| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
|
 Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:21 am Post subject: Stephen Pinker |
 |
|
Anyone read any Stephen Pinker books?
I'm reading 'The Language Instinct' now. Very good stuff. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 6:35 am Post subject: |
|
|
Me @ the East Sea this February -- our first beach trip of the year.
I also finished The Stuff of Thought the same month; quite interesting both. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Pink Freud
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Location: Daegu
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:32 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Words and Rules
The Language Instinct
How the Mind Works
The Blank Slate
All excellent, although some material is "recycled" in several books.
Haven't been able to find The Stuff of Thought in paperback
How the Mind Works was a tough slog for the first 300 pages.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm also (slowly) working my way through. Good stuff. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nicholas_chiasson
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Location: Samcheok
|
| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:14 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Pinker is a hard-core Neo-Chomskian extremist. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
| Pinker is a hard-core Neo-Chomskian extremist. |
Not sure what this means.
Actually, he's quite critical of Chomsky's "romanticist" positions regarding human nature and his rejection of an evolutionary account of linguistic ability in humans. Maybe if you'd actually read the books...
I've read:
The Language Instinct
Words & Rules
The Stuff of Thought
The Blank Slate
I've found each to be extremely interesting, well-argued and supported. I've rethought a lot of stuff because of his work. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nicholas_chiasson
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Location: Samcheok
|
| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:21 pm Post subject: |
|
|
...Chomsky�s well-known claim (popularized by his loyal follower Steven Pinker) that grammar is innate and that humans are biologically �hard-wired� for grammar. In one of his emails, Williamson challenged this thesis with a list of ten examples of transitive and intransitive verbs that clearly failed to obey these hard-wired rules. In a footnote, Williamson reveals how intellectually taxing he found this task: �I would like to thank the girls of Hooters at the Jefferson Davis Turnpike location south of Richmond for helping me to compile this list.�
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/sept04/keith.htm
...Pinker is quite well known for his desperate efforts to keep TFG alive and kicking even though we should burry it, and the whole corpse of psycho-babble linguisitcs. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:51 am Post subject: |
|
|
Nicolas,
You overstate your case and Pinker would be on your *** as much as he splendidly was, the "language mavens" who speak such utter nonsense about language (ie. William Safire and gang...).
I"m with Woland and if you read Pinker critically he focuses on the endless adaptability of language and also its contradictory nature. It is unceasingly creative and Pinker stresses communication as oppossed to some innate "frame". He also focuses on underlying process and not "words" or their mere appearance of organization and logic......
I loved "Blank Slate" and yes, sometimes he rehashes stuff but it is always well written and interesting. The stuff of thought I found particularly good at being an "overview" of a big topic. Here is a great review of the it, if somewhat unflattering.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/review/Saletan-t.html
Take in his TED talk for some more "thoughts".
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/164
Nothing deperate about this Canadian boy who did Harvard good.....
David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:50 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
...Chomsky�s well-known claim (popularized by his loyal follower Steven Pinker) that grammar is innate and that humans are biologically �hard-wired� for grammar. In one of his emails, Williamson challenged this thesis with a list of ten examples of transitive and intransitive verbs that clearly failed to obey these hard-wired rules. In a footnote, Williamson reveals how intellectually taxing he found this task: �I would like to thank the girls of Hooters at the Jefferson Davis Turnpike location south of Richmond for helping me to compile this list.�
http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/sept04/keith.htm
...Pinker is quite well known for his desperate efforts to keep TFG alive and kicking even though we should burry it, and the whole corpse of psycho-babble linguisitcs. |
Windschuttle's characterization of Pinker as a "loyal follower" betrays the writer's own ignorance of Pinker's work. While Pinker agrees with Chomsky (and the vast majority of people working in cognitive science) on the issue of the existence of innate properties of mind, and on the existence of a distinct language module in the architecture of the mind (a position of more controversy in the field), he disagrees with him over the historical development of that module, as well as its contents. He also critiques Chomsky's ideas about the implications of innate properties of mind as romantic, as I noted above. Where he agrees with Chomsky, he does so because that's what the evidence of his own and others' work points to; where he disagrees, it is for the same reasons. Hardly a "loyal follower."
