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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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References: <3guoku$bci@mp.cs.niu.edu> <D3L79A.IJ4@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <3h66fb$c85@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 16:37:49 GMT
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In article <3h66fb$c85@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In <D3L79A.IJ4@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>In article <3guoku$bci@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>>>In article <3gtu3i$rf3@mp.cs.niu.edu>, 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?
>
>>But perhaps this is not actually possible.  Perhaps w/o a UG
>>creatures like us can't learn a sufficiently expressive language.
>
>That is conceivable, although I think it unlikely.  My argument was
>mainly about whether the 'poverty of stimulus' argument proves
>anything.  You are suggesting a different type of argument for UG.

It seems to me that your thought experiment assumes that a UG
is not needed, and so of course the experiment suggests that a
UG is not necessary.

A UG may not be necessary in general.  Perhaps there are creatures
(or maybe robots) who are able to learn expressive languages starting
from a very different initial basis.  But it may still be that humans
-- or creatures very like humans -- cannot learn very expressive
languges in the time available unless they start with something
like a UG built in.

>>>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.
>
>>What if, w/o the UG, we have the linguistic abilities of chimps.
>>If English (say) evolved to be learnable by such creatures, there'd
>>be very little left.
>
>I don't think that UG would help chimps.

I failed to be sufficiently clear.  I mean that we might be able
to learn only very simple languages or simple parts of languages.

>>>  In the
>>>circumstances, it is almost certain that there will be apparent
>>>evidence which supports a "poverty of stimulus" argument.
>
>>I don't see how this follows (even assuming that the rest of
>>your argument is ok).
>
>Given any learning system whatsoever, it is likely to have biases.
>That is, there are likely to be things that are easier to learn, and
>things that are harder to learn.  [...]

>The point is that there are all kinds of reasons for learning
>biases.  It would be strange if these biases did not affect language
>acquisition.  If there are biases which affect language acquisition,
>the child will learn most effectively those parts of language which
>are easiest to learn, and those are the parts of a language which
>will tend to be propogated to the next generation.
>
>The effect is that language will evolve so as to mainly contain
>features which are easy to learn, given the particular learning
>biases.  Since these features are easy to learn, we would expect
>children to learn them with relatively little stimulus.  Thus there
>would be evidence to support a 'poverty of stimulus' argument.

Ok, I can now see what you're getting at, and I find this argument
much better than the earlier thought experiment.

-- jeff



