Chomsky est un imposteur

[Tobias Scheer]

Chers linguistes (et spécialement phonologues),

Voici donc (cf. infra) un article "populaire" 
dans New Scientist qui continue à explorer le 
filon du Chomsky-bashing, surfant sur la vague 
générale de l'empirisme et de la haine du 
raisonnement et du top-down (pour savoir quelle 
politique économique je dois faire, j'appelle la 
bourse). Les langues sont teeeeellement diverses, 
et les humains ont tellement envie de communiquer 
qu'ils s'en fichent du linguiste en chambre et 
font ce qu'ils veulent, les universaux n'existent pas.
Dans le tas, il y a un scoop pour les 
phonologues, défaits de leur dernière illusion quant aux universaux:

Since the theory of universal grammar was 
proposed, linguists have identified many language 
rules. Although these are supposed to be 
universal, there are almost always exceptions. It 
was once believed, for example, that no language 
would have a syllable that begins with a vowel 
and ends with a consonant (VC), if it didn't also 
have syllables that begin with a consonant and 
end with a vowel (CV). This universal lasted 
until 1999, when linguists showed that Arrernte 
<http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_arr>, 
spoken by Indigenous Australians from the area 
around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, 
has VC syllables but no CV syllables.

Alors qui se propose pour un commando de 
phonologues français qui descendent en Australie? 
On espère que les données ne proviennent pas 
d'une seule personne linguiste qui parle la 
langue, comme dans le cas du Piraha qui ne fait rien comme les autres langues.
Sinon il suffira peut-être de mettre son nez dans 
le type d'analyse syllabique pratiquée par ceux qui arrivent à ce résultat.
[...5 min plus tard]
Ce que j'ai fait: la langue en question, dans la 
référence WALS donnée, s'appelle Ar(r)anda, et ce 
n'est pas une inconnue dans la littérature phonologique. Dans l'article
Takahashi, Toyomi 1999. Constraint interaction in 
Aranda stress. Issues in phonological structure, 
edited by S.J. Hannahs & Mike Davenport, 149-179. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
on trouve les formes suivantes
Nalama "to move" (N= n vélaire)
tarama "lo laugh"
kutuNula "ceremonial assistant"
etc. à la pelle

Mais il est bien connu que Takahashi est un 
intégriste Chomskien qui falsifie les données 
pour donner raison à son gourou religieux. Ou, 
alternativement, l'analyse syllabique des 
linguistes australiens a des subtilités qui 
échappent au commun des mortels, peut-être - 
comme en piraha - sous l'influence de la culture? 
Nous pauvres occidentaux, nous ne pouvons pas 
comprendre comment un aborigène coupe les 
consonnes et les voyelles, parce que nous ne connaissons rien de sa culture.
Si vous vous dites parfois que Christian Estrosi 
s'exprime bizarrement, ne vous en faites pas: la 
culture azuréenne et niçoise est basée sur le 
Médecinisme et l'amitié paraguayo-niçoise, vous 
ne pouvez pas comprendre. Il ne fait pas les 
mêmes choses avec les mots et les phrases que vous.

