Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
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Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#2The study relies on isochronously spoken words!
Inside joke: I recently published a network protocol that relies on sending words isochronously between switches.
I'll take this as validation that I'm on to something :-)
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#3As someone who is a fan of the generative grammar tradition, that's pretty cool!
Going to have to read the full study later, but it sounds like they have some decent results from that press release (though not total evidence for the thesis).
Hopefully this finding can contribute toward pushing studies in neuroscience, psychology, and linguistics further.
Has some implications for a computational theory of mind too.
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#4> Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure.
Wait, is this true? There are people who seriously suggest that we don't have an innate notion of grammar?
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#5> Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. Wait, is this true? There are people who seriously suggest that we don't have an innate notion of grammar?
Yes, there are. Or at least, that we don't have a special-purpose module of our brain devoted just to that.
The common counter to Chomsky's version of innate grammar is that language is the result of the interaction of a bunch of different cognitive modules which all evolved for different purposes, but which when combined happen to make language possible, and have since been under selection pressure to make language work better.
The article doesn't actually provide any support for the "innate" or "universal grammar" hypothesis as it is typically understood, though. This is really about whether the de-facto grammar that emerges from whatever the "language faculty" has a particular hierarchical and recursive structure. And yes, there are people who seriously argue against that, too. The most common alternative model that I have been exposed to is analogical template matching, which actually does a pretty good job at a lot of NLP tasks.
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#6> Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. Wait, is this true? There are people who seriously suggest that we don't have an innate notion of grammar?
Yes, there are. Or at least, that we don't have a special-purpose module of our brain devoted just to that. The common counter to Chomsky's version of innate grammar is that language is the result of the interaction of a bunch of different cognitive modules which all evolved for different purposes, but which when combined happen to make language possible, and have since been under selection pressure to make language…
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Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#7> Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. Wait, is this true? There are people who seriously suggest that we don't have an innate notion of grammar?
I am having a frustrating time finding a good summary of the position, but the branch that studies this is informally known as West Coast Linguistics.
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#8This appears to be the paper in question:
http://psych.nyu.edu/clash/dp_papers/Ding_nn2015.pdf
Also, for more background on the idea of the "Universal Grammar":
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#9> Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. Wait, is this true? There are people who seriously suggest that we don't have an innate notion of grammar?
Yes, sort of, for example: http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2012/09/what-chomsky-didnt-get-... It depends a lot too on what exactly you mean by innate.
Re: Neuroscientists find new support for Chomsky’s “internal grammar” thesis
#10> Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. Wait, is this true? There are people who seriously suggest that we don't have an innate notion of grammar?
Yes, there are. Or at least, that we don't have a special-purpose module of our brain devoted just to that. The common counter to Chomsky's version of innate grammar is that language is the result of the interaction of a bunch of different cognitive modules which all evolved for different purposes, but which when combined happen to make language possible, and have since been under selection pressure to make language…
Well, OK, I could understand a position saying "We don't have a special-purpose module of our brain devoted to grammar," which is (I think) a direct opposite of Chomsky's position. I'm not a neuroscientist, so I don't really know how much we're close to answering this.
However, that is very different from the quoted passage. It sounds like these "neuroscientists and psychologists" don't think our brain has any notion of "grammar" at all, and everything can be explained better with statistical relations. I find that very hard to accept, and I wonder if a more reasonable position (= there is no special part of brain reserved for learning grammar) was summarized poorly into a much stronger hypothesis.
Well, of course, if we reduce everything as much as we like, then we could say everything is about statistical relation of a gazillion variables (or quantum mechanics, if you go far enough). But that's not useful, isn't it? Even if we cannot pinpoint a neuron and say "This neuron will fire if it sees a past perfect!", if the brain as a whole acts like it has an underlying notion of grammar, then I think it's fair to say that it "knows" grammar.
And, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that my brain acts like it has some notion of English grammar. :P
Edit: Hmm, I think I caused confusion by using the word "innate". Apparently it can mean (1) existing from the time a person or animal is born, and (2) existing as part of the basic nature of something.
Chomsky proposes (1), and many disagrees. (I don't find Chomsky's arguments particularly convincing, either.) But the sentence I quoted (which didn't use the word "innate") sounds like it was against (2).