If you’re trying to help StreetlightX derail your own thread you’ve pretty much succeeded. Kind of sad, but such is the nature of online forums.

Stop taking the bait? There has been four pages of hot air, and repetition dressed up as evidence. Some people just have a chip on their shoulder.

Basically you’re talking about immediate over future benefits. If not why bother? If so how far are you willing to go?

That’s your problem, and possibly mine and everyone else’s too if you have any actual influence in the world.

It’s part and parcel of the OP. I’m reasonably well versed in this area - more so in terms of the neurogenesis and the general neurological ‘mechanisms’ related to language, perception and communication.

It’s a delightful short film/interview that focuses on language (including the question of acquisition). Take it or leave it :)

I would highly recommend this both for an insight into Chomsky’s thinking and regard for linguistics and philosophy, AND because Gondry’s animations are wonderful.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cv66xFD7s7g

Put your dummy back in maybe?

In that sense it would be pretty hard to argue that when I talk about an apple and an orange, a dog and a cat, or a toilet, a shovel and a toadstool, that each iteration of ‘and’ is anything but ‘identical’.

There are several terms like this that transcend languages - the most obvious being numbers. In every language the number ‘one’ is the same number one not a different number ‘one’. That said, there is differences in each person’s lexicon and experience, so I may associate certain ‘universal terms’ like these with experiences that aren’t ‘universal’ - the meaning, in the purest sense of the term, does remain identical though.

As a rule of thumb any ‘abstract’ term - not concrete nouns - is identical, yet it’s use is rarely, or maybe never, used in an identical way (as above with the example of items listed). Remove items located in time and space and you’ll find many identical items of thought such as conjunctions and identifiers.

I’m interested in moving this into a more fruitful area of discussion - more fruitful for me at least.

I’ not specifically interested in Chomsky or any other view as a stand alone account of language so maybe another thread? Let me know if you wish this split off (or inform a mod).

I’m very interested in how we distinguish between general communication and language. I’ve always been intrigued by how our cognitive abilities manifest as we grow and how these abilities develop in other species too - as a means of singling out different stages of progression from ‘basic communication’ to a full-blown ‘language’.

Note: Using ‘language’ here in terms of this here written/signed/spoken structure.

I mentioned the ‘baby babbling’ early (or maybe in another thread?) as it seems inherent to be part of language development - there is also ‘signed babbling’ too so it appears to be apparent in language. It is also a property of ‘song birds’ too.

Also, although it seems kind of obvious that ‘language’ evolved for ‘language’, that is actually not necessarily the case. For instance the idea of biological spandrels may be one counter example, but there is a lot about language in our early development that plays into giving people a sense of identity - it could be that ‘language’ is a spin-off of other cognitive functions that just happened to evolve alongside each other with the capacity for complex vocalisation.

Bees communicate locations of nectar and ignore other bees if the source doesn’t coincide with their ‘mental picture’ - the example of this is that in an experiment a source was floated in the middle of a lake, the bee returned to the hive and gave a waggle-dance signal that the other bees ignored. This suggests that the bees have a clear world map that they adjust to their requirements. If more bees keep returning with nectar from the lake then they adjust their map. I am not suggesting the bees are having a ‘conversation’ here, but they are clearly using given information to judge their world view - not that this is ‘identity’.

Furthermore, when it comes to looking at cognitive capacities in terms of ‘world view’ researchers returned to Nicaragua and look at how the language had developed. What is fascinating is they found something they previously missed, the original speakers were unable to to combine abstract concepts (ie. ‘to the right of the blue box’, not being able to hold both ‘blue’ and ‘right’ together to distinguish where the person meant - the same capacity of a 5 yr old I believe, or a rat). This may be due to ‘language’ being a learned tool rather than an innate ability - keep in mind when the younger generations began to mix with the older speakers they picked up this ability to distinguish items in the real world (the learned language helped them ‘refine’ their experience to equate more readily with reality).

Note: I don’t believe there is any true dividing line only that there are areas that are more or less distinct than others.

who exactly is being hyperbolic? — StreetlightX

You.

