The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and unique to them.
As far as I'm aware, this is not necessarily true. We know that dolphins have rich vocal patterns for communicating, and I recall recently seeing an article hear about lexical structure in bird calls.
Whether or not recursion is the secret sauce, it seems undeniable that human language is qualitatively very different than communication between other animals. It is apparent simply from the uses to which we put it, even without considering how it works.
There isn't any, because its one of those evidence of absence things.
Until we understand Dolphins, parrots Uncommon ants and other communicators as well as we understand common ants we won't know if they do or do not grok recursion.
We very strongly believe they don't grok recursion because they don't use it.
We have countless hours of recordings of dolphins, parrots, whales etc... communicating and none of the vocal patterns are complex enough to indicate recursion.
Recursion implies the ability to create infinitely complex language constructs--if animals have this capability they are communicating via some method that we aren't capable of recording, or they've just decided not to do it when we're listening.
You might as well say that mice are more intelligent than humans, they just do a good job of hiding--sure I can't prove that you're wrong, but I wouldn't bet much money on it.
That's not how it works. "is not" is a stronger proposition than might or not", thus the onus of proof is on the grand parent comment arguing for uniquenes of recursion.
Much of what is written here is reasonable, but there seems to be places where the argument is overstated - for example, this statement is repeatedly used as a justification for the claim that the so-called Basic Property must be simple:
"That leads us to expect that the faculty of language emerged along with modern humans or not long after, a very brief moment in evolutionary time. It follows, then, that the Basic Property should indeed be very simple."
This argument does not take into account the possibility (a very strong one, IMHO, FWIW) that the facility for language is an emergent property of the human brain, in which case language may have become possible as a result of one or more factors crossing a threshold, in a manner analogous to how a smoothly varying physical property can lead to discontinuous phase changes in matter. While there might have been one last change that took us across that threshold, it does not follow that language would be explained by that last step. In fact, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the final step was not directly related to language: for example, that an improvement in nutrition alone had the side-effect that properties already present became powerful enough for language to emerge.
I feel that Chomsky is arguing for the necessity of some basic properties, while seemingly suggesting that the reasonableness of these arguments extends to the proposition that these properties alone will provide a full explanation of language, once the details have been worked out.
The use of a bow and arrows is also unique to humans (as far as I know) but I don't see that as a compelling argument that humans have an innate, unique and specific bow n' arrow faculty.
Neither is the complexity of human language alone an argument for a specific and innate human faculty to support language - no more than the complexity of the human body is enough to support the theory of intelligent design.
In fact the whole debate reminds of the intelligent design argument. The theory itself is hardly falsifiable (or at least it keeps getting modified to avoid new found inconvenient facts - compare the original strong claims of a universal grammar with the vagueness of the current version of Chomsky's theory of language). It provides little or no predictive value as a theory; for example, you'd imagine it would explain the patterns of language acquisition in children but it doesn't[1]. And it seems it's difficult to debate the subject without the discussion becoming heated and politically charged.
15 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 44.6 ms ] threadAs far as I'm aware, this is not necessarily true. We know that dolphins have rich vocal patterns for communicating, and I recall recently seeing an article hear about lexical structure in bird calls.
Until we understand Dolphins, parrots Uncommon ants and other communicators as well as we understand common ants we won't know if they do or do not grok recursion.
We have countless hours of recordings of dolphins, parrots, whales etc... communicating and none of the vocal patterns are complex enough to indicate recursion.
Recursion implies the ability to create infinitely complex language constructs--if animals have this capability they are communicating via some method that we aren't capable of recording, or they've just decided not to do it when we're listening.
You might as well say that mice are more intelligent than humans, they just do a good job of hiding--sure I can't prove that you're wrong, but I wouldn't bet much money on it.
"That leads us to expect that the faculty of language emerged along with modern humans or not long after, a very brief moment in evolutionary time. It follows, then, that the Basic Property should indeed be very simple."
This argument does not take into account the possibility (a very strong one, IMHO, FWIW) that the facility for language is an emergent property of the human brain, in which case language may have become possible as a result of one or more factors crossing a threshold, in a manner analogous to how a smoothly varying physical property can lead to discontinuous phase changes in matter. While there might have been one last change that took us across that threshold, it does not follow that language would be explained by that last step. In fact, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the final step was not directly related to language: for example, that an improvement in nutrition alone had the side-effect that properties already present became powerful enough for language to emerge.
I feel that Chomsky is arguing for the necessity of some basic properties, while seemingly suggesting that the reasonableness of these arguments extends to the proposition that these properties alone will provide a full explanation of language, once the details have been worked out.
I especially appreciate your example of phase changes in matter which I think perfectly illuminates the limits of Chomsky's logic.
Neither is the complexity of human language alone an argument for a specific and innate human faculty to support language - no more than the complexity of the human body is enough to support the theory of intelligent design.
In fact the whole debate reminds of the intelligent design argument. The theory itself is hardly falsifiable (or at least it keeps getting modified to avoid new found inconvenient facts - compare the original strong claims of a universal grammar with the vagueness of the current version of Chomsky's theory of language). It provides little or no predictive value as a theory; for example, you'd imagine it would explain the patterns of language acquisition in children but it doesn't[1]. And it seems it's difficult to debate the subject without the discussion becoming heated and politically charged.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-c...