What do you mean by system of thought? Are there multiple systems of thought, language being one? It looks like you're trying to distinguish between a "system of thought" and "communication". Is that correct or no? — Noble Dust
Because I don't understand what "system of thought" is supposed to mean, I'm not clear on how it differs from communication — Noble Dust
Language is a system of thought. It's communicated very rarely, whether by sign or through speech. So it's communicative properties aren't what's essential. One can communicate with a hairstyle, bees with a waggle dance, etc. There are all kinds of ways to communicate, down through the insects. So language certainly isn't that. — Xtrix
Evolutionary endowed language capacities evolved very slowly. (Chomsky can offer no real insights there...)... — VagabondSpectre
I'm basically of the opinion that if you take everything Chomsky said about language, and then held the diametrically opposite view to anything he ever wrote on language ever, you'd be roughly on the right track. Like, you couldn't ask for a better, more exemplary, utterly wrong way to look at language than from a Chomskian POV. — StreetlightX
The long and short of it for me is that Chomsky's approach to language is evolutionary nonsense. Not only does Chomksy and his ilk almost entirely divorce language from function, but so too does he universalize utterly contingent aspects of language while at the same time making those aspects 'innate'. It's a Platonism of language that is, for me, indistinguishable from a theism. No one who takes evolution seriously can take Chomsky seriously. — StreetlightX
Here and here [both pdfs] are some easy reading if you're interested in some rather straightforward critiques of the Chomskian paradigm. The long and short of it for me is that Chomsky's approach to language is evolutionary nonsense. Not only does Chomksy and his ilk almost entirely divorce language from function, but so too does he universalize utterly contingent aspects of language while at the same time making those aspects 'innate'. It's a Platonism of language that is, for me, indistinguishable from a theism. No one who takes evolution seriously can take Chomsky seriously.
Edit: A popular article by Vyvyan Evans, a summary of his book on the utter and complete waste of time that is Chomskian linguistics, can be found here, if you'd prefer some lighter reading: https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-is-in-there-is-no-language-instinct — StreetlightX
Just this alone goes to show they've never read a word of Chomsky. Of course language evolved. It's difficult to see, however, how it evolved incrementally. So yes, it's possible that it appeared in one human a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Hence the sudden explosion of creativity that's seen at this time — Xtrix
You’re seriously putting forward that Chomsky has moved the field of linguistics backward? — I like sushi
You misunderstand - Chomsky et. al. effectively say that the FLN ('faculty of language in the narrow sense', which includes only recursion and nothing else) should not be considered to be adaptive. They want instead to insist that it is exaptive - it evolved for some other, entirely unspecified, entirely speculative, and entirely theoretically unsubstantiated purpose. — StreetlightX
But that's just the first ridiculous line of non-argument. — StreetlightX
The next utterly incredulous step they make is to say that having evolved for something else (who knows what or why?), this adaptation (which was decidedly not for language) became harnessed by humans for the purposes of language. How and why? Not. a. single. attempt. at. an. answer. — StreetlightX
Instead we get this shit: "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. This change from domain-specific to domain-general may have been guided by particular selective pressures, unique to our evolutionary past, or as a consequence (by-product) of other kinds of neural reorganization." (Quotes from "The Faculty of Language", Chomsky et. al.). — StreetlightX
Who's arguing the FLN isn't adaptive? — Xtrix
Between the work of Vyvyan Evans (The Language Myth), Daniel Everett (How Language Began), and Daniel Dor (The Instruction of the Imagination), I'm basically convinced that Chomskyian linguistics is the entirely wrong approach to anything regarding language. — StreetlightX
If the only operation in FLN is the operation that appears in every computational system ["Merge"], and if it's a fact at some point in evolutionary history humans got the capacity for unbounded computation, then at the very least they had to have this minimal computational operation (Merge), and if they only have this (and the general principle of keeping computation efficient), then the story of acquisition is already over. — Xtrix
Paraphrased: "FLN must have been evolutionarily acquired because FLN must have been evolutionarily acquired:. — StreetlightX
Chomsky: "As a matter of simple logic, it would be impossible for the language to contradict any theory of mine, even if the claims about the language were true. The reason is simple: these theories have to do with the faculty of language, the basis for acquiring and using individual languages ... ". — Xtrix
It's worth noting that Chomsky's response here is a straightforward admission of unfalsifiability. Quite literally, not a single piece of emperical evidence - of language-as-actually-spoken - would be able to contradict his theories. Insofar as he's dealing with the 'faculty' and hence potential for language, no actual use of language could bring the theory into question. This is the very definition of unscientific. — StreetlightX
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 like sushi
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 — I like sushi
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. — I like sushi
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? — I like sushi
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
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