[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by floatingslowly

right, but that didn't really become an issue until much later.

macro / micro - it's all part of the whole, but neither theory describes both very well.

anyways, I'd love to hijack this thread about language and turn it into something I care about, like quantum mechanics, but yeah.

carry on.

Hence the seach for a Theory of Everything, or Grand Unification Theory.

Quote:
Originally Posted by floatingslowly
quantum mechanics came about because the theory of relativity was found to be not as all-encompassing as it once was believed.

new knowledge, new ideas.


I'll respond anew to this post by just declaring that your notion that quantum mecahnics is somehow more encompassing or more correct than relativity is preposterous. Now Bohr did teach Einstein a thing or two though. Have a good night.

[Rob Instigator]

 

[m1rr0r dash]

 

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

ahhh i miss the days on SYG where an otherwise intelligent discussion about linguistics devolves into a trolling battle about philosophy and quantum mechanics

[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

ahhh i miss the days on SYG where an otherwise intelligent discussion about linguistics devolves into a trolling battle about philosophy and quantum mechanics

Lolz. Yeah, I wasn't around for that, but it sounds pretty awesome.

Really any discussion of linguistics necessitates a discussion of different philosophies and methods of data gathering — ethnographic/anthropological, neuroscientific — but I never delved very deep into that stuff when I was masquerading as an academic. Because... y'know... linguistics is hard.

I'm actually a little terrified of the scientific study of linguistics. Not language, which is in itself quite a bit more direct, but the cognitive basis of language mechanics, and the reductive study of aptitude for sound creation and mimicry that is variable by culture and region. Yikes.

Blah blah. This is why I left grad school. Ima go write a review of Star Trek now

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

yeah linguistics has a lot of intellectual pontificating and red tape. same with genetics. a lot of snobbery. BUT these are two very critical fields of study for people with a historian's professional bias such as myself, combined with archaeology and historiography, linguistics and genetics provide some of most valuable tools to better understand the past and also the past-present connections

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Severian

I'm actually a little terrified of the scientific study of linguistics. Not language, which is in itself quite a bit more direct, but the cognitive basis of language mechanics, and the reductive study of aptitude for sound creation and mimicry that is variable by culture and region. Yikes.

but that's superfun! the search for neural correlates to linguistic theory is not just mentally bonerific, but it actually turns some aspects of linguistics into hard science. that's HUGE. HUUUUUUUGE.

e.g.: http://www.psych.nyu.edu/nellab/

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

but that's superfun! the search for neural correlates to linguistic theory is not just mentally bonerific, but it actually turns some aspects of linguistics into hard science. that's HUGE. HUUUUUUUGE.

e.g.: http://www.psych.nyu.edu/nellab/

Oh trust me, I know. Psych grad school dropout, member? I thought I made it pretty clear that I am too dumb for it.

[pepper_green]

all I know is English is witchcraft. designed to cast spells. that would explain a lot.

studying early dialect seems abstract to me. time is nonlinear, doesn't need to be examined. it just happened. early man farted, then smiled and laughed, then made art after approximating fart sounds with mouth making friends laugh. sounds = mmmmmm cool!= boasts of ego.

then goes beats on log making beat-in-time leading to possible procrastination with female impressed with boasted ego.

[Severian]

^ though I remember being fascinated by Noam Chomsky's upending of the field of linguistics in the 1990s, which more or less brought on the age of linguistics as a "hard science." Unfortunately, it's usually not studied that way. It tends to fall into Anthropoloy curriculum as a sub-discipline, when it should really be a cognitive neuroscience at this point.

Sometimes I fucking hate anthropology

[!@#$%!]

oh, the generative grammar thing dates all the way back to the 60s, maybe even earlier-- by the 90s he had moved on to politics-- east timor, manufacturing consent, that sort of thing.

but yes it is a cognitive neuroscience at this point-- which i why i linked you that lab. i met david poeppel when he was in maryland. he was already saying then what his 2015 study showed-- there are neural correlates to a generative grammar. see: https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publi...-our-head.html

beyond that, looks like the brain is more or less kantian with his apriori categories. i.e., tabula rasa is utter shit. even though skinner taught pigeons to play ping-pong.

we're more hard-wired than we like to think and that is exactly why marxism failed-- you can't really indoctrinate the "new man" of the revolution into existence. we're hardwired hierarchical beasts and it's the same old shit always with us-- which is why you can read sumerian tablets and totally relate to their pursuits.

same as it ever was
same as it ever was
same as it ever was
same as it ever was

okay, enough free-association from me for today

[ilduclo]

not at all an expert in any of this, but there's a pretty entertaining article in the latest Harpers Mag all about this, penned by Tom Wolfe, personally I enjoy the musings of WS Burroughs on language, but don't find his analysis any more believable than any other dogmatic claims

"In this month’s cover story, Tom Wolfe attacks the charismatic cult of Noam Chomsky and the long reign of his theory that human beings are born with an innate ability to acquire languages. “It no longer mattered whether one agreed with Noam Chomsky’s scholarly or political opinions or not,” writes Wolfe, “for fame enveloped him like a golden armature.” For thirty years Chomsky had insisted that some empiricist would come along and prove him right. But in 2005, Daniel L. Everett published a paper that didn’t so much refute Chomsky’s conception of a language organ as dismiss it entirely. Wolfe tells the story of the man who proved Chomsky wrong, precipitating the great linguist’s fall from his “plateau on Olympus.” "