Tobias Scheer


>-------- Original Message --------
>Subject:        [LAGB] Article about linguistics in New Scientist
>Date:   Tue, 1 Jun 2010 12:48:14 +0100
>From:   Raphael Salkie <R.M.Salkie at BTON.AC.UK>
>Reply-To:       R.M.Salkie at BTON.AC.UK
>To:     LAGB at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>
>
>
>A recent issue of NS had a rare article about 
>linguistics.  I have reproduced it below: it is 
>also freely available from the web address given at the end.
>
>
>I personally think that it shows everything that 
>is bad about science journalism.  Before I write 
>to /New Scientist/ and say so, am I 
>over-reacting?  Is anyone else planning a 
>response?  Would a collective response be useful?
>
>
>Thanks. ­ Raf Salkie
>
>
>*Language lessons: You are what you speak *
>
>§  26 May 2010 by *Christine Kenneally* 
><http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Christine+Kenneally>
>
>§  New Scientist Magazine issue 2762 
><http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2762>.
>
>LANGUAGES are wonderfully idiosyncratic. English 
>puts its subject before its verb. Finnish has 
>lots of cases. Mandarin is highly tonal.
>
>Yet despite these differences, one of the most 
>influential ideas in the study of language is 
>that of universal grammar. Put forward by Noam 
>Chomsky in the 1960s, it is widely interpreted 
>as meaning that all languages are basically the 
>same and that the human brain is born 
>language-ready, with an in-built program that is 
>able to decipher the common rules underpinning 
>any mother tongue. For five decades this idea 
>has dominated work in linguistics, psychology 
>and cognitive science. To understand language, 
>it implied, you must sweep aside the dazzling 
>diversity of languages and find the common human core.
>
>But what if the very diversity of languages is 
>the key to understanding human communication? 
>This is the idea being put forward by linguists 
>Nicholas Evans of the Australian National 
>University in Canberra and Stephen Levinson of 
>the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
>
>They believe that languages do not share a 
>common set of rules. Instead, they say, their 
>sheer variety is a defining feature of human 
>communication - something not seen in other 
>animals. And that's not all. Language diversity 
>is the "crucial fact for understanding the place 
>of language in human cognition", Levinson and Evans argue.
>
>In recent years, much has been made of the idea 
>that humans possess a "language instinct": 
>infants easily learn to speak because all 
>languages follow a set of rules built into their 
>brains. While there is no doubt that human 
>thinking influences the form that language 
>takes, if Evans and Levinson are correct, 
>language in turn shapes our brains. This 
>suggests that humans are more diverse than we 
>thought, with our brains having differences 
>depending on the language environment in which 
>we grew up. And that leads to a disturbing 
>conclusion: every time a language becomes 
>extinct, humanity loses an important piece of diversity.
>
>Since the theory of universal grammar was 
>proposed, linguists have identified many 
>language rules. Although these are supposed to 
>be universal, there are almost always 
>exceptions. It was once believed, for example, 
>that no language would have a syllable that 
>begins with a vowel and ends with a consonant 
>(VC), if it didn't also have syllables that 
>begin with a consonant and end with a vowel 
>(CV). This universal lasted until 1999, when 
>linguists showed that Arrernte 
><http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_arr>, 
>spoken by Indigenous Australians from the area 
>around Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, 
>has VC syllables but no CV syllables.
>
>Other non-universal "universals" describe the 
>basic rules of putting words together. Take the 
>rule that every language contains four basic 
>word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives and 
>adverbs. Work in the past two decades has shown 
>that several languages lack an open adverb 
>class, which means the number of adverbs 
>available is limited, unlike in English where 
>you can turn any word into an adverb, for 
>example soft into softly. Others, such as Lao 
><http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_lao>, 
>spoken in Laos, have no adjectives at all. More 
>controversially, some linguists argue that a few 
>languages, such as Straits Salish 
><http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_sst>, 
>spoken by indigenous people from north-western 
>regions of North America, do not even have 
>distinct nouns or verbs. Instead they have a 
>single class of words to encompass events, entities and qualities.
>
>Even apparently unassailable universals have 
>been found wanting. This includes recursion, the 
>ability to infinitely embed one item in a 
>similar item, such as "Jack thinks that Mary 
>thinks that... the bus will be on time". It is 
>widely considered to be a characteristic that 
>sets human language apart from the 
>communications of other animals. Yet Dan Everett 
>at Illinois State University recently published 
>controversial work showing that Amazonian 
>Pirahã does not have this recursive quality 
><http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925431.500-a-people-lost-for-words.html> 
