March 24, 2008

• Orientation.
• Very interesting, but my understanding (limited) is that Chomsky himself, as distinct from people like Pinker, has never offered an evolutionary explanation, and in fact disdains the whole subject. From memory his position is that you can say language evolved if you like, so long as you realise that what you're saying is basically meaningless (ie, as I interpret it, humans are the product of evolution so everything they do is a product of evolution - but evolution offers no particular insight into language. He offers no explanation at all of how we came to have a built-in language acquisition device: we just do. So far as I can see none of the findings reported here are ones which actually need cause Chomskians to lose much sleep. I don't know which of Terrence Deacon's ideas were popular here, but I don't like his view that meaning was built up from iconic to more complex forms of symbolism. The old view on that was that iconic representation is not simple or basic, but actually a sophisticated form of symbolism, and I think that was right. I might easily be missing the point, though: happy to be straightened out if so.
• That generative grammar evolved is obvious. That modules evolved IN ORDER to make mathematical syntax possible sounds like teleology, which I think is another word for Intelligent Design. That Chomsky himself never bought into the concept is interesting, even though his name goes down on paper along with his intellectual proteges. I would like to place their view alongside Wittgenstein's Tractatus in which a sort of sub-metaphysical depth grammar wants discovering in order to explain language, while in his later Philosophical Investigations all that is required is the usage that a statement has in a person's life. Accordingly he invents a language game not even needing words, but just correspondences like finding certain colored chips and sorting them for different purposes. The simple languages mentioned in the articles Hank cites can hardly be simpler than Wittgenstein's language games. It's as if Wittgenstein anticipated this whole controversy and came to the sort of conclusion that the Barcelona conference presents.
• Little by little, that's how language evolved. More obscure explanations are simply trying to publish papers. Chomsky has been obsolescent for a very long time. Without him, however, we would not have been able to move on to more accurate theories.
• > Chomsky has been obsolescent for a very long time Well, he should hurry it up, damnit.
• Well, he should hurry it up, damnit. Perhaps when his posse dies out...
• OBEY CHOMSKY
• Too much book lernin' in this thread.