I don't know what 'human facilities' are meant to be, but I do believe that language must be studied in the context of it's history, development, and socio-cultural specificities, along with it's biological and cognitive aspects. — StreetlightX

I agree. I imagine we disagree about the use of parcelling off certain areas for focus study. The major problem above is how we then distinguish between terms like ‘socio-cultural’ and ‘biological’.

At the end of the day we need people like yourself and hardcore ‘Chomskyans’ - I just feel, like Pinker stated in the article above, it’s a lot of noise over nothing much at all.

I just had a brief look, but I can tell already that it's not rigorous enough. Studying human beings without language is very interesting, but we have to be very careful before we throw out a widely held idea (for good reasons). One case study doesn't doesn't quite cut it. But I'll take a look at it. Maybe it does show that there's no critical period -- I'm not married to the idea, just very cautious, as it tends to make good sense. — Xtrix

Of course. I’ve never read her book and she openly admits that her method wasn’t scientific and that she is no linguist. Nevertheless I have looked at various accounts of this and I don’t believe this is a made up story at all - too many people verify the account. The main critique I’ve seen is some kind of attempt to parcel off ‘deafness’ as some contributor to this? Something also done in regard to the language created by deaf Nicaraguan children.

When it comes to language I’m much more interested in more obscure ideas and thoughts involving comparisons with various seemingly unconnected fields of interest. How/Why human languages evolved the way they evolved is interesting to speculate over, but I don’t find it anywhere near as interesting as several other items of neurogenesis (my opinion is that the question over such distinctions is too simplistically formed).

Eh, again I have no particular sympathy for Chomsky, but these reactions are hyperbolic, even hysterical. Complaining that a scientific theory postulates an ideal object that is then subject to performance constraints doesn't seem like an interesting criticism to me. That's how a lot of science works, and there's nothing methodologically objectionable about it per se (it does not, pace your claims, make a theory unfalsifiable that it works in this way). If there are valid criticisms of Chomsky, one would hope they'd be better than this. — Snakes Alive

:up:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-chomskys-theory-of-language-wrong-pinker-weighs-in-on-debate/

Nationalism - Rabindranath Tagore

the whole point of the generative grammar program is to discover the principles of linguistic competence - these principles are meant to be transhistoric and transcultural, so much so that, as our friend the threadstarter seems to celebrate, not even communication ought to be taken into account. In fact the principles are meant to be so abstract, that they are meant to have no relation to meaning at all. They are meant to be entirely syntactical, shorn of any semantic relevance. I mean, this is simply built-in to the program. — StreetlightX

Sounds like that is almost a reductive scientific approach. Limited, yes. Redundant?

Gradualism or otherwise isn’t really an issue for me tbh as I don’t see a meaning of determining one over the other, nor do I believe there is necessarily one over the other and it’s likely down to how we currently delineate between items of interest. I’m not one for applying Occam’s Razor to highly complex phenomena.

Is your view VERY basically that language is a more or less a circumstance of other human facilities?

I also want to caution that the speculative side of Chomsky's linguistics is only part of it – the part that's been most influential in linguistics is the application of new (in the mid-20th c.) mathematical tools to the practice of writing explicit 'generative' grammars, which is more like a formal science and has been enormously fruitful. — Snakes Alive

Yes. That is basically why I am baffled by Streetlight’s comment.

To add, there are many myths about learning languages that pervade. There are many myths in many areas of science too. They usually start due to the kind of misrepresentation I believe we’re seeing here - it’s common so you’ll no doubt carry around many more than you see in others.

It’s tough to know what’s what, and then question said ‘knowing’ :D

Of course he had language. Who's saying he had "no language" and then, at 27, acquired it? That's in fact extremely rare, if not impossible. There does seem to be a certain formative period for language acquisition in early development. — Xtrix

It blew my mind when I heard about this too. It’s no joke. Have a look, just search The Man with no Language.

That doesn’t follow. The point is to narrow down the fuel for the system. As an analogy we could say liquid makes an engine run and fill our cars with coffee - that doesn’t mean engines don’t function.

We have the ability to either create language from some faculty or we’re born with a faculty to create language - what’s the difference? If we’re to define language as necessarily requiring ‘syntax and grammar’ then we have our answer (or rather, the question then becomes ‘what is syntax and grammar’?)

