Chomsky

A. Katz amnfn at well.com
Fri Oct 29 20:25:18 UTC 2010


Sheri,

Okay. I certainly respect that.

There is a point with every child where you're not sure if they're really 
talking, or we're just reading too much into it. But that's usually before 
they can reliably produce recognizable output.  There's even sometimes the 
point at which only some family members can understand what they are 
saying. It's because we give them the benefit of the doubt that they can 
proceed along the path beyond that point.

I don't have problems with a graded approach. But then we'd have to admit 
that some humans don't have language at all, and others have mastered 
phonology and the lexicon, but not syntax. And others still are good at 
almost everything, but they can't write metrical poetry to save their 
lives.

So if we really went around making each human subject prove with the same 
exactitude what degree of mastery they have over language, it 
would be a level playing field. And there would be no more grandiose 
claims about what anyone knows just by virtue of being human.

But I don't think we're even allowed to say that Alex mastered phonology, 
after seeing him manipulate phonemes. I have people who tell me they do 
not doubt that Bow can spell words and construct sentences, but that 
somehow it isn't the same, because he's not human. The same proof should 
apply in all cases. (And if social cuing is not okay for other animals, 
then it's not okay for humans, too.)

The great thing about Alex is that no one can claim that he was being cued 
as to what vocal gesture he should make.

    --Aya



On Fri, 29 Oct 2010, Sheri Wells-Jensen wrote:

