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From: curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 19:46:25 GMT
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Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: >>By the time of the next generation, this ungrammatical speech has
: >>become the norm.  Therefore, by virtue of the way linguists define
: >>grammatical, it has become the correct grammar for the new
: >>generation.  In other words, without a UG, the language itself
: >>evolves so as to become learnable without a UG.  Who is to say that
: >>the English language has not already evolved so as to become
: >>learnable without a UG?

: In <D3GBKw.F5D@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
: >Boy, you just don't like UG, do you?  :)  This is an interesting argument,
: >but not a very convincing one, IMHO.  Mutations affect individuals, not
: >populations.  If the change destroys UG, then in effect non-UG individuals
: >would be competing with UG individuals, and presumably, since they couldn't
: >learn language as well, not doing as well.

: Well I can see why you found it unconvincing.  I too would be quite
: unconvinced with the argument as you interpreted it.  Apparently I did
: not explain myself well.

: I was presenting a thought experiment, not suggesting something that
: might have actually happened.  What I was trying to suggest was that,
: even without there being a UG, you can pretty well guarantee that any
: language will evolve to be learnable, simply because a language has
: to be learnable to survive into the next generation.

It has to be learnable by humans, not by (for example) chimpanzees.
If humans actually have a neural implementation of a UG, then
it is quite reasonable to suppose that language is learnable by
those (and only by those) possessing such a UG.

Unfortunately, we have no examples of non-human language users
by which we can measure the degree to which language universals
transcend the accidents of our evolution.

: In the circumstances, it is almost certain that there will be apparent
: evidence which supports a "poverty of stimulus" argument.  In other
: words language will develop so as to support a "poverty of stimulus"
: argument, quite independent of whether or not there is a UG.
: Therefore the poverty argument by itself is no more persuasive that
: there is a UG than it is persuasive that there is not a UG.

But it might very well be that, due to the aforementioned poverty,
no language of human complexity could evolve at all in
the absence of a UG. Your argument would be stronger if the
"poverty of the stimulus" were the only (or even the strongest)
argument favoring a UG. That is, I agree that "the poverty
argument by itself is [not] persuasive". However, when combined
with other arguments, it is strongly corroborative.

Consider vision. We know that considerable preprocessing of
retinal images is hardwired into the brain. Many features of
images are abstracted out of the raw data, before we are
conscious of anything which could be a subject of learning
(I understand that some learning/imprinting takes place at
all levels of the visual system, but it is in some sense
"pre-conscious", "local", and "non-semantic"). Because of
this, we are strongly predisposed to see a world composed of
lines and edges, coherent moving blobs of color, and faces
with eyes. This would be, then, the "Universal Visual Grammar"
of which all our visual experiences are composed. Why should
the case not be similar for language?

Bo


