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. I believe in a kind of wholism and embeddedness of language, if it could be put that way. The exact opposite, that is, of the Chomskian program which seeks to isolate, dehistoricize, desocialize, and place language under the air-tight seal of a hermeticism for nothing more than ideological prejudice. — StreetlightX

I mostly agree with this, and I'm sympathetic with the idea that patterns seen across the world's languages can't be explained without reference to historical facts – it seems to me that a lot of the distribution of grammatical structures is a historical accident, albeit often a 'deep' one rooted thousands of years in the past. Why do so many Austronesian languages have a certain article system, for example? Yes, a synchronic psychological account can tell us how it is possible, or plausible, for a language to adopt such a thing, but the sample of languages we have is just a 'random' historical sample that happened upon a bunch of clusters of features in different families, decided some thousands of years ago – and we do not know what an 'alternate history' would look like, and what it would tell us about human language capacity.

But as it stands, this is just a heuristic dislike of the flavor of a research program, based on (it looks like, inaccurate) reports about it from its ideological opponents (ideological opponents, in general, cannot be trusted to report the theories of their adversaries!). Flavors and heuristics are just not what we decide these things based off, and what one 'favors' is not particularly interesting in the long run.

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.

. It seems to imply, early on, that Chomskyans thought that a universal grammar literally meant that all the world's languages had a structure similar to the European languages the researchers spoke (not only is this not true, but Chomsky was a scholar of Hebrew, a Semitic language, and generativists were early on studying languages like Japanese – that languages existed in a wide variety was utterly common knowledge, of which everyone was aware, including him and the other generativists!) — Snakes Alive

Hey, don't take its word for it. Here it is from the horse's mouth: "According to Chomsky, a visiting Martian scientist would surely conclude that aside from their mutually unintelligible vocabularies, Earthlings speak a single language" (Pinker). Like, this is simply a preposterous statement on the face of it, and the only way to understand how anyone could hold such a view is to recognise the grip of ideology at work. This is the kind of rubbish one can come up with when one hews to Chomskian views on language, one that requires one to ignore an ocean of cognitive dissonance. In the face of this kind of tripe, one has to wonder, who exactly is being hyperbolic?

And you really need to drop the idea that Chomskian linguistics is scientific. It's simply not. It's self-immunizing against all counter-evidence, and its empirical basis is limited to nothing other than sheer speculation. It's creationism in the realm of linguistic theory.

Like, this is simply a preposterous statement on the face of it, and the only way to understand how anyone could hold such a view is to recognise the grip of ideology at work. This is the kind of rubbish one can come up with when one hews to Chomskian views on language, one that requires one to ignore an ocean of cognitive dissonance. In the face of this kind of tripe, one has to wonder, who exactly is being hyperbolic?

And you really need to drop the idea that Chomskian linguistics is scientific. It's simply not. It's self-immunizing against all counter-evidence, and its empirical basis is limited to nothing other than sheer speculation. It's creationism in the realm of linguistic theory. — StreetlightX

This is just an ideological screed.

If actually giving a shit about empirical evidence and not attempting to curve-fit reality to prior theoretical commitments is ideology, count me all in.

Obviously, that doesn't accurately describe the situation! Again, you shouldn't be getting your opinions about a movement from its ideological opponents – be better informed and fairer-minded!

who exactly is being hyperbolic? — StreetlightX

You.

*shrug*, I'm sure they said the same of phlogiston. And I'm sure a great deal of those fair-minded about it now belong in the dust-bin of history, as will Chomskian linguistics in the not-too-far future.

It is clear too that much of what we call 'language' is common to other species like, bodily gestures, — fresco

cognitive deflationists (Behaviourists) would argue that there is nothing special about 'languaging' which amounts to no more than a complex behaviour which enhances social co-ordination. — fresco

If what we call “ language” in other species is really instinctive behaviour, then could this not mean that thought is also an instinct of humans and language the evidence of that, just as the behaviour of bees is evidence of an instinctive behaviour towards a threat or building a hive.

Why is all thinking in humans not equal, why Einstein and those who produce concepts and thought experiments? Is it a big assumption and error to think that those thoughts are the same as the thoughts that go on all the time in our heads throughout the day? In those circumstances are we choosing to think or just responding instinctively like bees.

So our communication is no more special than that of bees. What I’d call “common thought” produces very little of significance, and our language just as limited in its use. So there’s nothing special about thought or language. I’m not even sure, as an instinct, that thought does us much good, or as much good as we expect from it.

