisits? Anything by David Crystal, though again, he runs the gamut of pop science to fairly heavy-duty tomes. Great prose style too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Crystal
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johntpartee



Joined: 02 Mar 2010
Posts: 3258

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 7:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bill Bryson. "The Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way"

THE greatest book ever written about our bizarre, convoluted language.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 7:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Urrrgggghhhhhh!!! Hate, hate, hate this guy! Most over-rated hack on the planet. Gets top-prize for 'statements of the most obvious kind', however.

Fooooooo!!!
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coledavis



Joined: 21 Jun 2003
Posts: 1838

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 8:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, Chomsky is much more over-rated. His demonstrably false bilge is hyped up by your pal Pinker. Read B.F. Skinner; to use the American phrase, he rocks.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Skinner was a visionary, and highly original, I think. But most of his behaviourist ideas' linguistic applications have been largely discredited.
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HLJHLJ



Joined: 06 Oct 2009
Posts: 1218
Location: Ecuador

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Have you ever read Skinner's novel Walden Two? I found his idea of Utopia to be pretty eye opening. It very much changed the way I see him.

Also, has anyone ever seen Pinker in a debate? I am a fan of his books, and saw him once, but he was terrible. He was rude and arrogant, he didn't answer the questions and wouldn't let others speak and then ridiculed them for not answering. I was pretty shocked by his behaviour. It was a long time ago now but it stuck with me. I've always wondered if that's his typical style in debates or if I just caught him on a bad day.
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coledavis



Joined: 21 Jun 2003
Posts: 1838

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 10:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sashadroogie wrote:
Skinner was a visionary, and highly original, I think. But most of his behaviourist ideas' linguistic applications have been largely discredited.

To the contrary, recent observational research of children acquiring speech are much more supportive of Skinner's idea of cumulative behaviour related to language learning than to the LAD (language acquisition device) type theories of Chomsky and other cognitive theorists. One example is that when a young child does not know a particular grammatical form he or she is likely to apply a grammatical form based logically on what has been learned, rather than from any inherent understanding. Looking from the other end of the telescope, I have always found LAD theories hopelessly inadequate when it comes to babies of one racial type being brought up in different countries.

The idea that Chomsky has superceded Skinner is a meme rather than something based on hard experience. In my opinion.

I have read Walden Two although it was a long time ago.

About Pinker's books being popular. We have a problem that some theories are popular but not good, others are good but not popular. E.g. theories of intelligence: people want to believe in multiple intelligences (Gardner) - apart from anything else, teachers can tell some of their charges that they have a great sporting intelligence if nothing else - while 'G' that most old-fashioned of intelligence formats, is still robust as are the also rather boring but rather more operationally useful measures involving verbal, numerical and visual abilities.

Similarly, which theories lead to usable methods - for better or worse - in advertising and ways of influencing people? I put it to you that Freud and Jung come almost nowhere whilst methods based on Skinner's work and that of his predecessors (Watson and Pavlov) work in many forms.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cole, I think you have been reading some strange books. Chomsky does not say that a particular language has been 'hard-wired' in the brain - only the ability to learn a language, i.e. any language. So babies of any ethnic background will have the mental machinery to learn any language from any other ethnic group.

Skinner's ideas about behaviourism and language learning and their being overturned is more than a cultural meme, I'm afraid. Whatever else about his work as regards other disciplines.
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coledavis



Joined: 21 Jun 2003
Posts: 1838

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nope, your ideas of Skinner being outdated are themselves outdated.
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Sashadroogie



Joined: 17 Apr 2007
Posts: 11061
Location: Moskva, The Workers' Paradise

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Which interviews are these HLJHLJ? I'd be curious to see them. Not that I doubt your word - I just genuinely have not seem him behave that way before, (though I am sure he could do so). He seems alright for most of this interview, for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjJAwbc5IaE

Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, seems to fit your description more.
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HLJHLJ



Joined: 06 Oct 2009
Posts: 1218
Location: Ecuador

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 1:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It wasn't an interview, it was a chaired panel debate in London, probably at the Royal Society, but I wouldn't swear to that. It would have been around 2006/2007, possibly earlier, and there were 2 or 3 other speakers. I don't remember who they were, so they probably weren't particularly well known. It definitely wasn't Hitchens, I'd remember if I'd seen him!
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