Maybe we just need to rethink how we define ‘language’?

The problem is agreeing want x property makes ‘language’ a ‘language’. The general consensus is that it is at least partly syntax and grammar.

I understand that you’re saying we’re able to pick up language and that is ‘proof’ enough. I guess the counter argument is that ‘language’ isn’t as much an item as we assume it to be and that overtime we ‘created’ language via other innate capacities (yet such capacities are apparently not ‘language’ merely innate capacities - which takes me back to legs and walking).

This takes me back to an item that seems to have been willfully ignored. How is it that a 27 year old man with no ‘language’ managed to acquire language? He lived in human society, had a job and functioned without a language. He was deaf and his friends would play out stories physically - miming - and each would take turns and add a little more on to the previous performance. They had no language but they could exchange snippets of memories and information.

Another thing to consider is how language affects our sense of time. People in Sicily were considered more ‘childish’ due to living more or less for the day - lack of long term planning. A linguist noted that the dialect of Sicilians made sparse use of future tense. Does planned action create more complex grammar or does some ‘innate grammar’ create the ability for more planned action? Is they any real distinction here or are we asking the wrong kind of questions?

Yes, but then people take this as a steadfast claim rather than a statement of fact. A lot of this likely has to do with neuroscience wrestling these kinds of questions away from philosophers in part.

I’ll read those papers carefully. If you have any other suggestions I’d appreciate any other links you’d care to provide - if you’re so adamant about this I’m intrigued.

Agree or not, there are plenty of linguistics quite happy to call it language. It is precisely these kinds of disagreements over the term ‘language’ and ‘recursive’ that lead to all sorts of false accusations and strawmen arguments.

This is bizarre. You’re seriously putting forward that Chomsky has moved the field of linguistics backward? I can only encourage others here to ignore such a strange notion.

Less vitriol may help back up your position. I’m extremely suspicious when someone wholeheartedly dismisses an extremely prominent figure in any field. Anyway, I’ll read the papers when I have time.

In terms of genetics what I’ve stated is true. That is not ‘evidence’ merely a possibility. Many people laughed at and mocked McClintock, then several decades later handed her a Nobel Prize for precisely what her colleagues refused to take seriously.

I’m not denying that many assumptions based on Chomsky’s ideas have been brought into serious question. It is not the case that his ideas haven’t profited the field of linguistics though - that isn’t something I can get my head around. He wasn’t doing alchemy.

I wasn’t discussing Pinker - who no doubt has amended his ideas since 1994 to some degree.

From Evans:

And In 2005, the US linguist-anthropologist Daniel Everett has claimed that Pirahã – a language indigenous to the Amazonian rainforest – does not use recursion at all.

Claimed being the key word. I’ve already pointed out that people are not exactly in agreement over what does or doesn’t constitute ‘recursion’ - and even less likely to adhere to another’s definition.

More from Evans (a hidden contradiction):

But we now have several well-documented cases of so-called ‘feral’ children – children who are not exposed to language, either by accident or design, as in the appalling story of Genie, a girl in the US whose father kept her in a locked room until she was discovered in 1970, at the age of 13. The general lesson from these unfortunate individuals is that, without exposure to a normal human milieu, a child just won’t pick up a language at all. Spiders don’t need exposure to webs in order to spin them, but human infants need to hear a lot of language before they can speak. However you cut it, language is not an instinct in the way that spiderweb-spinning most definitely is.

Yet just as there is an argument against comparing ‘walking’ with ‘language’ it is here deemed perfectly okay to use the same technique to cover up items like a 27 year old deaf man acquiring language. The capacity was already there it was just awoken at a much later date due to deafness - basically either the argument for ‘walking’ and ‘language’ is valid as this argument is, or both are pointless? Which is it?

Plus, do we assume that all our ancestors could ‘walk’ and that only at a later date did this become non-instinctual?