So then, maybe language isn’t communication, that it’s not the way we should be communicating, that we have not evolved in the way we imagine we have.

Tim white asked if language is not communication then what is it? But isn’t the question then if language is not communication then what is the way we really communicate? Or are we really communicating at all?
If we could really communicate wouldn’t the world be a different place?

Firstly, our capacity for language is not infinite. The number of possible sequences of sounds we can make is infinite, but we cannot sounds indefinitely. We acquire shared language at a limited rate, and we have a limited capacity to store information pertaining to language (the idea-symbol relationships encoded in the brain). — VagabondSpectre

Language is a digital infinite system. Like the number system. You can create infinite expressions. This is so obvious to even point it out is stating a truism. Language is not sounds, nor did I ever claim that.

Secondly, words and language as we know them aren't the only kind of communication. As evolving social animals, our distant ancestors (the tree of hominids we're related to, and beyond) have been refining language capacity for eons. — VagabondSpectre

When did I say language is the only form of communication? Quite the contrary.

Our species have not been refining "language capacity" at all. Our ancestors acquired this capacity at some point, of course. But there's no evidence to suggest it's changed since (and which you wouldn't expect given the short time scale). If you mean to say that forms of communication have changed over time, then yes that's obviously true. So what?

You may want to conclude that if we can set dogs down the vocal language road in just a few thousand years of artificial selection, this is evidence of the sudden emergence of communication skills in our ancestral homonids, but we could also interpret this as evidence that the basic language and communication structures are far more ancient (and have been cooking for far longer) than Chomsky wants to reckon. — VagabondSpectre

Dogs do not have language. No one is arguing dogs have language. Yes, you can teach birds and dogs to vocalize in ways that sound like words, and you can teach chimps a few signs -- but none of them are capable of acquiring language. This has been tried in the case of chimps, and has failed. If it succeeded, it would have completely falsified Chomsky's claims.

Language is a human property and a "species property" in the sense that it's completely unique among living things. This is not a difficult or profound statement. It was acquired at some point in the past. Whether gradually or suddenly is up or debate and involves a lot of speculation which we can discuss. But let's at least be clear about what it is we're talking about.

I'll repeat once again: if you're defining language as simply another form of communication, then we're talking at cross purposes. Language, as a system of thought, can be communicated in various ways -- of course. But if it were simply a complex form of communication, there's very little reason why a primate couldn't learn to do what we're doing right now. They can't. Nor can any other species on earth. Furthermore, most of our "speaking" is, in a sense, to ourselves -- hence the notion of an "I-language." When I say "most," just introspect for a while: we're talking to ourselves all the time. How much of this gets communicated through speech, or sign, or writing, etc? Very little.

A sudden "re-wiring of the brain in an individual" is incredibly fantastical. It's entirely possible that a small adaptation which enhanced language capacity snowballed as the mutation spread and refined, but this optimization would be gradual (and is in fact still occurring to this day). — VagabondSpectre

Yes, that's the dogma. But it's not true. The story of a "small adaptation" spreading and being refined is just as fantastical. It's like saying arithmetic developed by gradual steps. That's not the case. Either you have it or you don't. You don't go from 1 to the concept of infinity in a step-by-step manner. If one is a "just-so" story, or fantastical, so is the other. But given evidence for a burst in creativity a couple hundred thousand years or so ago, and given how small a timeframe that really is, it's hard to believe we gradually acquired our current capacity for language. To suggest it's "still occurring to this day" is absurd. I suppose our capacity for arithmetic is also evolving?

The relevant question is what is inherited, and how this inheritance (which magically evolved) functions to underpin the FLN. Chomsky offers not a single biological mechanism that would meet these two criteria, other than to handwave some kind of evolutionary exaptation as a promissory note in its place. This is like trying to say that we've inherited the ability to walk without talking about legs and gravity, and then, to add insult to injury, further speculating that we may never know what allows us to walk, other than to note that we possess 'the faculty' for it. It's so incredibly stupid that anyone who who even feels a jot of sympathy for Chomsky should feel their intelligence insulted. — StreetlightX

Before throwing around insults, try to demonstrate that you understand what you're discussing. What you've just described is such a strawman that anyone familiar with Chomsky or linguistics generally would consider it completely embarrassing.

