Chomsky wrong on language?

[Young Master Smeet]

LBird wrote:

But there you go – a site which claims to be giving a lead to workers

We don't claim that.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

But there you go – a site which claims to be giving a lead to workers

We don't claim that.

You certainly don't, YMS.The whole concept of 'workers', never mind 'democracy', or, god forbid, 'workers' power' are anathema to your individualism.But don't worry about the substance of my earlier post to Hud, and just concentrate on your own ideology.

[stuartw2112]

A comrade once pointed out to me the difference between political engagement and fanaticism. If someone comments on the price of bread and then offers an idea about the causes of inflation, then that is a reasonable basis for a political discussion. If, however, someone turns to you in the bus queue, rolls their eyes, and comments on how typical it is for the bus to be late, only a fanatic would use that as an excuse for launching into a diatribe about privatisation and the commodification of human relations. I say this, LBird, because I'd be interested if any bus has ever turned up in this forum that you don't see as a legitimate reason for launching into your half sensible/half looney claims about "ideology"?

[LBird]

stuartw2112 wrote:

…your half sensible/half looney claims about "ideology"…

The usual response, stuart.You know there's something to it (as do the academics in their prefaces, as do all who pay lip-service to the fruits of 20th century philosophy of science), but you don't like where it takes us, in practice (so talk of 'fanaticism', 'diatribe' and 'looney').I'd ask you which ideology you use, but I'll bet you'll protest 'But, I'm an individual, with my own opinions, and I merely weight the objective evidence', without any recognition that those are precisely the ideas that the ruling class expounds.It must be pure co-incidence, that a Communist who argues for democracy in truth production is deemed a 'looney'.It certainly scares the academics, who populate bourgeois academia, whose elite expert role would come under question by the class conscious proletariat.I ask a proper question, stuart: if workers are to democratically control the means of production, doesn't that include scientific knowledge and the social production of 'truth'?If not, who is to control science and truth?Or do you believe the bourgeois mythology about 'disinterested academics' employing a 'neutral method', only concerned to reveal 'The Truth' by dispassionate examination of 'The Facts'?Unfortunately, the 'looney claims' are as true as the sensible ones, about ideology.

[moderator1]

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[Hud955]

"no-one else will declare which ideology tells them what to say."  Where did you get this idea from, LB?  It is maybe true in academia, at least generally, but I'm not aware of it here.  If SPGBers don't declare their ideology with every post, I think that is because they wear their Marxian thinking quite openly. It's why they are posting here, not writing letters to The Telegraph."Ahhh… the 'get-out clause'. Lip service to 'theory', then return to 'facts' and 'individuals'. Which 19th century ideology stressed facts, individualism, and 'amateur experts'? Liberalism, perchance?"I think this is why I find your views so unpalatable, LB.     Marx never attempted to shoehorn selected historical or other  data into a rigid theoretical straitjacket.  He was never a crude or mechanistic thinker.  His theories are investigative tools, not statements of meta-historical necessity.  You have to start with evidence – in this case evidence about Chomsky, and there is a lot of it – and then , applying a general theoretical understanding to it, see where that takes you.   Historical materialism becomes a mockery of itself when it merely play lip-service to the wide ranging evidence available and then returns to 'theory' to provide a crudely undetailed account of the world  "Let's see. Chomsky stresses 'individuals', their 'biology' (not their socially-produced thought) and the role of 'elite experts' like himself, in the production of social knowledge. Chomsky would shit himself at the very idea that a vote by workers should determine whether his ideas have any 'truth' or not. Some here would, too. So much for socialism being workers' power.But you apparently can't see this, Hud. You can't see how Chomsky's political ideology plays, not only a massive role in his views on linguistics, but also a massive role in his so-called 'Anarchism'. We have quite a few here who also subscribe to 'free individuals', rather than 'democratic control of production'."What a crude mash-up!  It seems that in your hands, the sole purpose of this analytical principle is make the thinnest attempt at providing 'evidence', apply to it the merest ghost of a thought, and then bludgen your way through to your  second, and equally crude obsession.   To an outsider like myself, it seems the world you inhabit consists of these two projected ideas and little else. If historical materialism were ever to be reduced to this caricature of itself in the wider world, then we might all as well pack up our bags and go home.Chomsky's position is complex, his situation and role are complex, there are many complex ideological and material influences on him.  His views have many complex social and ideological consequences.  Without consideration of this we can't begin to get an idea how the man's political ideology might influence his linguistics.  You may be right.  I doubt whether Chomsky would accept that workers outside his field should be allowed to determine the truth of his theories (in fact, I could give you quotes to demonstrate it), but then that is also true of other academics who stress neither 'individuals' nor their 'biology', but the very opposite.  Drawing crude lines between these 'facts' as you  have just done, does not constitute either a sound application of theoretical principle, or even much in the way of actual thought. 