> I remember feeling the same way about our daughter when she was about one: I kept thinking: those are certainly signs that refer to things, but I wonder if it's language ... yet.  Later on, at some point, she crossed over some productivity point and it seemed clear to me that she was actually using language.  I can't say when that was or what made me feel like it was language, but there was a point where I thought it wasn't and then later a point where I thought it was.  I like to think of things in terms of a continuum and this seems to be an example of this to me.  I respect the way the Alex papers are all quite conservative with the  claims made about everything.  I wouldn't say Alex didn't use language, but I feel cautious about all such claims: human and animal I guess.
>
> Sheri: apparently feeling difficult today! :)
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen
> Assistant Director
> English as a Second Language Program
>
> Associate Professor
> Department of English
>
> 423 East Hall
> Bowling Green State University
>
> (419) 372-8935
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: A. Katz [mailto:amnfn at well.com]
> Sent: Friday, October 29, 2010 1:50 PM
> To: Sheri Wells-Jensen
> Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Chomsky
>
> Sheri,
>
> Are you saying that when Pepperberg spoke English words out loud they were
> symbols rather than words, because she was speaking to a parrot? But if
> she spoke those same words to a human, they would be words?
>
> I agree that she could as easily have used plastic signs with words on
> them, but to me in both cases those would be words. She probably didn't do
> this because there is a notion that reading is harder, but I agree that
> it's not functionally all that different from recognizing the phonemes
> that compose a word from the acoustic stream that we generate when we
> speak.
>
> How do you distinguish words from symbols? Or symbols from language?
>
> This is exactly what I mean when I talk about the double standard for
> humans and non-humans. If you did this experiment with a human child,
> would you take the trouble to call the words used by the experimenter and
> the subject symbols? Would you claim that you were testing cognition apart
> from language?
>
>
>    --Aya
>
> http://hubpages.com/hub/Project-Bows-FAQ-Why-is-it-called-a-lexigram-when-it-looks-like-a-word
>
>
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2010, Sheri Wells-Jensen wrote:
>
>> Aya,
>>
>> I don't think I'm convinced that his responses to her were mediated by language necessarily.  Symbols, certainly but she could have as easily "asked her questions'  by holding up a plastic stop sign.  What I'd like to hear more about are the informal interactions where language was used and Alex responded.  there is where we could see words recombining in novel ways: something I don't think he ever did (or at least it was never reported in anything I've read).
>>
>> Sheri
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen
>> Assistant Director
>> English as a Second Language Program
>>
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of English
>>
>> 423 East Hall
>> Bowling Green State University
>>
>> (419) 372-8935
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: A. Katz [mailto:amnfn at well.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 6:30 PM
>> To: Sheri Wells-Jensen
>> Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
>> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Chomsky
>>
>> Sheri,
>>
>> I did notice the "simplified" English, but I'm not sure it makes much
>> difference in terms of judging the ability to master human syntax, because
>> many other human languages don't need a copula in that kind of sentence.
>>
>> The idea that you could by-pass language and go straight to cognition
>> when the questions and answers are in the form of spoken English, (albeit
>> pidginized), is somewhat naive. What we should ask ourselves is this: how
>> did Alex understand what Pepperberg wanted to know?
>>
>>
>>    --Aya
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, Sheri Wells-Jensen wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Aya,
>>> What you say makes sense and the difference between  production and reception is an important one.  For what it's worth, the questions directed at Alex
>>> experimentally were simplified: "What Same" for example.  Probably the best measures of what he actually understood
>>> would have come from his reactions to casual speech directed his way outside of the experimental paradigm.  I've read some quantity of the published work
>>> on Alex and the other parrots, but I've never seen any controlled
>>> attempt to measure his (or their) language comprehension outside of the
>>> experimental tasks designed to access cognitive processing.    It's
>>> fascinating work.  I was quite startled by the things the birds could do,
>>> and I'd love to see some experimental attention directed toward their
>>> linguistic abilities per se.
>>>
>>>
>>> Sheri
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: A. Katz [mailto:amnfn at well.com]
>>> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 4:49 PM
>>> To: Sheri Wells-Jensen
>>> Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
>>> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Chomsky
>>>
>>> Sheri,
>>>
>>> What the Alex Studies were intended to investigate, and what we can learn
>>> from them may not be exactly the same.
>>>
>>> I would disagree that he did not seem to acquire much syntax. In order to
>>> interpret Pepperberg's questions correctly, Alex had to be able to parse
>>> them. That's syntax.
>>>
>>> Let's remember that language comprehension is no less important than
>>> production.
>>>
>>>    --Aya
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, Sheri Wells-Jensen wrote:
>>>
>>>> Folks,
>>>> It's worth pointing out, I think, that the goal of the Alex studies and the ongoing studies of other parrots has been the investigation of parrot cognition not language  acquisition.  Dr. Pepperberg states quite clearly that Alex's utterances are meant as only a vehicle for him to demonstrate his various (impressive) abilities.
>>>>
>>>> He does not seem to have acquired much syntax at all, but it's fascinating to note  the other cognitive abilities he clearly has, demonstrated by the problems he can solve.
>>>> It would be interesting to construct a list of the cognitive abilities necessary to manipulate a grammar accurately and compare those to what the parrots can do albeit in a nonlinguistic context.
>>>>
>>>> For what it's worth, there is quite a bit of phonetic detail in The Alex Studies if you want to see spectrograms and such of parrot speech.
>>>>
>>>> Peace,
>>>> Sheri
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sheri Wells-Jensen
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice*.edu] On Behalf Of Keith Johnson
>>>> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 1:38 PM
>>>> To: A.Katz
>>>> Cc: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
>>>> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] Chomsky
>>>>
>>>> Aya, discussing the problem of demonstrating that birds can talk, says:
>>>>
>>>> "If humans had to go through this to prove their children can really
>>>> talk, they wouldn't fare much better."
>>>>
>>>> I think that this is a false statement, as evidenced by the years of
>>>> research reported in journals like the "Journal of Child Language".
>>>> Children are studied in controlled settings, and behave differently
>>>> than nonhuman creatures do. My point is that the linguistic
>>>> accomplishments of nonhuman species are quite different from those of
>>>> humans.  This seems to be an observation that we should be able to
>>>> explain.
>>>>
>>>> Barbara King argues that there are more interesting questions that
>>>> whether nonhuman creatures have "language" or not.  But, I would say
>>>> that if we are seeking to understand the organic basis of this human
>>>> capacity we call language, then it is crucial that we understand
>>>> whether the capacity for language is shared across species.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Keith Johnson
>>>> Professor of Linguistics
>>>> University of California
>>>> keithjohnson at berkeley.edu
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>



More information about the Funknet mailing list