FUNKNET] analysis: unhappiness

[Geoff Nathan]

I did not consider my argument to be one supporting Chomsky's version of nativism, in which linguistic knowledge is independent of (and prior to) experience. Rather I was arguing that the acquisition of language was quite different from the acquisition of a carpenter's skills in that language is not a consciously designed object, unlike what I would think of as a prototypical tool, such as a hammer or a pair of glasses. The structure of language is constrained, not by our genes, but by the 'equipment' that is used to produce, perceive and understand it. I am arguing here for the 'natural' view in 'Natural' Phonology.

Stampe and Donegan, in their seminal paper 'The Study of Natural Phonology' argued for a different kind of innateness, in which universals arise from the interaction of the nature of the materials used with the general cognitive processes of the user. This is most clear in phonology, of course, where phonological structures are (partly) determined by the anatomy and physiology of the vocal tract, the physics of sound production and the psychology of perception. We make the sounds that our mouths make it easy to produce clearly (fortitions), and in the way that it's easy to produce them (lenitions), and we hear what other people say by assuming they have the same vocal apparatus and we hear what we would have intended should we have said that. But folks like Karen van Hoek have shown that syntactic island constraints have a similar basis in processing limitations, and others have also found extrinsic causes for other universal constraints on morphology and syntax.

So language is certainly learned, but not in the same way that arithmetic is learned--it's more like how riding a bicycle is learned, through interaction with the physical stuff, and additionally, guided by our categorization and perceptual systems.

Donegan, Patricia J., and David Stampe, 1979. “The Study of Natural Phonology,” in Current Approaches to Phonological Theory., ed. by Dan Dinnsen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.


Geoffrey S. Nathan
Faculty Liaison, C&IT
and Professor, Linguistics Program
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Everett" <dan at daneverett.org>
> To: "Geoff Nathan" <geoffnathan at wayne.edu>
> Cc: "Funknet Funknet" <funknet at mailman.rice.edu>
> Sent: Monday, September 13, 2010 10:37:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] FUNKNET] analysis: unhappiness
> Dear Geoff,
> 
> These are all valid points, but none of them support nativism.
> 
> One place to start is with Fiona Cowie's relatively recent book,
> What's Within
> (http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Philosophy/Mind/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE1OTc4Mw==)
> 
> There are many cultural artifacts and values and types of knowledge
> that are never taught, but are all acquired just fine, from knowing to
> sit still in a canoe to how to use a bow and arrow. They are learned
> out of necessity and by observation, with no explicit instruction.
> 
> In a paper with Mike Frank (Stanford Pscyhology), Ted Gibson and Ev
> Fedorenko, in Cognition, support was offered for the idea that there
> are cognitive tools, number and counting being the examples we
> discussed.
> 
> The reasoning chain for innatism often goes like this:
> 
> 1. There is evidence that someone knows something that they were not
> taught.
> 
> 2. I cannot think of how they learned it.
> 
> 3. Therefore, they didn't learn it.
> 
> 4. Therefore, it is innate.
> 
> Both 3 and 4 are non-sequiturs. I don't want to get into a big
> discussion of this here. And I talk about this quite a bit in the
> book. So I will try to resist the temptation to respond to further
> postings.
> 
> So I find your concerns both quite understandable, but not
> insurmountable or even particularly difficult problems for
> understanding language as a cognitive tool.
> 
> -- Dan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sep 13, 2010, at 9:36 AM, Geoff Nathan wrote:
> 
> > ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "A. Katz" <amnfn at well.com>
> >
> >> You might as well say that a person cannot possibly avoid watching
> >> TV
> >> once
> >> he's exposed to it, as say the same about language. But people can
> >> survive
> >> just fine without television, and unless someone shows them how to
> >> make a
> >> TV set, most people will never figure out how to build one. The
> >> same
> >> goes
> >> for language. We're great at using it, not so great at generating
> >> it
> >> out
> >> of thin air with no ambient culture.
> >>
> >> --Aya
> >
> > Those who are familiar with my work know that I'm anything but a
> > Chomskyan, but I'm sorry, there's an enormous difference between the
> > acquisition of language and the acquisition of the knowledge
> > necessary to build a television set (or the brodcasting and
> > recording technology behind it). As generativists have pointed out
> > since the early sixties, nobody is explicitly taught language, yet
> > we all acquire it. Conversely many are intensively taught elementary
> > physics, engineering etc. and DON'T aquire it. This is a difference
> > in kind, not in degree.
> > This is not to say that culture is taught either (of course nobody
> > learns in school the correct distance to stand apart from an
> > interlocutor, or how many milliseconds of silence in a conversation
> > constitutes a 'pregnant pause'), but these are different kinds of
> > knowledge from academic knowledge explicitly taught in some cultures
> > and not in others.
> > All cultures have correct social distance rules, syntactic
> > structures and other tacitly acquired knowledge, but not all
> > cultures learn physics, or which mushrooms are edible and which
> > fatal.
> > I'm looking forward to reading Dan's book too, but I find 'tool' an
> > inappropriate metaphor for a cultural artifact that is never
> > explicitly 'taught', is learned without effort in all cultures
> > regardless of level of technology and is never improved by explicit
> > experimentation or accidental innovation--there will never be the
> > linguistic equivalent of a 'better mousetrap'.
> > I prefer Rudi Keller's view that language is an object of the 'third
> > kind'--an artifact that is neither wholly natural nor man-made, but
> > that develops as a spontaneous order, without being designed, and
> > with 'improvements' developing in different directions from the
> > intentions of the developers. See his book
> >
> > Sprachwandel. Von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache. 2. Auflage
> > Tübingen 1994
> >
> > or, for those, who, like me are Germanically-challenged,
> >
> > On Language Change: The Invisible Hand in Language, Routledge 1995,
> > translated by Brigitte Nerlich.
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> >
> > Geoffrey S. Nathan
> > Faculty Liaison, C&IT
> > and Professor, Linguistics Program
> > +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
> > +1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
> >