My main gripe is your rather blasé dismissal of Chomsky’s views as being completely wrong in every way shape and form regarding linguistic theory. Such a statement is clearly coming from some extreme bias of opinion - maybe based on his political views perhaps? Any interest in linguistics that ignores Chomsky is plain silly, just as it would be daft to ignore/dismiss Skinner or Saussure because they’ve been shown to be wrong in some areas of their thinking. Again, Lamarck was dismissed, yet today his general idea has more weight and it turns out he was partially right in his assumptions - same goes for Mc... what’s her name who was laughed at for her conclusions about genetics ‘leaping’ (McClintock).

Were we talking about literally any other biological function, the very idea that 'something happened at some point in the past that made us speak language good' ought to be taken seriously as a thesis would be laughed out of the room so fast as to leave anyone with sympathies to it perennially embarrassed. It's unscientific bunkum. — StreetlightX

If you’re living in the past, yeah. Today, absolutely not. There is nothing to say that evolution in terms of genetics is a ‘gradual’ process when it comes to considerable ‘leaps’ in function. As I’ve laid out already we know that many tiny incremental alterations in the genetic structure can lie untapped before another minute change in the genetic codes literally ‘turns on’ several other previously dormant genes. The mistake, is again, to assume one polar idea is 100% true over the other. Evolution is both a gradual and immediate process - in terms of translation (a more Lamarcian view).

I’m unsure what you’re opinion would be regarding the neuroscience of memory, social ability or spatiotemporal perception in terms of physiology. This doesn’t mean I am suggesting we’re born with the ‘innate ability to fashion clothing’ though. The problem, as I see it, is distinguishing what we each mean and weighing up the limitations of theories not the outright dismissal of theories we either don’t like the sound of, or that we lack a large body of evidence for. We don’t throw away Newtonian mechanics simply because Einstein refined our view of ‘physical motion’.

I find it strange to hold such a string opinion in complete opposition to anyone who has helped develop the field. Perhaps many dislike what he says as it is too analytic/theoretical?

It depends on how broad the term ‘language’ is in your usage. A great many linguistics are quite happy to talk about ‘language’ in terms of a bee’s waggle-dance (I can cite from prominent university text books if you wish?).

The Piraha is the most controversial language. There is FAR too much to go into there, but it is looked at as being the main component in the disagreements around Chomsky’s theories/ideas.

There were years when I was convinced that our capacity for language must have evolved gradually as a complex form of communication, in accordance with the widely-held belief in evolutionary biology that organisms change slowly and incrementally via natural selection (with some exceptions, Steve Gould being an obvious example). — Xtrix

Both are true genetically. It has to be taken into account that several non-phenotypical iterations of the genetic code over generations can then become highly affective in phenotypical presentations due to one singular mutation - consider the so-called ‘junk DNA’ which is basically sitting there doing nothing. If another gene changes somewhere else in the sequence this can then create proteins that unlock previously ‘junk’ items that have a domino effect on other protein synthesis.

It helps to view the inner workings of any organism as an ‘environment’. This is why sensible people are loath to make a delineation between ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ in any real sense.

We have legs to walk and language to speak. The question is do you view ‘walking’ as a ‘cultural development’ or as a genetic predisposition? If no, then what exactly is different in terms of a capacity for language acquisition? The argument is basically held around the misrepresentation/disagreement around what is being proposed. The hardliners against this or that idea are usually at the poles of the argument or misrepresenting the argument.

As for Everett arguement against this ‘walk’ and ‘crawl’ idea ... feral children walking on all fours due to being brought up by wolves. Then there is ‘The Man with no Language’ who learn language from scratch at 27 years of age (that contradicts the argument in the article link posted above). Everett does make some good points though. The main argument over ‘recursion’ is another term people cannot agree over. It seems people misunderstand something then rile against it, then when told ‘I didn’t mean that!’ they refuse to say ‘okay’, instead claiming the term to mean what they thought it meant in opposition to the original proposition put forward.

Chomsky brought linguistics into a more scientific realm of analysis - regardless of whether you agree with all his ideas he as/is an extremely important contributor to modern linguistic theory.

Isn’t part of that argument basically saying a humans ability to walk is cultural? If we’re going to say we have no capacity for language - via some innate functionality - then surely we must also argue that we have no capacity for walking - via some innate functionality.