You keep throwing around the "FLN" but then wonder about "what's inherited" and "how," which is perplexing. I'm almost certain that at this point your only contact with anything related to Chomsky is that one article in Science (yet it seems you've deemed the so-called "criticisms" of UG much more worthy of consumption). That's fine. But to feel entitled to throw around insults on this basis makes me think I'm completely wasting my time. Regardless, I'll respond more with other readers in mind.

The language faculty in the narrow sense. The core property here that Chomsky is proposing is Merge. That's what is uniquely human. This is, of course, a biological property on par with the visual system. It didn't "magically evolve." Any neurological reorganization that took place did so genetically, most likely through mutation. This involves the brain. Straightforward enough. Now compare your statement: "This is like trying to say that we've inherited the ability to walk without talking about legs and gravity". Yes, Chomsky and his adherents are so stupid as to believe humans' capacity for language is a miracle of God, or due to some other magic. Please shoot him an e-mail and inform him of his errors, by all means.


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Chomsky's proposal is at once very specific (it's the FLN, which is comprised of recursion, exclusively), and entirely undertheorized (how is it inherited, and how does it function?: NFI). — StreetlightX

To quote the (apparently) one article you've deigned to read:

"The empirical study of the evolution of language is be set with difficulties. Linguistic behavior does not fossilize, and a long tradition of analysis of fossil skull shape and cranial endocasts has led to little consensus about the evolution of language (7, 9). A more tractable and, we think, powerful approach to problems of language evolution is provided by the comparative method, which uses empirical data from living species to draw detailed inferences about extinct ancestors (3, 10 –12). The comparative method was the primary tool used by Darwin (13, 14) to analyze evolutionary phenomena and continues to play a central role throughout modern evolutionary biology."

If the problem you're having is with the speculative aspects of how language evolved, fine. But neither Chomsky nor myself claim anything other than speculation. Your emotional response to this does show, indeed, how dogmatic gradualism has become. That's a shame.

Obviously, that doesn't accurately describe the situation! Again, you shouldn't be getting your opinions about a movement from its ideological opponents – be better informed and fairer-minded! — Snakes Alive

Good advice. Although a simple understanding of what you're criticizing is good start too. So far I see no understanding whatsoever. I wouldn't mind the denunciations, but the complete ignorance is comedic. Although when someone is so emotional about an issue, it's usually a good sign they haven't a clue about what they're talking about. I see it a lot with climate change deniers and creationists as well. Lots of emotion, zero understanding.

It's like saying arithmetic developed by gradual steps. That's not the case. Either you have it or you don't. You don't go from 1 to the concept of infinity in a step-by-step manner. — Xtrix

Actually, yes we did...

Primitive number systems are very basic. They go something like "One, Two, Three, more than three, more than all my fingers and toes". Depending on our need for precision and high quantity arithmetic, it's not necessarily obvious at all, from the conceptual systems we use to perform it, that all the numbers between one and infinity exist..

Mathematics has evolved relatively slowly, as have our number systems. Children aren't born with inherent comprehension of arithmetic, and if we did not teach them our number system and the operations associated with it, they would likely have very limited capacity to perform arithmetic.

But given evidence for a burst in creativity a couple hundred thousand years or so ago, and given how small a time frame that really is, it's hard to believe we gradually acquired our current capacity for language. To suggest it's "still occurring to this day" is absurd. I suppose our capacity for arithmetic is also evolving? — Xtrix

There's no creativity burst 100k years ago that I'm aware of...

But yes, we're still evolving, and yes, if there are selection forces favoring math or language skills, then the underlying genetic markers which yield those inherent capacities are still being optimized by the exploratory genetic algorithm that is sexual reproduction.

Given how much more important language and maths have suddenly become in our society, we really ought to expect that this strong change in selective forces is going to have ramifications on our genetic-adaptive trajectory in the near future. I could go into a lot more detail about neuro-diversity, and why it's an important adaptive component, but the fact that we're still evolving (including our mental faculties) is strictly factual.

Primitive number systems are very basic. They go something like "One, Two, Three, more than three, more than all my fingers and toes". Depending on our need for precision and high quantity arithmetic, it's not necessarily obvious at all, from the conceptual systems we use to perform it, that all the numbers between one and infinity exist.. — VagabondSpectre

Every human being has the capacity for arithmetic. There's little evidence that many primitive societies use it. The Babylonians had a sexagesimal number system - does this prove something about arithmetic? Having words or symbols is not the same thing as having the capacity to learn such things.

