Enough with empty philosophical discourse about language! :-) This is for empirical data, models that are testable, tools for machine translation... The topic of this thread is the scientific method applied to language, in other words linguistics. — Olivier5
when somebody finds out that I’m a linguist, the first question they ask me is how many languages I speak. — Olivier5
This methodology involved consulting your own intuitions about what is possible and what is not possible in language. This was a brilliant new way to unpack the structure of languages, of your own native language. — Olivier5
Google Translate is useful — Bitter Crank
One can write pretty good, best-selling texts in predominantly Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English; Tolkien wrote several volumes of it. Granted, Tolkien didn't have the problem of explaining viruses, the risks of anal sex (which is probably what the orcs preferred) or proper condom use. — Bitter Crank
an English text avoiding entirely words of French origin would be just as artificial — Olivier5
It’s not me talking but professor Shravan Vasishth, an Indian-origin professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Potsdam in Germany.
How would you describe Chomsky’s approach? — Olivier5
What you say sounds a lot closer to what people understand as Chomsky's approach. — Bitter Crank
It makes sense to me that the capacity and operation of language would reside in the brain as directed by our species' genetics. Our very complex brains were not built 'de novo'. The need for, and means to communication existed in our predecessor species. We are not born with a ROM-stored language (Chinese, Urdu, Swahili, Norwegian...) but we are born with instructions to acquire the available languages which present themselves to us. We don't have to be taught' it's more like "language falls into place in our brains". — Bitter Crank
my guess is that Old French had a much larger, more sophisticated corpus than Old English did — Bitter Crank
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.