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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
Message-ID: <D3r847.EuB@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <D38qGn.H6L@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <D3Fpv3.8o2@spss.com> <D3LGHJ.LpM@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> <D3nIwA.5CA@spss.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 22:36:06 GMT
Lines: 132

In article <D3nIwA.5CA@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <D3LGHJ.LpM@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>,
>Andrzej Pindor <pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca> wrote:
>>In article <D3Fpv3.8o2@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>>There's some stages of language acquisition where this might be true-- 
>>>infants learning names of things, for instance-- but I don't see that it's
>>>even approximately true of the process as a whole.  Children start speaking
>>>by babbling, for instance, which is hardly copying anything they hear.
>>>A two-year-old's sentences are almost entirely novel, not copied from
>>>any adult utterance, and indeed violating many rules of adult grammar.
>>
>>I can only speak from my own experience with two-year-old's (and it has been
>>quite a few years since) but their sentences are mostly ad-hoc combinations
>>of the elements of the language they have heard. They are able to parse
>>the speach they hear into words and they combine them according to patterns 
>>they have discerned. What is your definition of "almost entirely novel"?
>>Children are copying the words they have heard and phrases they have heard,
>>what is the novelty you are talking about?
>
>Children, like adults, can create words, phrases and sentences they have never 
>heard before.  Certainly the elements they build them out must be learned
>from others, but to call the whole process "copying" because of that is
>like saying that writing a computer program is "copying" because the names
>of the commands are copied from a manual, or that composing a piece of music
>is "copying" because all the notes already exist on the piano.
>
It seems to me that part of the disagreement comes from different 
interpretations of the of the word "copying". I did say aboove that children
combine the elements of the language they heard in various ways, like
they experiment with toy blocks, etc. My main point is that they experiment
with material which comes from listening (in case of language) to the adult's
speech. Even inventing new words (or their private speech, which sometimes
happens) can be considered as copying what adults do - after all they hear
adults making sounds which do not mean anything to the kids.

>Let's look at some of the things English speaking children generally learn
>by about their third birthday:
>
>* They can express a wide variety of concepts, by no means limited to 
>ones they have heard before.  The major purpose of language, after all, is

Do you mean that three year olds invent rutinely new concepts? There are
of course geniuses, but in general I am very sceptical.

>to communicate; and one of the things a theory of language must explain,
>it seems to me, is how a speaker can use it to frame and express utterances.
>Putting the emphasis on "copying the words... and phrases they have heard"
>seems to me to miss the point.
>
It may miss some points, but it also stresses an important, in my view,
feature of learning by children - copying what adults do and observing 
results. 

(an impressive list of children language abilities by third birthday 
omitted)
>
>(This is not simply a summary of English grammar; important omissions,
>presumably learned later, include passives, reflexives, and the perfect tense.)
>
>* They've grasped the conceptual and semantic features underlying all that, 
>including developing a system of categorization (cf. _Women, Fire, and 
>Dangerous Things_), an understanding of time, causation, and possession, 
>understanding of reasons and goals, acquaintance with various speech acts and 
>their effect, and of course an enormous amount of real-world knowledge.
>
Like in the list above, I think that these statements are far too strong 
and tainted by a theory one wants to prove by these 'facts'. Note that many 
adults have problems with 'understanding of reasons and goals' except in
very simple situations. Ascribing all this to children is in the same category
as insisting that Koko the Gorilla (or other ape) understands the sign
language (or whatever else). It is to a large extend a matter of interpretation
or theory used to organize the observations. For instance children make a lot
of mistakes in language use (as you have observed yourself). At which stage 
are we going to decide that they know the correct use of prepositions, for
instance, if sometimes they use them right and sometimes wrong? 

>Considering all this, most linguists don't find an explanation in terms of
>copying what is heard very compelling.  They see the child building a
>complex conceptual system, linked to sophisticated grammatical and pragmatic
>knowledge, and, importantly, a procedure for perceiving and integrating new 
>grammatical insights; copying things heard is only one part of the process. 
>
>(If they're Chomsky, of course, they think that much of this is a) inbuilt
>and b) language-specific.  But this is by no means accepted by all linguists.)
>
Of course the copying is only a part of the process, but it provides the
material on which learning is build and it seems to me that importance of
this input is not sufficiently recognized. As you probably know, children
brought up in orphanages from the very early age (as babies) have a lot
of developmental problems, for instance they do not speak very well. There
just is not there enough adults to listen to. If there was a very strong
innate component to language learning, this probably would not be such 
a problem.

>>>And children are often highly resistant to grammatical correction, which
>>>they shouldn't be if they're just copying what they hear.
>>>
>>They are resistant to grammatical corrections precisely _because_ they are
>>copying what they hear, with most obvious patterns imprinitng on them most
>>strongly. They listen to the language all the time, most of which you are not
>>aware that they are listening. Occasional corrections rarely have enough 
>>weight to influence the strongest patterns. As they grow up, they start to
>>notice more and more subtle patterns and then corrections have more chance to
>>have influence.
>
>In broad outline this is true; but the acquisition of new patterns (or rules,
>in linguist-talk) is more complex than that.  What linguists have noticed,
>and seek to explain, is why *certain* patterns are generalized, and not
>others.  Certain classes of errors are very common, and others are made
>hardly at all.  (See Pinker, p. 272, for some examples.)
>
 I am not denying a possibilty of some innate features in language 
capabilities. It just seems to me that not enough attention is given to
the material language learning is built upon.

>It's not enough to say that a given error is not spoken because it's not
>heard.  Children say plenty of things that are in error, and that they have
>not heard.  This is one reason why Chomsky hypothesizes UG; he posits, in
>effect, that children already know not to make certain errors.  I myself
>am willing to hear other explanations (but I want to see the problem
>explained, not dismissed or ignored).

I am not dismissing the problem. As I've said above there very well may be
effects of brain wiring.

Andrzej

-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