If we look at new borns in the wild they walk almost as soon as they drop. Humans are effectively born ‘prematurely’ in comparison to many other animals.

Aphasia is also another point here. Various different form of aphasia are quite specific to certain ‘grammatical’ features. This is probably the hardest evidence there is to back up the idea of universal grammar. Keep in mind Chomsky original put forward the position in opposition to some tabla rasa view of brain development that was persisting (through behaviorism).

Today most sensible people understand that the distinction between ‘nature and nurture’ is merely a convenient (yet essentially fuzzy) boundary between two equally applicable approaches. The reductionist approach toward genetics in this area has been a dead end for the most part as the ‘mechanisms’ of evolution are more complex than this - but huge immediate jumps can be made within one generation due to previous little tweaks being turned on (ironically in a Lamarcian way).

One example is how song bird babies ‘babble’, like humans. When it come to syntax and grammar, that is generally considered to be the main difference between humans and other animals.

That’s probably the worst piece of advice I’ve ever heard.

Humans share many basic attribute of spoken language with other animals. The difference is we possess ALL where other animals only possess certain aspects.

It helps to make a distinction between ‘worded language’ and ‘language’ (ie. a bee’s waggle-dance). There is a focused use of the term ‘language’ (regarding syntax and grammar) and the broader use of ‘language’ (body language and unconscious ‘signals’). We don’t need the former to think, but the former appears to be extremely beneficial for both communicating thoughts, passing on knowledge and long term planning.

My point is that real change is very difficult to bring about in the American system, and it seems the same in the UK, where they've been bickering about Brexit long after they supposedly decided to exit. — Hanover

The reason was parliament was particularly weak. Now the Conservatives have a whooping majority it’ll be easy to ‘change’. Don’t forget that May assumed she’d get a clean sweep and be able to push through Brexit much earlier - her plan backfired stupendously.

Overall I reckon it’s been a good period of shake up. Once the Brexit train is well and truly rolling perhaps the opposition parties will accept this and restructure their policies rather than pandering to popular opinion - for that Corbyn was certainly a breath of fresh air. The difference in the UK is the lesser parties. The Lib Dems have suffered massively, but they can still rise up again with a half-decent leader. Now Labour is imploding it may lead to my dream finally coming true ... an election where THREE parties have a decent chance of winning out. In terms of the popular vote the Lib Dems have been there or there about (even though the number of seats has never shown this support).

Anyway, enough of all that from me. I jumped the ship Blighty 8 years ago and have no intention of living there again :) it is still part of me though, but having it at a distance helps me put things into perspective (people don’t appreciate what they have most of the time).

That’s the one.

Also, think about this alongside cases of feral children where they’re never able to obtain a full ‘worded language’. I’m pretty sure this is simply due to items in the human world being alien to them whereas for others, like the Mexican guy, they already live in the human world and can then at least come to appropriate social concepts and conventions with use concepts.

If he was deaf AND raised by wolves I doubt very much he’d ever have stood a chance of acquiring language so late in his life. The key element of language being ‘common experience’ and a ‘common social environment’, rather than ‘word symbols’ (be the auditory or visual).

I’d appreciate if you could copy and paste for me. I ain’t signing up to read an article.

My beef in this is that I am anti-Brexit and Corbyn was our best hope in somehow stopping it. — Punshhh

If he’d resigned several months ago, then yeah. If and buts don’t matter now.

He said, she said, don’t much care he was PM. Like every other human being he has his point of view, and I remember many within the Labour party complaining about him being too centrist/right-leaning ... so it therefore must be his fault then? - joke*

Doesn’t matter. The bigger problem was the disintegration of the Lib Dems. Popular vote - even under Clegg - was 6% less than Labour, but they had 200 more seats. The travesty was the negative propaganda surrounding the proposed overhaul of the electorate system by the Lib Dems.

Personally I don’t think ONLY the popular vote should determine members of parliament but it seems ridiculous to treat a marginal win in this or that county as a victory and shut out half of the population of that constituency.

I guess commonsense isn’t exactly synonymous with politics though.

Language in the broader sense of a ‘communication’/‘relation’ to environment and interactions.

