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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 gr

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.

deleted 11y ago
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yongjik 11y ago
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).
- brenschluss 11y ago
  Let's say that you are very good at basketball, enough so that you can almost always make a shot from anywhere on the court. Your mind is computing, based off of visual feedback, how to fire your muscles in such a way so that the basketball makes a near-perfect parabola and makes it into the net. Does your brain "know" the formulas that describe projectile motion? Is it running a physics model in your brain?
  - yongjik 11y ago
    I think that's a very good analogy, and no, I wouldn't say my brain would "know" Newton's formulas. However, I will still say my brain "knows" grammar. The difference is complexity. Even if you consider spins, throwing a ball is only about 9 degrees of freedom. It is too small to make good prediction on how the brain works, so Occam's razor dictates that it probably doesn't solve a differential equation. (Also I could try throwing a baseball, and I'll find that I have to re-learn everything, so it's reasonable to assume that my brain was "optimized" to just throw one particular kind of balls to a particular height.) Human language is so mind-bogglingly complex that even if you just restrict yourself to a dozen words you can easily utter sentences that were never spoken in entire history of English. Yet my brain has no problem dealing with that. Sure, we could say that it's all statistical relation, but those relations have to stack (almost) recursively and connect phrases that are a dozen words apart. At what point do we stop calling them a heap of relations and instead call it what it is, i.e., grammar?
    - brenschluss 11y ago
      Let's make it complicated, then: if you're great at walking a tightrope on a windy day, is your brain storing a model of your muscular+skeletal structure and live-computing a kinematics physics model + wind simulation to simulate how you should be walking across that tightrope? My point was that Newton's formulas are simplified models of how the world works. As a result, just because you know how to throw a ball doesn't mean you "know" Newton's formulas. Similarly, just because you know how to speak doesn't mean you "know" grammar. The question to ask to help us answer this question would be: is grammar a simplified model of language?[1] [1] This depends on whether you're a linguistic prescriptivist or descriptivist.
atdt 11y ago
I am not aware of Chomsky ever making the argument that language has a specific physical location with the brain, or that it is the achievement of a single organ which evolved for exactly this purpose. You may be confusing Chomsky with Jerry Fodor, whose "Modularity of Mind" was inspired by Chomsky's ideas (which it helped popularize).
linhchi 11y ago
Thanks for the second point. It's frustrated when they write titles like that for the public. I always think that "human is born with some miracle thing" is quite suspicious. How can orderliness be born out of no where (no work spent, no energy consumed)? The probability of orderliness to be spontaneously assembled itself must be infinitesimally small. Grammar might evolve along the way (due to statistical learning) but it seems too good to be true if it's born out of no where.
- mbrock 11y ago
  Giving birth to a human child is not trivial. Lots of assembly required. DNA is pretty complex, and the process of motherhood is not just waiting for nine months and delivering a miracle.

deleted 11y ago

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yongjik 11y ago

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).

brenschluss 11y ago
Let's say that you are very good at basketball, enough so that you can almost always make a shot from anywhere on the court. Your mind is computing, based off of visual feedback, how to fire your muscles in such a way so that the basketball makes a near-perfect parabola and makes it into the net. Does your brain "know" the formulas that describe projectile motion? Is it running a physics model in your brain?
- yongjik 11y ago
  I think that's a very good analogy, and no, I wouldn't say my brain would "know" Newton's formulas. However, I will still say my brain "knows" grammar. The difference is complexity. Even if you consider spins, throwing a ball is only about 9 degrees of freedom. It is too small to make good prediction on how the brain works, so Occam's razor dictates that it probably doesn't solve a differential equation. (Also I could try throwing a baseball, and I'll find that I have to re-learn everything, so it's reasonable to assume that my brain was "optimized" to just throw one particular kind of balls to a particular height.) Human language is so mind-bogglingly complex that even if you just restrict yourself to a dozen words you can easily utter sentences that were never spoken in entire history of English. Yet my brain has no problem dealing with that. Sure, we could say that it's all statistical relation, but those relations have to stack (almost) recursively and connect phrases that are a dozen words apart. At what point do we stop calling them a heap of relations and instead call it what it is, i.e., grammar?
  - brenschluss 11y ago
    Let's make it complicated, then: if you're great at walking a tightrope on a windy day, is your brain storing a model of your muscular+skeletal structure and live-computing a kinematics physics model + wind simulation to simulate how you should be walking across that tightrope? My point was that Newton's formulas are simplified models of how the world works. As a result, just because you know how to throw a ball doesn't mean you "know" Newton's formulas. Similarly, just because you know how to speak doesn't mean you "know" grammar. The question to ask to help us answer this question would be: is grammar a simplified model of language?[1] [1] This depends on whether you're a linguistic prescriptivist or descriptivist.

atdt 11y ago

I am not aware of Chomsky ever making the argument that language has a specific physical location with the brain, or that it is the achievement of a single organ which evolved for exactly this purpose. You may be confusing Chomsky with Jerry Fodor, whose "Modularity of Mind" was inspired by Chomsky's ideas (which it helped popularize).

linhchi 11y ago

Thanks for the second point. It's frustrated when they write titles like that for the public. I always think that "human is born with some miracle thing" is quite suspicious. How can orderliness be born out of no where (no work spent, no energy consumed)? The probability of orderliness to be spontaneously assembled itself must be infinitesimally small. Grammar might evolve along the way (due to statistical learning) but it seems too good to be true if it's born out of no where.

mbrock 11y ago
Giving birth to a human child is not trivial. Lots of assembly required. DNA is pretty complex, and the process of motherhood is not just waiting for nine months and delivering a miracle.