Chomsky wrong on language?

[LBird]

stuartw2112 wrote:

LB: Have you considered that it is your very ideology and your insistence on the importance of it that makes discussion with you so fruitless?

Of course it's 'my very ideology' and my 'insistence on its importance'!I keep saying this, and exposing what my ideology is, because that is the scientific method.The 'fruitlessness of discussion' doesn't stem from that, though, but from the avoidance of the issue by you and the others.

stuartw2112 wrote:

After all, if you've got your ideology and I've got mine, and this rules our perceptions, and there's no such thing as individual opinion or any objective reason why we should believe one thing rather than another, what purpose conversation?

Talk about 'from the horse's mouth'!What ideology, stuart, tells you that we've all got our own individual opinions?I haven't 'got my ideology', I've 'got a socially-produced ideology', which has a social origin and a historical development.You've got one, too, but it tells you that you haven't, and that you're an individual, and that your opinion is yours.So, it will be 'fruitless' trying to discuss with someone who insists that 'they have their very own ideology'. People who insist that haven't lived in society, apparently. Yeah, right.That's why it's 'fruitless' discussing with you, stuart. Wake up and smell the coffee.  Pehaps a nice American chain brand, which no doubt you believe is 'individually' produced just for you. And bollocks to the notion that it's a commodity, eh?

stuartw2112 wrote:

And what could "workers power" based on such unthinking ideology be other than a grotesque tyranny – one indeed that the world has only in living memory seen the back of?

Bingo! What a rich seam we're hitting today!So, you think (individually of course, with no social input from the bourgeoisie) that the Soviet Union et al were examples of 'workers' power'?This just gets better and better!'Fruitless'? I get more sensible political discussion, and experience of the world we live in, from the family dog!Yeah, stuart, you're totally correct – it's fruitless discussing with an ideological Democratic Communist like me. Especially with you being so untainted by the world and its dirty social ideologies.In fact, I should defer to you as St. Stuart, since you have such insight into politics, economics, philosophy, history…Amen.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

LBird wrote:

Yes, I have tried, and I know that, with you at least, I've failed. That makes me unhappy.

This observation from a non-member of this forum should make you even more unhappy:

Quote:

I am a loyal reader of the forum. Sometimes I recommend threads on it to friends — such as the thread on hunter-gatherers. (But then I have to warn them to not read any postings from or back to the tiresome maniac LBird.)

 

Another individualist, materialist, who deosn't do critical thought or philosophy, I presume?Just wants 'The Truth', eh?Let them not read my tiresome posts, then. Diddums.

[Capitalist Pig]

with all this talk about you have your ideology and I have mine, why does it matter? We may have different ideologies but the only thing that really matters is the communist theory that we all desire to become reality. A house divided against itself will not stand.

[stuartw2112]

LB: All you can do is spin the same old record, over and over again, even when the subject of discussion is why you continue to spin the record. I'm proud to accept the "saint" label. Better a saint than a (unconscious) Stalinist. Over and out.

[moderator1]

Reminder: 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’).Predicatable given the nature of this thread.  Duh!

[stuartw2112]

Thanks for the link YMS. I wasn't expecting to be able to understand a word of it, but it is a short, clear and (as you say) recent summary of the ideas from the horse's (horses') mouth(s). Seems perfectly reasonable – totally unlike the caricature offered by Knight, whatever the appeal of his rhetoric.

[Young Master Smeet]

Just to try and keep things up to date:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4332683/This one should be freely accesible. PLoS Biol. 2015 Feb; 13(2): e1002063. Published online 2015 Feb 13. doi:  10.1371/journal.pbio.1002063PMCID: PMC4332683Language: UG or Not to Be, That Is the QuestionJohan J. Bolhuis,1,2,* Ian Tattersall,3 Noam Chomsky,4 and Robert C. Berwick5 

Quote:

Language is a computational operation occurring in the mind of an individual, independent of its possible communicative use, while speech is one possible externalization of language (among others such as sign) and is not an essential aspect of it.

I think this is a key statement (and made this year) of what Chomsky et al mean by language, and they don't mean words, at all.  Hence why, I think the post I quickly made on Sunday is important, since it shows that human individuals can create sign language.  Indeed, Bolhius et al argue

Quote:

Emphasis on speech and the vocal tract is beside the point; as Lenneberg [9] showed nearly 50 years ago, signers acquire and use sign just as speakers do.

So according to Chomsky and his colleagues, language does not even ferature in that internal monologue in your head, language is what lies behind the words (much as Serle's Chinese Box thought experimment suggested intentionality does lie behind symbolisation).

[Dave B]

Does anybody have any further details of Chomsky’s breakout of Africa circa 100,000 years ago which is central to his sudden language hypothosis? Not that I disagree with it, I discussed it in general terms on out forum a couple of years ago re genetic archaeology and mitochondrial DNA etc. I even went to a lecture given by the lead developer of the technique a couple of years ago. There are implications I think as the sudden breakout may have been due to sudden climate change and the lake of toba thing.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory. Ie our modern humans could have been gradually evolving language and social skills etc for some time before the opportunity came to take advantage of it.  