‘Worded language’ isn’t a necessity of being a human. The case of The Man with no Language’ made that clear enough. I call it ‘kinesthetic language’ but that’s just to distinguish from the common use of the term ‘language’.

Could you elaborate on this? — softwhere

Yes. That’s kinda the problem.

Tbh when ever I see cries of ‘anti-semitism’ I assume they’re false. The reason being when I’ve looked further they are usually comments taken out of context and/or criticisms of the Israeli government.

Politics has always been a dirty game. It’s good to angry about this, but let’s not pretend to be shocked when these sort of ‘tactics’ are used.

Boris was, and is, more politically savvy than Corbyn. If they both had the same ideologies Boris would still win out because of this.

Anyway, doesn’t matter now. Boris has it and he’ll push Brexit through. He’s adamant about untangling the UK completely from EU rule - if he fails to deliver that he won’t last too long.

I'm sure you've seen this in B&T, but it's at least Heidegger being explicit.

This being, which we ourselves in each case are and which includes inquiry among the possibilities of its being, we formulate terminologically as Dasein.
— Heidegger / Stambough translation, top of page 7 — softwhere

The problem is how this fits in with everything else he says in terms of ‘Dasein’. It’s contrary and I suspect he was quite purposeful in how he was trying to hoodwink the reader. Huge lumps of text he wrote in B&T were frustratingly pointless. I don’t trust writers if they lead you on a merry dance to say something that could’ve been summed up in a couple of paragraphs. That said, it is forgivable on occasion, but when 80% of the entire text needn’t be there I’m not impressed.

Derrida is an even worse culprit, but at least he pretty much admitted what he was doing so I can forgive that - Heidegger was merely playing at rewriting Husserl’s ideas (likely because he assumed Husserl’s work would be buried and forgotten). Derrida is far more interesting, but far more post-modern. I have a feeling he could’ve done better trying to be explicit rather than playing with words to show how words can be played with.

There is ‘language’ beyond mere ‘worded language’. It is frankly foolish to ignore this. That is not at all to say that ‘worded language’ is hugely important - or how else would we be communicating now!

Guys what a fantastic discussion. I got to read more philosophy when my 3 and 4 year old kids get older. You guys are motivating me to do that. — DanielP

If I were I’d go out right now and buy a copy of Piaget’s ‘The Language and Thought of a Child’, or any number of works on child development. Even though it is old stuff it’s still relevant today and will open up a whole host of questions related to your life experience watching our children grow up.

Why does it matter? Because if we think finite, then our perspective is finite. — DanielP

We’ve become more acquainted with concepts of ‘infinite’ lately because we’re finite not in spite of our finitude. In exploring the universe we’ve moved from an infinite self in a finite world to a finite self in an infinite world. This is something Eliade does a superb job of digging into in “The Sacred and The Profane”.

I like to look at sedentary living playing a huge role in the paradigm shift from a more nomadic lifestyle - even though ‘mobile’ homes would bring the element that interests me into play. The idea is that nature is vast, boundless and limitless, and in creating a homestead and ‘shutting out’ nature to some degree we took on the role of a pretend ‘god’. We were able to dictate every corner of our abode to suit our will and creativity where in nature we were ‘ruled over’. The irony is by ‘shutting out’ we necessarily shut ourselves in too - this is the shift in our regard for the world as ‘finite’ or ‘infinite’. Also, we are in the habit of thinking about ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ in terms of magnitudes of space and time. Again, this wasn’t/isn’t an issue for tribal life because they didn’t house time in clocks or space in buildings - their world s a lost world of the ‘infinite’ in the sense of being experienced without demarcations of time or space in anything like our modern comprehension.

As the other person pointed out above - in reference - the Humean worldview has more relation to this more ‘raw’ experience of our world. We’re not empty receptacles of information - no tabla rasa - we impose ourselves on the world and project our view outward, perhaps more than we are under the ‘rule’ of what is extraneous to our ‘felt’ bodily limits.

You do sound like you’d be more interested in ideas regarding panpsychism - that’s not really for me as I find the terms used more obtuse and misleading than even Derrida or Heidegger!

http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf