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From: gerryg@il.us.swissbank.com (Gerald Gleason)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
Message-ID: <1995Jan25.152928.17262@il.us.swissbank.com>
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Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 15:29:28 GMT
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Neil Rickert writes
> In <D2xL1y.MzF@hpl.hp.com> curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry) writes:
> >Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
> 
> >: Chomsky explicitly denies that language acquisition can be part of a
> >: general learning facility.  Thus he must be arguing for a completely
> >: new structure built on completely new principles.  But Chomsky has
> >: not provided a plausible evolutionary path which would allow the
> >: development of this completely new structure.  He normally refuses to
> >: seriously discuss the question of how language might have evolved.
> 
> >The opposable thumb we anthropoids enjoy is a specialized adaptation
> >for grasping, not a general locomotor facility. This is not to say
> >that it did not evolve from such a general facility. Similarly,
> >Chomsky claims that human language acquisition is a special
> >genetic adaptation.
> 
> There is a large difference.  We can see the opposable thumb, we
> can measure it, we can design approximate mechanical versions of
> the opposable thumb, and of the corresponding finger of other
> animals, to compare their functionality.
> 
> We cannot see the UG.  Some people claim to find evidence for it
> while others do not find any such evidence.  Roughly speaking, those
> who consider language to be a syntactic operation in which semantics
> is little more than an epiphenomenon find evidence for UG.  Those who
> think language is primarily a semantic exercise, in which the syntax
> acts as a helper, do not find evidence for UG.  Those who claim
> evidence for UG have not found any reliable way to measure it, that
> could convince the skeptics.  Nor have they constructed an artifact
> (perhaps a computer program) which would have the presumed
> functionality of UG and which demonstrably works.

I think the two of you are talking at cross purposes.  Clearly, human  
languages have universals, but what is wrong is to claim that the  
universal is a grammer.  The program to find a UG in the sense originally  
meant by Chomsky and his supporters has failed, and so many have concluded  
that natural language does not have an abstract, exclusively syntactical  
grammer.

There are unquestionable regularities below the level of words, in the  
phonetics and morphology.  If someone was ambitious enough to take on the  
project, I bet you could fully characterize the range of possiblities in  
phonetics and word structure that actually exist in human language.  Your  
theory probably would predict a greater range of possibilities than are  
actually present, but it would also predict that many other possibilities  
cannot exist.  Even then, you would not have defined everything about  
human vocalizations, since not all of this is even lingistic, and  
semantics penetrates here as well in the form of stress and tone markers.

Gerry Gleason