[stuartw2112]

Hi Dave,Chomsky's just taking as read the standard view – or it was last I paid attention. See work of Chris Stringer.cheers

[ALB]

When Chomsky first formulated his universal grammar hypothesis people wouldn't have known much about DNA and how genes worked, would they? And he is positing a gene (or group of genes) for language. Until it  is found (if it is) his hypothesis must remain just that.

[Dave B]

OK , background as I understand it. Very recently an astonishing new scientific multi track and discipline theory has been produced by truth creating scientist for our own devious ends to take over the word.So be warned; we are the body snatchers of ideology! It has been dependent on the evolutionary technology re gene mapping, chemists working on gene replicating polymerase stuff,spanner monkeys and the French. And the data crunching and spitting, processing power no problem, computers; they really are shits and we do ned to keep an eye on them before microsoft word becomes Skynet and terminator sentient which I think it already is. Hence we can now tell if your horse meat burgers contains lamb etc or for instance if your orange juice has been coloured with mandarin juice.  I think the French gobshites, in practice, started or refined it first because they are petty bourgeois snobs when it comes to grape varieties, Spanish ‘Champagne’ and shit like that- but I am a chauvinist.] Anyway the conclusion is amazing even if it started with French wine? Circa 100,000 there were a group of people in southwest Africa, whose ancestors have stayed put and are still almost classical primitive communist hunter gathers (it is almost too good to be true).  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_people Suddenly they started to spread out at an amazing rate. They moved northwest ish reaching Ethopia about 40,000 years ago or so crossed over the Red Sea onto a piece of land on the southern end coast of the Arabian peninsula that is now under water due higher sea levels and was probably then on the edge of the monsoon region and like Ceylon; separate and independent scientific discipline. They put the number that crossed the Red seaat about 4000 individuals before they were cut off. Alice Roberts BBC the incredible human journey. I asked the guy who lead the team if that number was accurate and he said they gave it under pressure from the producers as a ballpark number as it made for good TV. Then moved up into Iran and Iraq in to the central Russia or whatever before panning out east and west. Around 20-30,000 years ago, this date  rages, a band of “17-24” individuals crossed the beering straits to populate South America before they got cut off. This is based on two separate datasets using a related techniques. Male Y chromosome and ‘female’ mitochondrial DNA analysis. The male Y chromosome and ‘female’ mitochondrial DNA analysis people hate each other and compete as to which is the best technique. But they come up with the same conclusions but differing by about 20-30,000 years or so. I think the mitochondrial DNA analysis people have the edge as it maps on better with historical Meteorology and archaeology gravel monkey people. It appears that Chomsky has his big bang cosmic ray language mutation theory fitting into the same time period and location etc etc. So, with Chomsky, we started to talk in southwest Africa100,000 years ago and decided, maybe flippantly, because of imaginary stories of what was over the horizon started to pack up and walk. As an anti revolutionary big bang cosmic ray language mutation person I would be a vulgar schoolboy Darwinist who lacks an appreciation of recent Nobel prize winning theories on revolutionary evolution. Actually I am not; as I understand that a very small tweaks in genes can produce very dramatic effects. Thus a fruit fly can be observed to develop extra wings and body parts etc as dramatic superficial effect but small changes in the application of pre-existent programming. [There was an excellent Star Trek The Next Generation Episode on this with old turned off Genes being turned on and current ones off etc.] I am a bit of a closet non vulgar lamarkian actually..However, the counter theory to language breakout of Africa theory of Chomsky might be; that out modern humans in southwest Africa were gradually and happily evolving, developing the sharing and co-operative instinct as the result of a 'series of chomsky vulgar mutating cosmic rays' to no great 'regional' advantage. And a sudden climatic wipe out of hominid competition to the north and sorting stress to themsleves opened up space for migration into empty ecosystems.   

[Young Master Smeet]

Adam,I don't think he is positing a gene, as such, but an organ, or, rather, a module of the brain, but you're right, given the way he has happily shifted ground over the years,it's an hypothesis, maybe even as far as theory…

[stuartw2112]

One of the things I love about Chomsky is that he is a bucket of cold water in the face for anyone who thinks they really know anything – ie, no one is a bigger party-pooper when it comes to wild speculation than he is (as I found out in the interview I linked to earlier). As he has pointed out, we know the complete genetic code and every detail of the neurological wiring and cellular organisation of the nematode worm C. elegans. And yet we still know nothing about how it decides whether to turn left or right. (Details from memory, so maybe wrong, but you see the point.) Given that gap in our knowledge, what hope for people who think they've figured out how language works, or how it evolved? Physicists don't even know what "material" is. What hope for "materialist" accounts of complex social phenomena such as say wars? None of this stops him or anyone else yakking on about it of course. But humility might be called for!

[ALB]

Somebody else who didn't agree with Chomsky's approach to language:http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/obits/obituaries/11880077.Obituary__Academic_formed_a_linguistics_theory_that_jettisoned_the_rules/?ref=rss

[alanjjohnstone]

Just to add to this thread, came across this video of Chomsky discussing science and linguistics and evolution…Part 1 …go forward to 20 minutes or so for the start of it. https://zcomm.org/zvideo/971918/Always better to base views on what comes out of  the horses mouth rather than defer to the "interpreters" and i found this typical of Chomsky…expressing complex ideas in simple terms that makes the subject interesting to listen to. 

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