To argue that we gradually acquired the property of the infinite numeration by gradual steps is a contradiction. Not having words for "more than three, more than my fingers and toes" is not the point -- that's already an infinite system.

Actually, yes we did... — VagabondSpectre

There's no reason to believe we did, given what we have.

Children aren't born with inherent comprehension of arithmetic, and if we did not teach them our number system and the operations associated with it, they would likely have very limited capacity to perform arithmetic. — VagabondSpectre

Children are certainly born with a capacity for arithmetic. If not, how would you "teach them our number system" in the first place? It's like saying without learning the rules of grammar, children wouldn't learn language. It's absurd.

Humans are born with a capacity for arithmetic. They're born with a capacity for music. They're born with a capacity for language. They're born with the capacity to see and walk. There's something in our genetic endowment that allows for this. This is not controversial. This is precisely why they can learn calculus, music, and language - and other primates cannot. To argue otherwise is basically arguing we're tabula rasa, which isn't very convincing to say the least.

There's data involved, of course. Just as there is with light stimulation in early visual development. That's trivial.

There's no creativity burst 100k years ago that I'm aware of... — VagabondSpectre

Well it's worth looking into.

But yes, we're still evolving, and yes, if there are selection forces favoring math or language skills, then the underlying genetic markers which yield those inherent capacities are still being optimized by the exploratory genetic algorithm that is sexual reproduction. — VagabondSpectre

Utter nonsense, I'm afraid. In your sense the visual system is still evolving. Fine- maybe in a few million years it'll result in something radically different from what we have now. To argue our inherent genetic capacities for language is currently being changed from "selection forces" is on equal footing. And pretty embarrassing.

Unless you can get into our genome and find a way to manipulate it to our ends, the "selection pressures" of our modern world will not change our genetic capacities.

If the problem you're having is with the speculative aspects of how language evolved, fine. — Xtrix

Except its not. The problem is that anyone who understands just how insane Chomsky's take on language is would be able to see the evolutionary problem for it coming from a mile away - by decoupling language from communication and making it a wholly cognitive faculty, Chomsky can't, by way of design - that is to say, prior and unemprically to any consideration of evidence - he can't have it so that language was in any way evolved by means natural selection. Which is of course exactly the position he is committed to.

Quite literally, he has to be committed, on pain of incoherence, to the insane idea that language initially evolved for means other than language. Which would be fine for a great deal of other exaptations, except that language is so incredibly specialized that the suggestion is pure madness. Not to mention that all exaptations that we are aware of were further subject to refinement by natural selection after that change in function - something else that Chomsky has to, and does in fact, deny. So we end up in this evolutionarily-nonsense position: language did not evolve via natural selection for any language- specific task, and once it came to be used for those tasks, it could not be subject to natural selection then either. It just popped into existence one fine day, and will remain the same forevermore.

If that isn't magic, I don't know what is. So yes, Chomsky and his adherents are so stupid as to believe humans' capacity for language is a miracle of God, or due to some other magic. And I don't need to write Chomsky a letter about this. Plenty of people have pointed out the madness to him already. I'm just relaying rather well established points.

And that's the thing: this is a problem specific to Chomsky's position, and not one facing evolutionary accounts of language in general. This insofar as most other, sane accounts, are not so idiotic as to make language nothing but a cognitive faculty unconnected with it's use, as language, among humans. And it should further be noted that those other accounts - I have in mind the work of Jablonka and Dor, Michael Tomasello, Terrance Deacon, Merlin Donald, and others - do and more importantly can say a great deal more than the trash that 'language popped into existence somehow somewhen because of totally unspecified changes to something somewhere probably genetic but we really have no idea, and then somehow somewhen probably started to be used by humans because no idea', because they are not theory-bound by utterly ridiculous ideas on language that make no evolutionary sense.

Chomsky's evolutionary incoherence is a feature, not a bug, of his position. It is purpose-built to be unamenable to any normal evolutionary account. Also, given that Chomsky basically forswore any discussion of the evolution of language up until his recent papers with Fitch and Hauser, it is littler wonder that I'm actually quoting the pitiful little he actually does have to say on the topic.

Quite literally, he has to be committed, on pain of incoherence, to the insane idea that language initially evolved for means other than language. Which would be fine for a great deal of other exaptations, except that language is so incredibly specialized that the suggestion is pure madness. — StreetlightX

I don't understand why this is insane. Exaptation is normal. The exception clause that language is special makes no sense to me – it's 'specialized?' Huh?

