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Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#31

Post by nhebb »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #21
anonymousDan wrote: post #3

How is Chomsky perceived on the field of linguistics today? My impression was that his theories are well respected, but recently I've come across several people dismissing his work as outdated and even wrong. Not sure whether this is just an attempt by people to denigrate him because of his political beliefs though.

I don't know who these people who claim that Chomsky is "wrong" are, but it sounds like coming from some newbies who just finished reading a couple of papers on machine learning, thinking they know the entire field of AI. From my experience most people who say Chomsky is wrong have in most cases never actually read Chomsky's papers. Trust me it's really hard to finish any of his actual papers, even as someone who maj…

I don't know anything about AI or machine learning, but your comment reminded me of this:

http://norvig.com/chomsky.html

HN discussion of related article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4290604

Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#32

Post by dilemma »

nhebb wrote: post #31
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who these people who claim that Chomsky is "wrong" are, but it sounds like coming from some newbies who just finished reading a couple of papers on machine learning, thinking they know the entire field of AI. From my experience most people who say Chomsky is wrong have in most cases never actually read Chomsky's papers. Trust me it's really hard to finish any of his actual papers, even as someone who maj…

I don't know anything about AI or machine learning, but your comment reminded me of this: http://norvig.com/chomsky.html HN discussion of related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4290604

That essay misses the point its trying to refute. It references Chomsky talking about the nature of language and by extension the human mind. It then turns to talking about how search engines work, which is an unrelated topic.

Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#33

Post by Natanael_L »

jugbandjames wrote: post #29
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who these people who claim that Chomsky is "wrong" are, but it sounds like coming from some newbies who just finished reading a couple of papers on machine learning, thinking they know the entire field of AI. From my experience most people who say Chomsky is wrong have in most cases never actually read Chomsky's papers. Trust me it's really hard to finish any of his actual papers, even as someone who maj…

I'd say his research methods are wrong. Limiting your research to so-called competent speakers is cherry picking data, in my view.

Depends on what your goal is. You won't be able to generalize to the wider population, but you'll still be able to learn a lot.

Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#34

Post by panglott »

anonymousDan wrote: post #3

How is Chomsky perceived on the field of linguistics today? My impression was that his theories are well respected, but recently I've come across several people dismissing his work as outdated and even wrong. Not sure whether this is just an attempt by people to denigrate him because of his political beliefs though.

Linguistics is a multi-paradigmatic field.

Chomskyian/generative linguistics completely dominated a generation of young linguists in the 1970s and 1980s: it provided a research program for writing dissertations. But the results were often dubious; generative grammar has great things to say about syntax, but little about morphology, phonology, semantics, &c. Moreover, Chomsky has radically changed his theories several times: his earliest theories, that were most influential, have been all but completely abandoned. Then he went to principles-and-parameters (which is where he lost me, with the argument that pro-drop is conditioned by binary brain switches), and then to the Minimalist Program, which I haven't really bothered to read as much about. But this is a minority paradigm these days. Chomsky's ideas start to really fall apart when you look too closely at some of his premises, like the poverty of the stimulus.

Then there are more traditional linguists (who do more fieldwork and comparative linguistics), applied linguists, and cognitive linguists. All of these groups tend to have separate conferences and have all the problems of scientists in different paradigms, always talking past each other.

EDIT: Chomsky made real, lasting contributions in formalizing the field. He completely transformed the discipline of linguistics for good and bad—but I think his good contributions will endure for a long time, once we get over the Chomskyan hangover.

Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#35

Post by panglott »

foobarqux wrote: post #24
glup wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generative linguistics is pretty isolated these days... chugging along but using a set of methodologies and premises that are pretty far removed from the rest of academia. Generative linguistics generally had trouble in two key areas 1) first language acquisition (where increasingly ornate innate machinery is needed to explain how kids arrive at the 'right' grammar) and 2) language processing, where the structural re…

> Chomsky is brilliant, no doubt, and critically showed the world how much latent structure there is in language. However, he is IMHO pretty wrong in thinking that this latent structure can't be learned (e.g. inferring a probabilistic context-free grammar). Presumably you have a critique of his poverty of stimulus argument and not merely a blanket dismissal?

The simple critique of the poverty of the stimulus argument is that there's no poverty of the stimulus: children receive ample, rich linguistic input as well as useful feedback. Children receive a lot more negative evidence than Chomsky suggests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus#Agains... Is Chomsky's argument for the poverty of the stimulus based on empirical observations of child language acquisition?

Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#37

Post by panglott »

foldr wrote: post #5
crux wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generative linguistics is largely discredited these days. It has been out of fashion for a little while, but the last few years have seen studies that more concretely disprove it.

As a generative linguist I don't really see this. Popular perceptions fluctuate, but the field is still carrying on more or less the same. Nothing in particular has been discovered in the past few years that would give anyone cause to abandon generative linguistics.

I mentioned in another comment that linguistics is a multi-paradigmatic field, with different paradigms having different conferences and professional networks. this is the consequence: generative linguists are increasingly out of step with the field as a whole, and yet satisfied with the level of research, publications, &c.

Re: Tom Wolfe takes on linguistics

#40

Post by mcguire »

dilemma wrote: post #32
nhebb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about AI or machine learning, but your comment reminded me of this: http://norvig.com/chomsky.html HN discussion of related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4290604

That essay misses the point its trying to refute. It references Chomsky talking about the nature of language and by extension the human mind. It then turns to talking about how search engines work, which is an unrelated topic.

On the other hand, if your idea of "the nature of language" doesn't include how listeners understand a statement then you are probably not thinking about the nature of language.
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