Language genes

[Anuradha Chepur]

It sounds like an example of the "special pleading fallacy" to me.

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I’m afraid it isn’t.

The theory isn’t being evasive and accounts for idioms by saying idioms are memorized and stored as single units just as words are, which means they are merged into the derivation as single units just as words are. All of us know how idiosyncratic idioms are. They are stored in the lexicon along with their idiosyncrasies which is outside syntax. Infact there is no case for pleading fallacy.

[fluffyhamster]

I don't know how many here on Dave's are really that interested in Chomskyan linguistics - the problem is that it's never really been made to seem of absolutely crucial relevance to language teachers (many of whom teach ESL or EFL to boot).

[Anuradha Chepur]

I don't know how many here on Dave's are really that interested in Chomskyan linguistics - the problem is that it's never really been made to seem of absolutely crucial relevance to language teachers (many of whom teach ESL or EFL to boot).

Well, I myself don’t know if anyone at all on Dave’s is into Chomskyan stuff, but I also don’t know why Chomsky figures on threads.

Relevance to esl/efl? Yes and no. But is it all only about relevance? I think it’s a passion for language and related genres that initiates one into linguistics. I think most of us are here answering queries of learners only out of passion for the profession and the subject, and for some intellectual exchange of views. Curiosity. A person who deals in language might be curious as to how the hell it all works.

Relevance? Chomsky himself is modest in admitting that linguistic sciences are irrelevant and impractical for purposes of teaching. Regarding the difficulty in teaching target language to adults, Chomsky says “Use your common sense and use your experience and don’t listen too much to the scientists, unless you find that what they say is really of practical value and of assistance in understanding the problems you face, as sometimes it truly is”. Chomsky makes it explicit that those involved in teaching language should not take the sciences seriously, and he feels the ability to teach without much conscious awareness of what is being done is usually far more advanced than scientific knowledge. Modern linguistics, “are totally crazy and they may cause trouble.” He adds that modern linguistics has very little to contribute which is of practical value. “Language is not learnt. It grows in the mind. It is, thus, wrong to think that language is taught and misleading to think of it as being learnt.”

Inspite, linguistic theories are being “applied”. Chomskyan and even other models have central roles to play in computational linguistics, natural language processing, artificial intelligence. Chomskyan theories rely on native speaker’s intuitions to tell grammatical/ungrammatical sentences. In Chomskyan linguistics data are grammaticality judgements, a grammar is a description of the native speaker competence.

Theories should catch up with practice. Some recent research points to relevance. Among them, Pius ten Hacken (2002), in "Chomskyan Linguistics and the Sciences of Communication", Studies in communication Sciences 2/2:109-134, argues that Chomskyan linguistics is compatible with research in communication sciences and that the adoption of a Chomskyan perspective on language constitutes an attractive option.

M.C.Pennington in “Grammar and communication: New directions
in theory and practice” (Hinkel and Fotos, New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms) overviews Chomskyan minimalism, Brazil's incremental grammar, Clark's action grammar as alternative descriptions of English grammar to replace traditional approaches. Pennington argues that any new approach to pedagogical grammars should be collocational, constructive, contextual and contrastive.

An aside: I know of a teacher in India, who runs a language centre named after Chomsky and makes his students “acquire” English and not “learn” it.

[Andrew Patterson]

Anuradha Chepur wrote:

The theory isn’t being evasive and accounts for idioms by saying idioms are memorized and stored as single units just as words are, which means they are merged into the derivation as single units just as words are. All of us know how idiosyncratic idioms are. They are stored in the lexicon along with their idiosyncrasies which is outside syntax. Infact there is no case for pleading fallacy.

To my mind, the idea that there are either purely syntactic structures or purely single unit memorisations doesn't ring true. Remember we have collocations. And often you are not sure if something is a collocation or not. sometimes a word in a collocation is changed just slightly. Really, this is not a natural model of language, special case pleading fallacy or not.

[Anuradha Chepur]

To my mind, the idea that there are either purely syntactic structures or purely single unit memorisations doesn't ring true. Remember we have collocations. And often you are not sure if something is a collocation or not. sometimes a word in a collocation is changed just slightly. Really, this is not a natural model of language, special case pleading fallacy or not.

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[fluffyhamster]

Sorry, AC, I guess I just do not live by what Chomsky (or his keenest supporters) write. The quotes that critics such as Postal, Sampson, Wasow, Coleman etc have taken from Chomsky's works have made me rather doubt if the man is worth taking too seriously; that being said, I find the questions he's posed somewhat intriguing (even if I wonder if Chomsky himself was ever up to the task of answering them, despite the high regard in which he seems to hold himself).

[Anuradha Chepur]

But fluffy, to me, the ‘Sampsons’ who have taken upon themselves the job of policing linguists are either playing devil’s advocates (seem to be more preoccupied with the stuff than the believers and yes fanatics change neither their mind nor the subject) or trying to get some attention – the parasitic way might be easier (in that when the host is one voted as the topmost intellectual alive). Besides, major breakthroughs are often hurled by criticism of the unreasonable variety in the backdrop of traditional misconceptions. Wasn’t Galileo imprisoned when he suggested the earth is round? Darwin was caricaturized a monkey and we know why. Copernicus’s theory that the earth rotates on its axis, revolves round the sun and the universe is infinite was rejected in favour of Ptolemy’s egocentric-geocentric view that the earth is the fixed center of the universe which is a closed entity. Let’s buy or not buy the theory after taking a go at it directly and not after what racist cranks might write about it. The lack of honesty in such literature and their motive is evident from the inconsistencies in them.

