No subject

A. Katz amnfn at WELL.COM
Wed Jun 24 02:44:14 UTC 1998


"Ellen F. Prince" <ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU> wrote:

>But what makes the notion of novel sentences interesting for natural
>language is precisely the issue of acquisition, which you alluded to
>in your first paragraph but dropped. The issue of acquisition of
>computer languages is rather different...

My point is that there are no implications for the manner in which language
acquisition is achieved from the phenomenon of novel sentences.

This is because the phenomenon itself is not limited to human language, but is
an inherent part of any sort of `language'. The possibility of `novel
sentences' is built into any abstract code that carries information,
regardless of how that code came into being, or what devices are used in order
to interpret it.

DNA code, which presumably came into being by a long and tortuous
evolutionary path, also admits of novel sequences. To the extent that we are
able to decode DNA sequences, we would be able to predict a resultant mutation
from a change in the sequence, before any such change and mutation occurred.
That is, novel sentences do have objective meaning. And yet we can hardly
suppose that the chemicals on which DNA code operate have been fitted with `a
language acquisition device.' (`Translation' of DNA code into the appropriate
amino acids takes place through chemical reactions that are not unique to DNA
interpretation.) The code is self-executing and there is no centralized
control over the process by anything resemblng a language acquisition device.

On the other hand, the computer example that I mentioned earlier has
precisely such a device (the CPU), since it was designed for a particular
purpose and manufactured to specification.

The basic rules of information coding are universal and trascend the physical
mechanisms that make use of the code.

Assuming that we know nothing else about human beings besides the rules of the
languages they speak, (including the fact that novel sentences have more or
less predetermined meanings within a language community), this would tell us
nothing about whether the sentences are interpreted -- or the language is
acquired -- through a structure in the brain that is dedicated to language
acquisition, or through a more flexible priming mechanism involving pattern
recognition after repeated exposure.


                         --Aya Katz

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