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> They do not; there are studies which Chomsky cites involving trying to learning "impossible" non-structural languages that give strong evidence that this is n
by alecst 4y ago
> They do not; there are studies which Chomsky cites involving trying to learning "impossible" non-structural languages that give strong evidence that this is not the case.
I was looking for these studies. I found some similar stuff by Jennifer Culbertson, along these lines https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012329 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-lingui..., but didn't quite know what to Google. Can you point me to something?
- foobarqux 4y agoI believe Chomsky mentioned two studies in one of the 4 episodes in the "Closer to Truth" series, you'll have to search the transcript for the exact timestamp. The first is an fMRI study that shows that the brain doesn't engage the language processing centers when trying to understand a made-up non-structural language (i.e. a "statistical language") but does when trying to learn a made-up structural language. The second is about a man who had brain damage except in the language processing centers. A similar study showed that he could learn made-up structural languages but not "statistical" languages. Poverty of stimulus arguments might also be relevant. There might be an energy argument in his book "Why Only Us" as well.