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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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References: <3gtu3i$rf3@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3hbgfe$eks@mp.cs.niu.edu> <3hbsq4$arh@agate.berkeley.edu> <jqbD3r3Cp.CrC@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 01:38:39 GMT
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In article <jqbD3r3Cp.CrC@netcom.com>, Jim Balter <jqb@netcom.com> wrote:
[re "I saw John and Mary" --> ??"Who did you see John and?"]

>"John and Mary" is commutable; both subjects are given equal, or at least
>similar, worth.  "John and ... ?" is inherently not commutable; John and Mary
>(if that is whom he was with) play radically different *semantic* roles in the
>question, and therefore it is hardly surprising that we do not use a syntactic
>form that gives them equal roles.  

John has the same syntactic role in
   John flogged Mary.
   John was flogged by Mary.
(subject position; topic; case), but has a rather different semantic role,
as I'm sure you'd agree if you were John.

John has the same semantic role in 
   John flogged Mary.
   Mary was flogged by John.
   John's flogging of Mary (was abominable). 
yet has very different syntactic characters: subject vs. direct object
vs. determiner; topic vs. comment; nominative vs. objective vs. possessive.
 
So on what grounds do you assume that syntax pays any attention to "equal
semantic roles"?

For that matter, although we can't say "Who did you see and John?", we
*can* say "You saw John and *who*?"  Yet the semantics have not changed;
Mary and John are as commutable as they ever were; John and "who" are
as semantically mismatched as ever-- why then is one construction 
terrible, and the other one just fine?

>All of Pinker's examples are readily explained through semantics, and it takes
>an effort of will to not be able to come up with such explanations.  

Or just habits of bringing different questions, assumptions, and knowledge
to bear on the problem.  

>In syntax driven systems, we might expect forms like "negation I went
>to the store" 

-- which we do find in many languages, such as Polish-- 

>or "store the to went I", but in semantic systems the action,
>not the statement, is negated, and the negation signal is given first to avoid
>conceptual backtracking; 

Oh?  As in "I didn't go to the store?"  The negative comes third, by my count.
In sentences like "I think not" or "Fear not" (archaic syntax today, but
perfectly colloquial in earlier forms of English), the negation comes last.
This semantic constraint of yours begins to look like a mere ad hoc
generalization from one dialect of English.

>Aside from this, there are ridiculously obvious
>syntactic reasons why such forms don't exist: they require buffering (for word
>inversion), or introduction of verbal parentheses in complex forms.  

This is a valid objection to word inversion; but not to other conceivable 
syntactic operations that don't seem to be exploited by natural languages,
such as "Insert 'foo' every other word", or "switch the first two words
of the sentence".

>How would word inversion work for "I ate but didn't drink" 

"I ate but drink didn't".

>and "I neither ate nor drank"?  

Why should it?  English has *different forms* of negation: to negate a whole
sentence you put _not_ after the main auxiliary (inserting a form of _do_ if
there isn't an auxiliary).  Other forms of negation, as in the above 
sentence, use different techniques.  If word inversion were used to negate
a whole sentence, more specialized techniques could still be used for
the other kinds of negation, such as the one in your example.

>All this talk of sentence inversion is a typical misleading intuition
>pump.  Give an actual grammar for complex utterances using it, and we can talk
>more about what is wrong with it.  In particular, for strictly semantic
>reasons, when talking about what I did or didn't do, the first word out of my
>mouth is "I".  Often the sentence begins with "I, um, ...".  

What are the "strictly semantic reasons" that, in the same circumstances,
force a Spanish or Welsh speaker to utter a verbal morpheme first, or a 
Hixkaryana speaker to utter the object first?

>If this is the best that Chomskyists can offer, I am sorely disappointed.

Have you read any of Chomsky's works on syntax, semantics, or phonology?
If not, what makes you think you've even encountered "the best that 
Chomskyists can offer"?

I don't mean to be rude, but what we have here is a set of vague intuitions,
not thoroughly checked out against a wide range of situations and languages,
against a theory elaborated over the course of fifty years by professional
linguists.  Like God in _Time Bandits_, Chomsky is not entirely dim.
On some points he's unconvincing, or just plain wrong.  But in other cases,
you know, he may reject some seemingly obvious attack on his theory because
he or someone else tried it twenty years ago, and it didn't pan out.

>[Since some of this discussion seems to take, on the surface, a personal tone,
>I will point out that I have met and spoken to Noam Chomsky and have the
>highest personal regard for him.]

Qool.  If you really want some fun, read his political books.
