3 ms·

I have a bachelors in Linguistics. We were taught what Chomsky believes, but our professor also made it clear that many linguists, including himself, didn’t bel

I have a bachelors in Linguistics. We were taught what Chomsky believes, but our professor also made it clear that many linguists, including himself, didn’t believe it was right or true. Though, this was 30 years ago. I haven’t kept up with the field to know what professors of linguistics think today.

4gotunameagain 3y ago
The concept of an innate, universal language that Chomsky came up with is almost certainly true, now whether that universal language contains information regarding what we call ethics, that is an open question
- beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
  > The concept of an innate, universal language that Chomsky came up with is almost certainly true It's important to clarify that Chomsky's argument about universal grammar, in that there is an innate universal base human language, is not remotely certainly true. The existence of a human capacity or ability for language is true, but that's not a really amazing finding. People have been talking about that for hundreds of years. There's very little actual evidential basis in neuroscience or brain research for Chomsky's claim. It also frequently falls into private language fallacies, which is a logical blackhole he can't really climb out of.
olalonde 3y ago
His editorial on ChatGPT definitely read like "sour grapes"[0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chat...
- mcv 3y ago
  ChatGPT does feel a bit like a refutation of his life's work. Because whether or not ChatGPT can think, it certainly has a good command of language without starting out with an inborn sense of grammar. It learns grammar by copying. Just like kids do, I suspect.
  - theodorethomas 3y ago
    I suspect not. Children are exposed to far less text than LLMs. LLMs are parlour tricks that teach us nothing about how humans do it.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >without starting out with an inborn sense of grammar I'm not so sure though, because it starts by being fed sentences assembled by people. Sort of how we wouldn't say that a book itself has a "good command of language", but that the writer has one, and put it in the book. So you might need a seed with "an inborn sense of grammar" to create language first and a training corpus second, but once that's available in huge volumes you can mechanically train an LLM to appear to have a "good command of language" just by brute force. Would an LLM gain a "good command of language" if it was just fed all the taling a human hears and the words it reads in its first 18 years of life?
    - ajuc 3y ago
      > Would an LLM gain a "good command of language" if it was just fed all the taling a human hears and the words it reads in its first 18 years of life? Depends on what its starting weights are ;)
      - BobbyJo 3y ago
        Aaaaaaand we're back to inborn sense.
  - benpacker 3y ago
    Kids learn grammar by copying, but a group of kids with no language will invent one (see Nicaraguan sign language), and empty transformer models will not do this. Kids raised hearing a mix of French and African languages will also invent a new language (Haitian creole) and a LLM will not do this, it would alternate speaking one or the other. ChatGPT proves that language is not so complex that it can’t be modeled, but the core Chomsky arguments are unaffected. I haven’t looked into the alternative perspectives (emergent grammar, etc) in the discipline since undergrad so I’m not saying Chomsky is right, just saying LLMs don’t disprove it.
mcv 3y ago
I think his importance to linguistics is not so much due to being he's correct, but due to moving forward the way the field thinks about language and grammar.

4gotunameagain 3y ago

The concept of an innate, universal language that Chomsky came up with is almost certainly true, now whether that universal language contains information regarding what we call ethics, that is an open question

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
> The concept of an innate, universal language that Chomsky came up with is almost certainly true It's important to clarify that Chomsky's argument about universal grammar, in that there is an innate universal base human language, is not remotely certainly true. The existence of a human capacity or ability for language is true, but that's not a really amazing finding. People have been talking about that for hundreds of years. There's very little actual evidential basis in neuroscience or brain research for Chomsky's claim. It also frequently falls into private language fallacies, which is a logical blackhole he can't really climb out of.

olalonde 3y ago

His editorial on ChatGPT definitely read like "sour grapes"[0]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chatgpt-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/08/opinion/noam-chomsky-chat...

mcv 3y ago
ChatGPT does feel a bit like a refutation of his life's work. Because whether or not ChatGPT can think, it certainly has a good command of language without starting out with an inborn sense of grammar. It learns grammar by copying. Just like kids do, I suspect.
- theodorethomas 3y ago
  I suspect not. Children are exposed to far less text than LLMs. LLMs are parlour tricks that teach us nothing about how humans do it.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >without starting out with an inborn sense of grammar I'm not so sure though, because it starts by being fed sentences assembled by people. Sort of how we wouldn't say that a book itself has a "good command of language", but that the writer has one, and put it in the book. So you might need a seed with "an inborn sense of grammar" to create language first and a training corpus second, but once that's available in huge volumes you can mechanically train an LLM to appear to have a "good command of language" just by brute force. Would an LLM gain a "good command of language" if it was just fed all the taling a human hears and the words it reads in its first 18 years of life?
  - ajuc 3y ago
    > Would an LLM gain a "good command of language" if it was just fed all the taling a human hears and the words it reads in its first 18 years of life? Depends on what its starting weights are ;)
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      Aaaaaaand we're back to inborn sense.
- benpacker 3y ago
  Kids learn grammar by copying, but a group of kids with no language will invent one (see Nicaraguan sign language), and empty transformer models will not do this. Kids raised hearing a mix of French and African languages will also invent a new language (Haitian creole) and a LLM will not do this, it would alternate speaking one or the other. ChatGPT proves that language is not so complex that it can’t be modeled, but the core Chomsky arguments are unaffected. I haven’t looked into the alternative perspectives (emergent grammar, etc) in the discipline since undergrad so I’m not saying Chomsky is right, just saying LLMs don’t disprove it.

mcv 3y ago

I think his importance to linguistics is not so much due to being he's correct, but due to moving forward the way the field thinks about language and grammar.