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From: jqb@netcom.com (Jim Balter)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 08:56:43 GMT
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In article <D3rGKG.16u@spss.com>, Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>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"?

All of this appears to me to be an extravagant quibble.  It is actually the
commutative *semantics* of "and" that I was commenting upon.  How does any of
this support Pinker's claims?

>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?

From "You saw John and Mary" we might derive
"*Who* saw John and Mary"?
"You saw *who* and Mary?"
"You saw John and *who*?"
"You saw *who* and *who*?"
"*Who* saw *who and *who*?"
"You *what* John and Mary?"
"*Who* *what* *who* and *who*?"

Certainly the last couple of sentences are not normally thought of as
grammatical, but with the proper stress, they make sense, just like "You
*what'ed* the *what* *when*?" makes sense, and I'm sure I've used such
constructions, especially over noisy phone lines.  That replacing various
nouns and verbs with words that mean <unknown noun> or <unknown verb>
is "just fine" barely requires explanation.  As for "*Who* did you see and
John?", if it were just fine it would have to be for a different reason,
wouldn't it?  Now, we could replace "and" with, say, "with", or "kissing".
All three are different grammatically, but two are "acceptable",
namely the two that state a relationship between John and another.
If this were a programming language, we might talk about binding strength
or precedence; "with" and "kissing" bind tightly, whereas "and" binds loosely.
In the C expression, "a + b . c", `.' binds more tightly than `+'.  This isn't
just a convention, it is due to the differing semantics of the two operators.
I would think that a set of "Universal Semantics" would sooner explain things
than a "Universal Grammar".

>>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.  

Such differences may provide ways to rebut such explanations, but they
cannot be used to justify failing to see them!  Since these examples
are being used to *demonstrate* UG, the burden is to show that they imply
UG to the exclusion of other explanations.

>>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-- 

I'll take your word for it.  Now, why isn't that mechanism universal?
Why is UG so ad hoc?

>>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.

Mark, are you being serious?  By first I meant "before the verb (the action)".

>In sentences like "I think not" or "Fear not" (archaic syntax today, but
>perfectly colloquial in earlier forms of English), the negation comes last.

"I think not" means something like "I think that isn't the case", not
"I don't think".  As for whether "Fear not" was colloquial, I don't think we
can judge from its presence in Shakespearean drama and Masterpiece Theatre.

>This semantic constraint of yours begins to look like a mere ad hoc
>generalization from one dialect of English.

Ah shucks, you mean it's not Universal (tm)?  But perhaps UG can explain
this drift in English.  Do you think perhaps our brains have been evolving?

>>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".

"Insert 'foo' every other word" is rather expensive; why should we expect
it when there are more economical means?  And inverting the first two words
still requires a one-word buffer, and would produce unmanageble ambiguities
(When Robin Hood renamed "John Little" to "Little John", this operation
would have transported him into a radically different possible universe,
I suppose).  Why does the absence of these operation support UG?  Why does the
absence of *any* particular operation support UG?  Explaining such absences
is a ridiculous burden to impose.

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

Has anyone claimed that no such forms occur in natural languages?  I thought
we were talking about sentences being negated by inverting their words?  From
the previous examples, I would have thought that we were talking about a
language just like English but in which "I didn't drink" is expressed as
"drank I" (and "Fear not" is expressed as "Afraid be"?).  But the sentence I
gave is not the negation of some other, at least not some other that doesn't
contain a negative (well, perhaps we can express it in
negation-by-inversion-English as "drink to failed and ate I").  Perhaps
individual phrases can be negated by inverting them, but that's not the rule
that was given.  My whole point is that "negate by inverting the words of the
sentence" is just an intuition pump, it isn't a real, workable, grammatical
rule.

>>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.

What more specialized techniques?  It only makes sense to complain about the
absence of sentence inversion if in fact it can be shown that a whole array of
complex concepts involving various nested and conjoined negated parts and
non-negated parts can all be expressed using word inversion to represent the
negations.  I'm not saying it can't, but the point is hardly worth addressing
until that is done.  And *then* we can still show that the whole idea is absurd
because that approach imposes buffering or backtracking.  I still want to be
able start any sentence about me with the word "I" (e.g., I'm not the one John
flogged").

>>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?

C'mon, Mark, cut out the linguistic snobbery.  If you want to make points
about languages other than the one we are communicating in, you will have to
be more concrete.  Even if the syntax of Spanish or Welsh require some other
phoneme to precede the first person pronoun, why is this relevant, since it
isn't syntactically universal?  I never said that it would be for strictly
semantic reasons.  If I say that, when the first word out of my mouth is "I",
it is for strictly semantic reasons, it doesn't follow that I mean that, when
the first word out of Ronald Reagan's mouth is "Well, ...", it is for strictly
semantic reasons, and it is silly for you to imput such a meaning; it
certainly doesn't further the discussion.  I might well have said "for
strictly semantic reasons ... the first word out of my mouth, following of
course any sort of noise words or obligatory syntactic stuff that must precede
it, is `I'".  The point is that the first word *with specific meaning relevant
to my intent in making an utterance* that comes out of my mouth is often "I",
and sentence inversion make that impossible in negated sentences.

BTW, how does one say "I'm walking" in Hixkaryana (whatever that is)?

>>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"?

Mark, I usually expect better reading comprehension from you.  This is third
or so time in this message that you have asked why or how I made a claim or
assumption I never made.  Surely you are familiar enough with the English
language to recognize a conditional when you see one?  I never said that I've
encountered the best that Chomskyists can offer.  Show where I said so.  In
fact, I'd be very surprised if I had encountered the best.  But the best would
have to be a lot better than what has been presented here.  And in that case
I'm sorely disappointed in the presenters.

>I don't mean to be rude,

Not even just a little? :-)

>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.

Mark, this is a bizarre approach to take in this forum.  Most of the postings
here are based upon partial knowledge.  I don't think mine are particularly
more vague or uninformed than others.  I make my arguments with the
expectation that there are variously cogent counter-arguments that others will
present.  I welcome you to make them, and to show me my errors.  Many of your
postings, on this topic and others, have been quite enlightening and have
helped shaped my views.  But don't expect me to respond to arguments from
authority.  I could name a lot of theories from economics, sociology,
psychology (take the Freudian view of female sexuality), that have a similar
elaboration but are utter nonsense.  Consider the spectrum inversion concepts
from "Philosophy of Mind" that are attacked by Hardin.  What about Hoyle's
various steady state theories?  What about Einstein's unified field theory
attempts?  There are all sorts of reasons that theories become elaborated over
a long period of time, and they aren't all that the theory is valid.

>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.

No matter how brilliant Chomsky is, he cannot be his own best critic.

I would be very interested in seeing whether Chomsky has responded to the
sorts of methodological criticisms offered by Minsky in his recent post,
and if so how.  Do you have any pointers?

>>[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.

Been there, done that.  That's were my association comes from.  I find his
critical analysis of the functioning of institutions rather convincing (but
then, I have my own biases).  In fact, I think it could be used to explain the
persistence of theories such as UG independent of their validity.  (Note, I
still am agnostic regarding the validity of UG.)

-- 
<J Q B>