Quite literally, he has to be committed, on pain of incoherence, to the insane idea that language initially evolved for means other than language. — StreetlightX

To my recollection, Chomsky’s, Pinker’s, et al.’s hypothesis concerns neither language nor communication (where differentiated) but the grammatical syntax to these - which is found only in Homo Sapiens.

In which case, it would be correct to say, "the occurrence of syntax to language initially evolved by means other than syntax to language (via some adaptive mutation(s))"

Be this as it may.

It just popped into existence one fine day, and will remain the same forevermore.

If that isn't magic, I don't know what is. [...]

And that's the thing: this is a problem specific to Chomsky's position, and not one facing evolutionary accounts of language in general. — StreetlightX

Are you ridiculing as stupid the position of punctuated equilibrium?

Were grammatical syntax to have rapidly evolved in some evolutionary ancestors followed by a period of evolutionary stasis that persists to this day, this is nothing else but the position of punctuated equilibrium – which holds application to evolution in general. There’s a plethora of empirical evidence in support of this view, be the view taken as antagonistic to the hypothesis of phyletic gradualism or not (they need not be antagonistic hypotheses of evolution). Phyletic gradualism, for example, fails to explain what are sometimes referred to as living fossils - the common example being the horseshoe crab - while punctuated equilibrium can easily account for these.

Are you ridiculing as stupid the position of punctuated equilibrium? — javra

No, I'm not. That Chomsky's thin gruel speculation on language amounts to "language popped into existence somehow somewhen because of totally unspecified changes to something somewhere probably genetic but we really have no idea, and then somehow somewhen probably started to be used by humans because no idea" has nothing to do with the reality of PE. The gradualism vs. PE 'debate' when it comes to Chomsky is a side-show, but it's one that it's adherents would prefer to make it about in order to distract from the gaping holes elsewhere.

I'll grant your first point.

No, I'm not. That Chomsky's thin gruel speculation on language amounts to "language popped into existence somehow somewhen because of totally unspecified changes to something somewhere probably genetic but we really have no idea, and then somehow somewhen probably started to be used by humans because no idea" has nothing to do with the reality of PE. — StreetlightX

I get the sarcasm and your dislike, but I don't yet get why. About the same account could be given for our bipedalism. We don't yet know the specifics of why our species' ancestors became bipedal, but it happened - evolutionary speaking, this overnight, and this aspect of us has remained in stasis. Although there are known cases of feral children that did not walk bipedally (with possible reasons for this being numerous), we do furthermore tend to assume that this inclination toward bipedalism is genetically inherited.

Placed in proper context, Chomsky's argument was against BF Skinner's behaviorist approach to language acquisition. In brief, operant behavior (and its conditioning) cannot account for human language acquisition, given the latter's complexity and variety.

BTW, this, to my mind, doesn't in any way deny that operant behavior has actual application. It only specifies that there must first be innate, general cognitive abilities that can facilitate species-specific operant behavior. For example, both a dog and a pigeon can be operantly conditioned, but each will so be in different species-specific manners due to (not behaviorist conditioning itself but, rather) the innate generalized cognitive faculties of each particular type of animal. This being where cognitive science holds sway over behaviorism - the former acknowledges the importance of innate mental predispositions whereas the latter does not.

To not be presumptuous, are you proposing that Skinner had the correct hypothesis?

If not, and the syntax to language is not acquired strictly via behaviorist means, I don't understand why you find fault with the arguments proposed by Chomsky and others of the same perspective? After all, punctuated equilibrium would account for a cognitive know-how of grammar that is genetically inherited rather than behavioristically learned - one used to acquire specific human language(s) - which has since its genetic acquisition by our species remained in a state of evolutionary stasis.

No, behavioralism is a dead end, but the dichotomy Skinnerism/Chomskyism does not in the least exhaust the field. Both are false alternatives whose headstones ought to lie beside each other in the graveyard of terrible ideas.

More to say later.

punctuated equilibrium would account for a cognitive know-how of grammar that is genetically inherited rather than behavioristically learned — javra

A quick word on this (I'm out right now and don't have access to my usual stuff): this cannot possibly be the case. PE is a theory of evolutionary temporality. It speaks to the rapidity, or not, of evolutionary change. That is what it is an 'account' of. It cannot, even in priciple, be an account of any particular evolutionary trait. Not a single one, let alone a "cognitive know-how of grammar that is genetically inherited rather than behavioristically learned". To confuse a thesis about evolutionary temporality with any one of its particular outcomes is a category mistake through and through. It's not even wrong. It's mistake at the level of sense-making.

