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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: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 19:26:13 GMT
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: >: curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry) wrote:
: >Some random gleanings from Pinker's "The Language Instinct":
: >1. For every human language, linguists are able to identify
: >constructs which play the roles of Subject, Object, and Verb.
: >This may seem trivial, but it's rather amazing when you think
: >about it. It is not true of artificial languages, e.g. Pascal.

Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: This is entirely consistent with the idea that the meanings
: people desire to communicate are the driving force, rather than
: an innate UG.

But do you have a consistent way to define "the meanings people
desire to communicate" which is independent of their expression
in language?

: >2. Languages which depend on word order tend to keep Object
: >and Verb together. Most word-order languages are either SOV
: >(e.g. Japanese) or SVO (e.g. English), a few are VSO, and
: >the other three possible permutations are very rare or nonexistent.
: >(This is a statistical limit, not an absolute limit. It still
: >requires explanation.)

: Again, this is consistent with semantics playing the an important
                                                   ^^^^^^
: role in sentence construction.

Is the grammtical error you made above a Freudian slip, or what?
If you use the indefinite article, you will get no argument
from me.

: >3. The large majority of SOV languages put question words at the
: >end of sentences, and form postpositional phrases. The large
: >majority of SVO languages put question words at the beginning,
: >and form prepositional phrases. It is not uncommon for
: >a language to shift from SOV to SVO (consider, in English,
: >archaic and poetic phrases like "til death do us part").
: >When a language does so, however, the question words and
: >prepositions shift in synchrony.

: Again, these regularities could be semantic in origin.

Can you explain how, in more detail? This one is not obvious to me.

: >Note that this striking regularity, which obtains only across
: >different languages, cannot be learned by a child, but only
: >by a linguist.

: I am not sure what this means.  You seem to be saying that a
: regularity accross multiple languages can only be discovered using
: data from multiple languages, and someone studying a single language
: is restricted to discovering regularities within that single
: language.  Since this seems obvious, I wonder whether you were trying
: to suggest something more subtle that I missed.

Nope, nothing more subtle. I just wanted to emphasize that some
regularities suffer from "poverty of the stimulus" with a vengeance.

: >4. No language forms questions by total inversion of word
: >order in a sentence (e.g. "Built Jack that house the this is").

: Why is this surprising?  The word order is likely to have something
: to do with meaning and the internal organization of semantic
: structure within the brain.  The semantic structures are not going to
: reorganize themselves just because you want to ask a question.

Aha. We're coming to the nub of it, here.

What do you mean by "semantic structures"? Doesn't the existence
of a "structure" imply some sort of syntax? What is syntax, in
fact, if it is not the structures we impose on our knowledge?

This is related to the comment Minsky made, and deserves some
elaboration. In this peculiarly linear notes-reader, however,
I can't tell if the elaboration has already begun. So bear with
me, we'll get back to this question one way or the other.

: I don't know about other languages.  In English, a child might
: avoid "rats-eater" for purely phonetic reasons.

This explanation does not cover the data.

: >6. It is grammatical in English to form a question from the inversion:
: >"I saw John with Mary." => "Who did you see John with?"
: >The similar construction with a conjunction,
: >"I saw John and Mary." => "Who did you see John and?"
: >is not grammatical in any language. Why not? It makes perfect sense.

: It doesn't make sense to me.

It doesn't? You mean, you have no idea what that sentence might mean?

: I agree that Pinker's is a good book.  It is very readable, and
: expresses his positions very well.  I just don't agree with some of
: his positions.

That, at least, is undeniable.

Bo