[LBird]

Hud955 wrote:

You have to start with evidence … and then , applying a general theoretical understanding to it, see where that takes you.

This is not the scientific method, Hud.One does not start with 'evidence'.What counts as evidence is tied to one's theory.Even bourgeois philosophers of science have got that far – so why are we here ignoring the scientific method, as pointed out by Marx, of 'theory and practice'?You are employing a method of 'practice and theory'.Even you will admit that 'facts' are 'theory-laden', so how can you argue that one 'starts with the evidence'? The 'evidence' is tainted by theory from the start.Why not be open about our theories, which point to 'evidence'?Chomsky's theories point to 'evidence' that we wouldn't accept; the sooner we examine Chomsky's ideology, the sooner we'll understand why his 'evidence' is flawed, from our socialist perspective.There is no simple evidence. You are making a methodological error. It's not science.First warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts. 6. Do not make repeated postings of the same or similar messages to the same thread, or to multiple threads or forums (‘cross-posting’). Do not make multiple postings within a thread that could be consolidated into a single post (‘serial posting’). Do not post an excessive number of threads, posts, or private messages within a limited period of time (‘flooding’).

[moderator1]

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[Anonymous]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I believe Chomsky is fluent in several languages, and I beleive hs published an analysis of Hebrew.As for rationalism: part of the problem, as I suggest is once you elimjinate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be da troot, as someone never said.If I understand what I've read of what he's saying, it's not that "carburetor" relates to any real world object, but to a mental position.  It's rather like there is a filing cabinet in our minds, and an empty drawer gets made into the parking space for a new concept (and the same parking space in each mind).  That's slightly less implausible, if each mind is using the same indexing instrucions (lets all play spot the librarian).What this does, in effect, is take the ball away from the post modernists.  They play with the radical disconnect between signifier and signified, and eventually come up with the impossibility of communication.  He takes that, and, in much the same way as Russell, says that concepts are only ever interior, and there is no connection between signifier and signified at all.  There is a common "meaning" grounded ultimately in biology, and common humanity.If Chomsky is right, not only is communication possible, but it is possible without ideology, it holds open the prospect for genuine human communication.What, thouh, this ultimately comes down to is: how do you deal with the poverty of stimulous? Eitehr you experimentally disprove it, or you account for it, and the only account that can make sense is that there is firmware behind language.

 Noam Chomsky is only fluent in the English language, most of his interview has been edited or translated. He had an interview in Nicaragua and they had to used translators for him, and he has a television interview and they used a translator too.He might understand others foreign languages, and he  might know the grammatical structures of others languages, but he does not speak them. He said that he learned the classical Hebrew language, but nobody speak that language, and he also said that he has forgotten because ha has never used it.Many of the researches  on foreign language have been done by students, it is like  most of the presidents of the US, they do not write their own speeches, they use professional writers, and their memoirs are written by professional writers too

[Hud955]

LBird wrote:

Hud955 wrote:

You have to start with evidence … and then , applying a general theoretical understanding to it, see where that takes you.

This is not the scientific method, Hud.   One does not start with 'evidence'.