PE is used as nothing more than an excuse by Chomskyites to simply ignore and keep entirely mum on the question of how UE is supposed to make evolutionary sense. It's a case of: "well it happened real quick so yeah of course there's no possible way we could have evidence for it, which in any case our theory rules out to begin with because language cannot possibly be adaptive because it's all cognitive so how very convenient for us lets move on and not talk about it anymore OK haha".

At least the instances in which PE is invoked has a rich fossil record to back it up. The Chomskian recourse to PE is literally fabricated from out of thin air. Not a single thread of evidence, nor even a plausable conceptual narrative reconstruction that would or would not be corroborated by any forthcoming evidence. The flippancy of what is offered ('it was probably for navigation or some shit') is so intellectually poverty-stricken as to be legitimately insulting.

The problem is that anyone who understands just how insane Chomsky's take on language is would be able to see the evolutionary problem for it coming from a mile away - by decoupling language from communication and making it a wholly cognitive faculty, Chomsky can't, by way of design - that is to say, prior and unemprically to any consideration of evidence - he can't have it so that language was in any way evolved by means natural selection. Which is of course exactly the position he is committed to. — StreetlightX

Chomsky isn't saying natural selection doesn't happen, nor is he calling evolution into doubt in any way whatsoever. He's saying, and has said for years, that it's hard to see -- based on the properties of language -- how it could have evolved gradually. Perhaps it did, but it's hard to imagine given his conception of language. Now maybe his conception of language is radically off base. You, however, haven't made the slightest attempt at refuting his work in this respect. You've instead cited some highly questionable sources.

Quite literally, he has to be committed, on pain of incoherence, to the insane idea that language initially evolved for means other than language. — StreetlightX

I agree that this doesn't mean anything at all. Nor does Chomsky believe it. It's another figment of your imagination I'm afraid.

Not to mention that all exaptations that we are aware of were further subject to refinement by natural selection after that change in function - something else that Chomsky has to, and does in fact, deny. — StreetlightX

No, he doesn't. Again, you're showing your ignorance. Reading a few third-hand accounts of what someone thought someone who knew Chomsky might have said isn't interesting. Please cite some sources.

So we end up in this evolutionarily-nonsense position: language did not evolve via natural selection for any language- specific task, and once it came to be used for those tasks, it could not be subject to natural selection then either. It just popped into existence one fine day, and will remain the same forevermore. — StreetlightX

This is a fairytale created by you. A complete fabrication, which you would know if you deigned to read anything besides what you want to hear. But it must feel good to believe you're so much more brilliant than the father of modern linguistics.

You're kind of a joke, sir.

I get the sarcasm and your dislike, but I don't yet get why. — javra

He doesn't show he understands Chomsky at all, repeatedly. He's cited a number of articles by Chomsky's detractors, and one article from Science -- which he doesn't understand.

Combine that with insults and sarcasm, and the feeling of superiority from believing he's outwitted a famous linguistic, and it's fairly obvious what's going on. Comical, and not worth taking too serious. If he starts sounding like an adult, I'll maybe give it more time. But he hasn't said anything serious yet. I wouldn't waste too much time on it.

Free advice.

For anyone truly interested in Chomsky's linguistics, here's a good place to start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=068Id3Grjp0&t=4637s

Skip to about an hour in for specific discussions from linguistics in the audience. Some of it is technical.

Chomsky's framework is the most fruitful and influential one around today. So it's worth the effort. He goes through the dogmas of "language is communication" and "everything evolves gradually" -- which some here hold as well -- in this video too.

Lol, maybe read your own hero:

"Thus, a basic and logically ineliminable role for comparative research on language evolution is this simple and essentially negative one: A trait present in nonhuman animals did not evolve specifically for human language ... [W]e suggest that by considering the possibility that FLN evolved for reasons other than language, the comparative door has been opened in a new and (we think) exciting way ... One possibility, consistent with current thinking in the cognitive sciences, is that recursion in animals represents a modular system designed for a particular function (e.g., navigation) and impenetrable with respect to other systems. During evolution, the modular and highly domain-specific system of recursion may have become penetrable and domain-general. This opened the way for humans, perhaps uniquely, to apply the power of recursion to other problems". (my bolding)

Read: Language evolved for reasons other than language. About as clear-cut as you can get.

