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It's irrelevant to the experiment: he could learn synthetic language with human-like grammar and could not learn synthetic languages with non-human-like grammar

It's irrelevant to the experiment: he could learn synthetic language with human-like grammar and could not learn synthetic languages with non-human-like grammar. Regular people could solve the non-human-like languages with difficulty. Because his language ability is much higher than his general problem solving ability it gives strong evidence that 1. human language capacity a special function, not a general purpose cognitive function and 2. it obeys a certain structure. > There's no contradiction because i never argued/asserted the brain didn't have centers tuned for language, which is really all this experiment demonstrates. I don't know what you are trying to say then.

famouswaffles 2y ago
>Because his language ability is much higher than his general problem solving ability I don't see how you can say his language ability is much higher than his general problem solving ability if you don't know what proficiency of language he is capable of reaching. When you are learning say English as a second language, there are proficiency tiers you get assigned when you get tested - A1, A2 etc If he's learning all these languages but maxing out at A2 then his language ability is only slightly better than his general problem solving ability. This is the point i'm trying to drive home. Maybe it's because i've been learning a second language for a couple years and so i see it more clearly but saying 'he learned x language' says absolutely nothing. People say that to mean anything from 'well he can ask for the toilet' to 'could be mistaken for a native'. >I don't know what you are trying to say then. The brain has over millions of years been tuned to speak languages with certain structures. Deviating from these structures is more taxing for the brain. True statement. But how on earth does that imply the brain isn't 'thinking' for the structures it is used to ? Do you say you did not think for question 1 just because question 2 was more difficult ?
- foobarqux 2y ago
  As I said it's not relevant but if you wanted to know you could put in the bare minimum of effort into doing your own research. From Smith and Tsimpli's "The Mind of a Savant": "On the [Gapadol Reading Comprehension Test] Christopher scored at the maximum level, indicating a reading comprehension of 16 years and 10 months". They describe the results of a bunch of other language tests, where he scores average to above average, including his translations of passages from a dozen different languages. > But how on earth does that imply the brain isn't 'thinking' for the structures it is used to ? Do you say you did not think for question 1 just because question 2 was more difficult ? The point isn't to define the word "thinking" it is to show that the language capacity is a distinct faculty from other cognitive capacities.

famouswaffles 2y ago

>Because his language ability is much higher than his general problem solving ability I don't see how you can say his language ability is much higher than his general problem solving ability if you don't know what proficiency of language he is capable of reaching. When you are learning say English as a second language, there are proficiency tiers you get assigned when you get tested - A1, A2 etc If he's learning all these languages but maxing out at A2 then his language ability is only slightly better than his general problem solving ability. This is the point i'm trying to drive home. Maybe it's because i've been learning a second language for a couple years and so i see it more clearly but saying 'he learned x language' says absolutely nothing. People say that to mean anything from 'well he can ask for the toilet' to 'could be mistaken for a native'. >I don't know what you are trying to say then. The brain has over millions of years been tuned to speak languages with certain structures. Deviating from these structures is more taxing for the brain. True statement. But how on earth does that imply the brain isn't 'thinking' for the structures it is used to ? Do you say you did not think for question 1 just because question 2 was more difficult ?

foobarqux 2y ago
As I said it's not relevant but if you wanted to know you could put in the bare minimum of effort into doing your own research. From Smith and Tsimpli's "The Mind of a Savant": "On the [Gapadol Reading Comprehension Test] Christopher scored at the maximum level, indicating a reading comprehension of 16 years and 10 months". They describe the results of a bunch of other language tests, where he scores average to above average, including his translations of passages from a dozen different languages. > But how on earth does that imply the brain isn't 'thinking' for the structures it is used to ? Do you say you did not think for question 1 just because question 2 was more difficult ? The point isn't to define the word "thinking" it is to show that the language capacity is a distinct faculty from other cognitive capacities.