[Severian]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

not at all an expert in any of this, but there's a pretty entertaining article in the latest Harpers Mag all about this, penned by Tom Wolfe, personally I enjoy the musings of WS Burroughs on language, but don't find his analysis any more believable than any other dogmatic claims

"In this month’s cover story, Tom Wolfe attacks the charismatic cult of Noam Chomsky and the long reign of his theory that human beings are born with an innate ability to acquire languages. “It no longer mattered whether one agreed with Noam Chomsky’s scholarly or political opinions or not,” writes Wolfe, “for fame enveloped him like a golden armature.” For thirty years Chomsky had insisted that some empiricist would come along and prove him right. But in 2005, Daniel L. Everett published a paper that didn’t so much refute Chomsky’s conception of a language organ as dismiss it entirely. Wolfe tells the story of the man who proved Chomsky wrong, precipitating the great linguist’s fall from his “plateau on Olympus.” "

There's been a big to-do about Everett and Chomsky for some time now. Well... I don't know... maybe a decade? I don't remember the name of the book Everett published that refuted Chomsky's innate language thesis, but it has had plenty of critics too, as had Everett in general.

Tom Wolfe is such a garish writer. Someone needs to slap him with a glove and tell him he is neither Mark Twain nor Kurt Vonnegut (nor John Irving, for that matter). It really grinds my gears when matters of or relating to empirical science are hacked away at by flowery dandies. Not that I don't enjoy some To. Wolfe now and again, but I prefer my science writing — even editorializing — to come from individuals with some background in objective empiricism. Feels like a hackey attempt to steer pop culture toward one side of the argument or t'other when the literati gets involved. (This kind of applies to Chomsky as well. But at least the guy knows he doesn't have the skills to make an empirical statement about any of this. He's waiting out the research, and hoping a scientist will do this for him.)

Anyway, I think Everett's principal assertion is that language is a result of learning. A brief Wikipedia shows me that he likens language to a tool (which it undoubtedly is) and that the capacity for use is a result of problem solving and cultural learning. Communication being the end to which language is the means.

I'd have to get past a Wikipedia page to be able to speak to how he supposedly dismantles Chomsky's ideas, and I don't lab on doing that any time soon because — again — I'm not smart enough for this shit. But I will say that science is a process of trial and error itself... by definition. I think it's quite unreasonable to assert that everything one theorist claims is incorrect just because, hey, here's another theorist who says it's incorrect! Likely, the truth lies somewhere in between, and won't be known for God knows how long.

Also (more Wiki... take a look at the page... I'm not citing direct sources here) Everett asserts that Chomsky's claims are falsified by studies of the Pirah language and culture. Well, that's totally rad, and everything but it's also kind of a good thing for Chomsky. If his theories are falsifiable, then they fall within the parameters of hard scientific inquiry. If a claim is NOT falsifiable, that means it's essentially scientific rubbish (see Kuhn). Claims like "God exists, he's just too great and unimaginably awesome for us to comprehend" inherently lack falsifiability because nobody can ever hope to gather evidence that this is not the case. Same with "there is no God." No lack of evidence will ever make that a falsifiable claim.

Chomsky's language theories were certainly not 100% correct, and he probably understands that... how could he not? The important thing with scientific theory is to generate a falsifiable hypothesis (I.e. One that could be discarded with enough evidence to the contrary). He appears to have done that. He's certainly kicked off a research fad that has yet to diminish. What's important is coming up with genuinely testable ideas, which Chomsky has clearly done.

But now I'm starting down the barrel of reading up on this shit again because I can't stand how basic and infantile I sound right now, and how limited my ability to write about this subject is. Thanks, guys. God fucking dammit.

[!@#$%!]

ha ha ha-- great

now check out this:

https://www.edge.org/documents/archi...3.html#everett

and click on "the reality club" for a pinkert / everett "mano a mano"

or see if this works https://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge213.html#rc

[Severian]

Whoah... What?

[ilduclo]

Originally Posted by Severian

There's been a big to-do about Everett and Chomsky for some time now.
Tom Wolfe is such a garish writer.

yeah, Wolfe does a good history of the dispute. It's actually very well written. I think that his description of field work vs theoretical thought is very good in the article and is the basis for a lot of corrective work in social science as a whole.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

yeah, Wolfe does a good history of the dispute. It's actually very well written. I think that his description of field work vs theoretical thought is very good in the article and is the basis for a lot of corrective work in social science as a whole.

Social science, though. Social science is a broad and somewhat useless term in my opinion. If a single category encompasses everything from economics, political science and psychology (which is gebuinely not a social science, despite the way most undergraduate programs choose to categorize it) to geography, anthropology (also, in many cases, not an SS) and even educational science, it's a label of convenience and nothing more.

Linguistics is obviously very multi-faceted, and requires the inclusion of pursuits and studies from all all over the academic map, from literary and philosophical analysis to white-coat lab studies involving fMIR's and electrodes. But the brunt of contemporary research is being done in a "hard science," reductionist manner, like chemistry, physics, cognitive neuroscience, etc. Isolating and identifying units of measurement (the phenome, for instance), and then conducting longitudinal studies to map sounds and the capacity to create sounds in areas of the brain.

My gripe about prose writers venturing into the arena of science is that it often leads to a slanted representation of an issue. This is because subjectivity is the bread and butter of fiction and humanities writing, and many of these guys simply can't write about issue from an objective perspective. They can't resist peppering their writing with loaded phrases and adjectives galore.

Not saying it can't be done, or had never been done... and I'm not saying Tom Wolfe isn't an extrordinarily talented writer... I'm just saying he's not the guy I'm going to look to for pop editorials on scientific issues.