"According to recent linguistic theory, the computations underlying FLN may be quite limited. In fact, we propose in this hypothesis that FLN comprises only the core computational mechanisms of recursion as they appear in narrow syntax and the mappings to the interfaces. If FLN is indeed this restricted, this hypothesis has the interesting effect of nullifying the argument from design, and thus rendering the status of FLN as an adaptation open to question. Proponents of the idea that FLN is an adaptation would thus need to supply additional data or arguments to support this viewpoint."

Read: FLN was not an adaptation. The 'argument from design' referred to above refers to nothing other than natural selection, which is clarified earlier in the paper: "Because natural selection is the only
known biological mechanism capable of generating such functional complexes [the argument from design], proponents of this view conclude... [etc]".

These 'figments of my imagination' are printed in ink and signed by Chomsky.

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.

The exception clause that language is special makes no sense to me – it's 'specialized?' Huh? — Snakes Alive

Yes, specialized. Language - or rather languages - are chock full of various constraints on syntactical construction. One of the aims of early Chomskyian linguistics was to try and pick out a few universals that would be stable across all languages (after which via imaginitive leap they could be designated 'innate'), only the project was such a miserable empirical failure that it ended up with a postulated single universal, recursion, which itself became nothing but a capacity which, even when totally absent from any one actually-existing-language, could unfalsifiably be claimed to constitute the single trans-linguistic universal regardless.

Of course, for those not labouring under the delusions of Chomskian Grammar, the sheer diversity of various syntactic constraints were not so much useless hay to sort though in order to look for the needle of universals, but the very stuff of linguistic theory itself. And when decoupled from the nonsense injunction to hermetically isolate evolutionary considerations to some mythical, unevidenced puntum long-lost in time (after which the whole question of evolution could be bracketed and effectively ignored), the study of evolution and language as co-developmental throws up incredibly rich sets of correlations and reasons to consider evolution not merely relevant, but foundational in shaping the various syantactical constraints that show up in languages. To quote Evans and Levinson:

"In short, there are evolutionarily stable strategies, local minima as it were, that are recurrent solutions across time and space, such as the tendency to distinguish noun and verb roots, to have a subject role, or mutually consistent approaches to the ordering of head and modifier, which underlie the Greenbergian statistical universals linking different features. These tendencies cannot plausibly be attributed to UG, since changes from one stable strategy to another take generations (sometimes millennia) to work through. Instead they result from myriad interactions between communicative, cognitive and processing constraints which reshape existing structures through use.

A major achievement of functionalist linguistics has been to map out, under the rubric of grammaticalization, the complex temporal subprocesses by which grammar emerges as frequently-used patterns sediment into conventionalized patterns. Cultural preoccupations may push some of these changes in particular directions, such as the evolution of kinship-specific pronouns in Australia. And social factors, most importantly the urge to identify with some groups by speaking like them, and to maximize distance from others by speaking differently (studied in fine-grained detail by Labov 1980), act as an amplifier on minor changes that have arisen in the reshaping process". (source, PDF)

The exaptation thesis has to ignore all of this, because it is utterly committed to the idea that language evolved for means other than language. It has to, on the basis of nothing other than a prior, theoretical and dogmatic commitment, entirely stuff all of the above under the bed and argue it away because it cannot, on pain of incoherence, admit any of it into it's theoretical remit. It's alternative? Some middling unsubstantiated, unargued for bullshit about how it probably developed from some other reason (unknown) than hopped the genetic barrier over to humans for, again, no reason given. Language is rich, full of rich features, many of which can, and have been tracked closely with the ways in which it has developed over time, among cultures, in addition to anthropogenesis. To condense this all into some unspecified 'genetic modification' is nothing less than waving a magic wand stamped 'science' and thinking this should be taken seriously by anyone with half a brain.

The exaptation thesis has to ignore all of this, because it is utterly committed to the idea that language evolved for means other than language. — StreetlightX

I don't understand this. What does it mean for language to be the means for which language evolved?

Use. Language as used, which is to say, communicated, shared among its speakers in a socious of linguistic coordination and negotiation, and employed across time (history) and space (geography). i.e. the diametrically opposite position from the Chomskyian one for which language-as-communication is verboten. This and this alone allows language and evolution to be properly thought together without incoherence. So like I said, whatever Chomsky says, do the opposite, and you'll be fine.