Relativity versus Reality

Rob Freeman rjfreeman at email.com
Wed Jun 16 09:33:57 UTC 2004


On Monday 14 June 2004 22:42, Salinas17 at aol.com wrote:
> ...
> A contrary position is that these universal "primitive" elements of
> perception are similar to the letters of an alphabet.  They are essential
> to writing words and sentences and producing libraries.  But by themselves
> these perceptions represent only the universal basics in terms of overall
> human experience. Whether they are "innate" or universally learned during
> early development is a completely different question.

Steve,

Do we really have a choice between '"innate" or universally learned'?

Your arguments about relative relativity are fair. Everyone must accept there
is broad consensus out there, getting us to and from the fridge. We just want
to know why the detail is so elusive.

Equally you don't seem adverse to the idea of subjectivity in the details.
Your "line between universals and relatives".

But can the system be "universally learned"? What are the implications of
learned categories?

I think the analogy to phonemes is good, from the broad consensus to the
elusive detail. That means we can talk about language again. Which is why I
asked the question about Chomsky.

My understanding is that Chomsky was forced to propose UG exactly because he
found it was _not_ possible for language to be "universally learned",
phonemes and all. In fact he demonstrated that not only was it not possible
for language structure to be universally learned, it was not possible to
learn even a single, language specific, universal structure (the "incoherent
or inconsistent representation" thing).

Essentially he was saying either language is innate or it is subjective.

So a "universally learned" language system is not an option, and you don't
need to take my word for it, take Chomsky's. What you might want to take my
word for is the best conclusion to draw from this observation.

Because subjectivity was unacceptable to Chomsky he felt this was a knock down
argument for innateness. But the world has moved on since then and
subjectivity in language has proven robust. Where Chomsky got rid of it in
his rules by positing innateness it has crept back, largely through the
lexicon. How to reconcile this subjective, lexical, character, with the
assumed innate universality of Chomsky's rules has become the central
"dilemma" of modern linguistics.

Some dilemma! Wouldn't the world be a simpler place if we went back to the
central learnability issue and accepted subjectivity, synchronic "incoherent
or inconsistent" regularities and all, in the first place?

Otherwise aren't we are in the incongruous position of trying to bolt a fine
grain subjectivity onto a system which is supposed to be innate, exactly
because it was considered unreasonable that it be subjective!

That is what I understand of the ability of language to be "universally
learned", and its implications.

I'm sure I'm making all kinds of errors of fact. I would be happy to hear more
about the exact reasons Chomsky rejected rules based on the techniques of the
old "post-Bloomsfieldian" structuralists etc. from anyone familiar with what
the arguments were at the time.

-Rob Freeman



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