LB, you are confusing the testing of a theory with the application of a theoretical principle to the analysis of a situation.   When conducting an investigation, Marx always started with the evidence, and so should we, because anything else is dogma.The ideology of a researcher is not the only determinant of truth.  If that were the case, then socialists would have nothing to say to anyone except that we didn't agree with them, and Marx could have saved himself a great deal of time and trouble researching data/evidence for Capital in the British Museum.  Moreover, the idea that we can understand how Chomsky's linguistics are influenced by his politics while  ignoring 99.9% of the information we have about him and his institutional setting strikes me as even more absurd than the man's lingustic theories.

LBird wrote:

What counts as evidence is tied to one's theory. Even bourgeois philosophers of science have got that far – so why are we here ignoring the scientific method, as pointed out by Marx, of 'theory and practice'?  You are employing a method of 'practice and theory'.  Even you will admit that 'facts' are 'theory-laden', so how can you argue that one 'starts with the evidence'? The 'evidence' is tainted by theory from the start.  Why not be open about our theories, which point to 'evidence'?   Chomsky's theories point to 'evidence' that we wouldn't accept; the sooner we examine Chomsky's ideology, the sooner we'll understand why his 'evidence' is flawed, from our socialist perspective.  There is no simple evidence. You are making a methodological error. It's not science.  

If you think that Chomsky's linguistics are influenced by his politics, then you will have to show how this is so.  His methodological individualism, his Cartesianism and his biological determinism are the intellectual foundations on which his linguistic theories rest.  These are intellectual positions usually associated with capitalist or propertarian ideologies, political viewpoints very different from Chomsky's own.  So, right from the start we already have an unusual situation.   And it is that appartent contradiction that you need to explain in order to substantiate your claim, that his linguistics derive in some coherent and intelligible way from his political ideology. Personally I think Chomsky was very wrong in his linguistic theories, but I think the reasons for that are far more complex, more interesting and much more systemic, than your simplistic and, indeed, individualistic account has so far managed to produce.  And you have failed, I think,  largely because you have ignored huge swathes of the evidence, including – and this seems odd for someone who calls himself a socialist – the institutional and economic framework within which Chomsky is embedded.    

[LBird]

Hud955 wrote:

His methodological individualism, his Cartesianism and his biological determinism are the intellectual foundations on which his linguistic theories rest.  These are intellectual positions usually associated with capitalist or propertarian ideologies, political viewpoints very different from Chomsky's own.

[my bold]I'm just going to have to be happy with what you've publicly said here, Hud, and leave it at that, because I'm going to get banned (yet again) for asking questions about our proletarian method. My warnings from the moderator are stacking up.Hopefully, either you or another poster will deepen these insights into Chomsky's ideological foundations, upon which are built his parameters of selection for 'evidence'.Our selection parameters will be very different, because we have different 'foundations/positions/ideologies/viewpoints' , as you call them, from Chomsky's 'capitalist/propertarian' ones.Put simply, he's a bourgeois academic, and workers should be aware of this, when reading his necessarily biased work.

[Anonymous]

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/02/pirahã-undermines-noam-chomskys-idea-of-a-universal-grammar.htmlPiraha undermines Noam Chomskys idea of a universal grammar  Chomsky should have studied Anthropology  instead of Linguistic

[ALB]

Contribution from a follower in the Far East of this forum:

Quote:

taken from Victor Mair's blog at http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17949 , on the 'If you speak Mandarin, your brain is different' article: =================== Turning to the question of tones and the brain, I asked several colleagues who specialize in the cognitive aspects of East Asian languages their opinion of the article and paper cited above.  Their replies follow below.From Bill Hannas:If the study did no more than the linked article states, it fails to support its conclusion.  The claim, reportedly, is that phonemic tone accounts for observed differences in brain network activation between English and Mandarin speakers.  While these differences, if valid, are interesting, why didn't the researchers back up their claim by testing additional groups of speakers, e.g., Vietnamese (south: 5 tones, north: 6) or, for that matter, native speakers of other Chinese languages where the number of tones, their contours, sandhi rules and, arguably, linguistic importance vary from the Mandarin "standard"?  Am I missing something here?From Jim Unger:There may be an area somewhere in the right hemisphere that controls suprasegmental pitch adjustments (tone) in real time, but so what?  It certainly doesn't mean that the brains of Mandarin speakers are unique in some transcendental way.  There are loads of other tone or pitch accent languages in the world, even if they are a minority of all languages.  It doesn't prove that phonemic tone is transcendentally special:  there are many other "unusual" phonemic contrasts that occur in only a minority of languages, any one of which might also be handled in some specific brain area or other.  It does not add significant evidence to support sweeping theories of hemispheric laterality, on which Kosslyn and others have lately poured a good deal of empirical cold water.  In fact, given that speech production involves the coordination of numerous articulatory gestures in real time, it is more likely that pitch adjustments, voice onset time for obstruents, etc., are under the control of several competing loci in the brain, not just one, even if that one seems always to be active during the time that gesture is occurring.From a psycholinguist who specializes on Chinese:This is of course pretty surfacy stuff. Our brains are all different, and if you were to hold everything else constant and allow to vary only the languages that we speak, you'd find very minor, insignificant differences. Mandarin lights up brain areas about the same as any other language when the same tasks are performed. Functionally speaking, tasks focusing on 'contrastive tone' and 'contrastive stress' would activate the same brain areas, and those areas would only minimally involve R-hemisphere 'musical tone'.From a colleague who is a specialist on writing systems:Usually when I read a story on "here's your brain on Mandarin vs. English" there's some sort of link to Hanzi, along with entirely unsupported claims of their special and useful difference. So it's refreshing to see something without that for a change. Still, the article doesn't say anything about just how much difference was observed. And I'm wondering a lot about what is called "intelligible speech." Is that Mandarin as it is normally spoken or with the exaggerated tones of sing-song speech so common when someone is asked to read aloud?Is tonal vs. non-tonal really such an absolute distinction? Are there degrees? And as the write-up notes, "Tone matters in English, just not to the same extent as in Chinese." So what happens in the brains of English speakers if given tonal variations on the "Where have you been?" question?Another thing I'd like to see is the same study run with native speakers of tonal languages with different tones than Mandarin: Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Thai, for example. Are there differences among them? And would PRC-based scientists want to risk a study that might point to possible differences (however small) in the brains of Mandarin and Cantonese speakers? Heh.Tones are not sacrosanct, nor do they have the ability to modify a person'e brain.

So it seems that the press exaggerated the significance of the research mentioned in the opening post of this thread.Back to square one, then. But there must be somebody other than Sinocentrics and Chris Knight who can or have mounted a credible challenge to Chomsky's biological determinism on this issue.

[alanjjohnstone]

I live in Thailand and so the importance of tones in speaking is well known to me but it is not unsurmountable…understanding is still dependent upon context of the conversation as it is in the pronouncation of English…I went to sea on sheeps……But the Bushmen of the Kalihari use clicks in their language…which part of the brain determines those?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6WO5XabD-s

[Young Master Smeet]

I'm afraid that's why I kept coming back to the poverty of stimulous thing, which, if I may (legitimately and properly) argue by appeal to authority, remains broadly acepted as holding in linguistic circles (there are critics, obviously).  If that holds then there must be *some* internal mechanism for language generation (rather than simple acquisition).  The range and extent is up for debate (and you don't need to go as far as Chomsky, but you need to travel down the same street at least).   Further, as I've noted, the creation of new languages by maroon communities shows how language is not a function of a communal transmission.  There are, IIRC, a range of conditions (I think, including some species of autism) that inhibit language acquisition, and seem to throw some light on the subject.The bottom line, WRT Chomsky, is that his contibutions have been significant, and he remains the old gun slinger that everyone wants to beat.  I'm sure one day he will be beaten.

[Author]

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