It is reasonable to state that language development is part of the evolutionary process driven by genetic mutations. Evolution need not stop with the ape evolving into man. Man is evolving at his own pace and more so on the plane of intelligence, and the extraordinary abilities of the likes of child prodigies, super-intellectuals, artists are also attributed to the evolutionary process at the realm of the brain. Vinci in all probability was genetically predetermined to posses the ability to create what he did!

[Anuradha Chepur]

Human Language Evolves by Natural Selection 06/06/2002

A trio of scientists writing in the June 6 Nature believes language should be included in evolutionary theory:
Language is our legacy. It is the main evolutionary contribution of humans, and perhaps the most interesting trait that has emerged in the past 500 million years. Understanding how darwinian evolution gives rise to human language requires the integration of formal language theory, learning theory and evolutionary dynamics. Formal language theory provides a mathematical description of language and grammar. Learning theory formalizes the task of language acquisition-it can be shown that no procedure can learn an unrestricted set of languages. Universal grammar specifies the restricted set of languages learnable by the human brain. Evolutionary dynamics can be formulated to describe the cultural evolution of language and the biological evolution of universal grammar.

They feel the same evolutionary rules can be applied to language as to biology, because DNA is also a language:

Biology uses generative systems. Genomes consist of an alphabet of four nucleotides, which, together with certain rules for how to produce proteins and organize cells, generates an unlimited variety of living organisms. For more than 3 billion years, evolution of life on Earth was restricted to using this generative system. Only very recently another generative system emerged, which led to a new mode of evolution. This other system is human language. It enables us to transfer unlimited non-genetic information among individuals, and it gives rise to cultural evolution.

They propose a multidisciplinary approach to human language “to study language as a biological phenomenon, as a product of evolution.” After discussing things like Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar (UG), and exploring aspects of language from these various approaches, they list several unanswered questions about human language, and to answer them, propose combining all approaches under the aegis of evolution: “The study of language as a biological phenomenon will bring together people from many disciplines including linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, genetics, animal behaviour, evolutionary biology, neurobiology and computer science. Fortunately we have language to talk to each other.”

[Anuradha Chepur]

There is this PDF on the net: Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence. It has to be googled out.

[Andrew Patterson]

Anuradha Chepur wrote:

There is this PDF on the net: Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence. It has to be googled out.

Why does it have to be googled out? I presume you mean this link.
http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/papers/Tre ... lished.pdf

[Anuradha Chepur]

Yes, that's the link and thanks for that.

[lynnmora]

Man is evolving at his own pace and more so on the plane of intelligence, and the extraordinary abilities of the likes of child prodigies, super-intellectuals, artists are also attributed to the evolutionary process at the realm of the brain.

Intelligence has always been spotted with exceptions, I believe they've just become less. Why?

With the breakthrough of the information age, children have faced several ways to learn, but without a method to do so. Think about a boy in China, in an average family and with no computer at home. He may have access in some places, but he would just crawl and crawl without learning as he would be required.

I guess the idea for the whole thing is to try to take this FOXP2 gene research and turn it into new methodologies that can very well fit into language curriculums.

[fluffyhamster]

There are strict rules which allow only certain sequences of words and dissallow the rest. Who wrote the rules? Nobody? If nobody did it, then nature did it. We are born with the rules and the template is innate. This is the long and short of Chomskyan linguistics.

No, it's not. It's a grotesque over-simplification.

I'm revisiting this thread for its connection to the recent 'Why Everyone Should Study Linguistics' one.

The above quote may be a bit simplistic, but who doesn't like a quick tasty chicken and egg fry-up once in a while.

I suspect that the rules "wrote themselves" during the interaction, interplay and ever more effective communication in (prehuman to) human evolution (otherwise we are left with the problem, oft remarked upon, of how "something" as "complex" - and "it" would be pretty complex if "it" really were genetic - suddenly appeared, as if by an amazing mutation in the brain alone).

Chomsky could be excused if he was just trying to forumlate what those rules are nowadays (and as far back into time as the evidence will allow), like most linguists, but he is trying to rewrite human nature in every sense, which is a bit presumptuous given that he doesn't appear to concern himself much with evolution even (or maybe it should remain everyone else's task to familiarize themselves not only with his formalisms but also what should be related fields, if only the great man himself had time for it all).

[Stephen Jones]

but he is trying to rewrite human nature in every sense, which is a bit presumptuous given that he doesn't appear to concern himself much with evolution even

Do you have the least idea what you are talking about? One of the points Chomsky makes clearly is that the idea that language acquisition is innate is accepted by all evolutionists, since it manifests all the characteristics of an inherited trait.

[fluffyhamster]

Of course Chomksy is going to say that "everyone" agrees with him - it would hardly be in his interests to seriously answer his critics (or even doubting Thomases), who seem to have been growing in number and answering questions for themselves (e.g. if a sudden mutation strikes one as unlikely, and that is what Chomsky has "hypothesized" with a wave of his hand, then one is probably going to instead theorize language as having arisen through a need for more effective communication). Or it could simply be that you and I have been reading and following different "evolutionists", Stephen.