Your own reference to TFG (by which I take you to mean Transformational Generative Grammar - better TGG) suggests how out of date your own reading is. The term has not generally been used in the field in around 30 years. And in any case, Pinker's work holds no particular brief for it as a theoretical model, but argues more generally for the ideas of innatism and mental modularity (including a language module). And these are different ideas from transformational generative grammar. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
nicholas_chiasson
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Location: Samcheok
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject: |
|
|
'out of date?' I'm 23. I just happen to appreciate anti-chomsky linguistics.
However, isn't it cool to see an actual conversation about LANGUAGE on an ESL website? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
crusher_of_heads
Joined: 23 Feb 2007
Location: kimbop and kimchi for kimberly!!!!
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| I'm looking at a world map I got from a civilised country right now-where is this East Sea? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Woland
Joined: 10 May 2006
Location: Seoul
|
| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 7:26 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
'out of date?' I'm 23. I just happen to appreciate anti-chomsky linguistics.
However, isn't it cool to see an actual conversation about LANGUAGE on an ESL website? |
I don't know that it's a conversation about language, but it is an interesting topic.
I didn't say you were old, just that whatever anti-Chomskyan linguistics you are reading is referencing theoretical models that aren't current. And I've found that to be a common problem among critics of a more ideological bent - they attack positions that Chomsky no longer holds because they are flawed. Chomsky moved from them as the evidence came in.
Serious critics of Chomsky today would include Pinker, and a number of other people who agree on the ideas of innateness and modularity. But there are those who critique the idea of modularity - the whole connectionist school. Pinker has critiqued them, quite well, particularly in Words and Rules, demonstrating empirically the limitations of their models.
Perhaps the most interesting critique of the idea of innate modularity that I've heard/read recently is Michael Hoey's work in his book Lexical Priming. Hoey isn't a cognitive scientist, and I'm sure Pinker would find points in his ideas worth critiquing. At the same time, what I appreciate about Hoey is that he also attempts to steer clear of the overreaching of the connectionists by ascribing more limited outcomes to learning than they claimed. In particular, Hoey makes the claim that incompleteness is a property of all grammars, not just non-native speaker ones, a position that would put him at odds with Chomsky and the connectionists.
Most relevant for what we are talking about here is that Hoey doesn't pitch his work as anti-Chomsky or anti-connectionist, but rather as a theoretical model developed from work with data to provide an explanatory account of language learning. The critiques and responses to flaws in other theories are things that I see in it from my listening/reading (confirmed in a brief conversation with Hoey a few years back when I first saw him present this). A lot of the anti-Chomsky stuff that you see out there is deeply personalized, and that doesn't do credit to any argument. I suspect that Pinker was labeled a 'loyal follower' because his writings give Chomsky credit where he feels it is due, and criticize the work, not the man, where he feels that is due.
EDIT: Fixed some grammar glitches.
Last edited by Woland on Wed Apr 23, 2008 2:15 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:03 am Post subject: |
|
|
I think Chomsky (and also Pinker), don't reduce language to some simple format and they really leave a lot of the "mystery" in it. (unlike maybe Minsky or many language mavens who think of themselves and language as closed systems.).
| Quote: |
I suspect that Pinker was labeled a 'loyal follower' because his writings give Chomsky credit where he feels it is due, and criticizes the work, not the man, where he feels that is due. |
I think that quote says it all regarding the misconceptions.......
A book about language that isn't about language that I always recommend is "Personal Knowledge" by Michael Polyani, the lesser known Polyani brother....
DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 12:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
I'm slowly catching up with the World of Pinker.
In the first 100 pages of 'The Language Instinct', he spends a lot of time going through what *some* of us (who may or may not be posting on this thread) were recently studying at Framingham's MA program - Whorf, Sapir, Hopi, Chomsky, Innate Language/Universal Grammar, etc.
Looking forward to reading more! |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TECO
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2008 10:44 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Sounds great!
just downloaded how the mind works and blank slate. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