>(/Language/, vol 85, p 405 <http://www.lsadc.org/info/pubs-lang-toc.cfm>).
>
>The more we learn about languages, the more 
>apparent the differences become (see "Tower of 
>Babel") 
><http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.000-language-lessons-you-are-what-you-speak.html?full=true#bx276210B1>. 
>While most linguists have somehow lived with 
>these anomalies, Evans and Levinson believe they 
>cannot be ignored. "The haul of clear and 
>empirically impeccable universals, after decades 
>of searching, is pitiful," Evans notes. He and 
>Levinson argue that the idea of universal 
>grammar has sent researchers down a blind alley. 
>We should embrace linguistic diversity, they 
>say, and try to explain the forms that languages 
>actually take. To that end, they published a 
>paper outlining their theory in /Behavioral and 
>Brain Sciences/ 
><http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=6427084> 
>last year (vol 32, p 429). Everett has described 
>it as "a watershed in the history of linguistic theory".
>
>If languages do not obey a single set of shared 
>rules, then how are they created? "Instead of 
>universals, you get standard engineering 
>solutions that languages adopt again and again, 
>and then you get outliers," says Evans. He and 
>Levinson argue that this is because any given 
>language is a complex system shaped by many 
>factors, including culture, genetics and 
>history. There are no absolutely universal 
>traits of language, they say, only tendencies. 
>And it is a mix of strong and weak tendencies 
>that characterises the "bio-cultural" hybrid we call language.
>
>According to the two linguists, the strong 
>tendencies explain why many languages converge 
>on common patterns. A variety of factors tend to 
>push language in a similar direction, such as 
>the structure of the brain, the biology of 
>speech and the efficiencies of communication. 
>Widely shared linguistic elements may also build 
>on a particularly human kind of social 
>reasoning. For example, the fact that before we 
>learn to speak we see the world as a place full 
>of things causing actions (agents) and things 
>having actions done to them (patients) explains 
>why most languages deploy these categories.
>
>*Origins of diversity*
>
>Weak tendencies, in contrast, are explained by 
>the idiosyncrasies of different languages. Evans 
>and Levinson argue that many aspects of the 
>particular natural history of a population may 
>affect its language. For instance, Andy Butcher 
>at Flinders University in Adelaide, South 
>Australia, has observed that Indigenous 
>Australian children have by far the highest 
>incidence of chronic middle-ear infection of any 
>population on the planet, and that most 
>Indigenous Australian languages lack many sounds 
>that are common in other languages, but which 
>are hard to hear with a middle-ear infection. 
>Whether this condition has shaped the sound 
>systems of these languages is unknown, says 
>Evans, but it is important to consider the idea.
>
>Levinson and Evans are not the first to question 
>the omnipotence of universal grammar, or UG, but 
>no one has distilled these ideas quite as 
>convincingly and given them as much reach. As a 
>result, their arguments have generated 
>widespread enthusiasm, particularly among those 
>linguists who are tired of trying to shoehorn 
>their findings into the straitjacket of 
>"absolute universals". To some, it is the final 
>nail in UG's coffin. "Recent strategies like 
>saying that not all language must have all 
>components of UG - with no explanation of the 
>variation - just immunise UG from 
>falsification," says Michael Tomasello, 
>co-director of the Max Planck Institute for 
>Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. A 
>developmental psychologist with particular 
>interest in language acquisition, Tomasello has 
>been a long-standing critic of the idea that all 
>languages conform to a set of rules. "Universal grammar is dead," he says.
>
>Steven Pinker of Harvard University, who is the 
>author of /The Language Instinct/ 
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct>, 
>agrees with many points made by Evans and 
>Levinson, including the fact that the standards 
>for a "universal" have not been rigorous enough; 
>that language arises from the co-evolution of 
>genes and culture; and that it is very important 
>to document the diversity of languages. Still, 
>Pinker argues that all humans do share an innate 
>set of mechanisms for learning language. He 
>accepts that the extent to which different 
>languages use these mechanisms may be shaped by 
>that culture's history, but still believes there 
>are many universals that underlie all languages.
>
>Others claim that just because we have not yet 
>worked out exactly what constitutes a universal 
>in language, doesn't mean they don't exist. 
>Tecumseh Fitch at the University of Vienna in 
>Austria says that from the outset Chomsky's own 
>definition was quite sophisticated. "In 
>introducing the term 'UG', Chomsky made it clear 
>that these features are highly abstract and not 
>[the same as] absolute surface universals," he says.
>
>"If universal means a 'bias that can be 
>violated' then I'm happy to use universal in 
>that special sense," says Evans. "I don't think 
>that's the sense in which it was originally 
>intended. But if that's what UG ends up morphing 
>into, then fine, we can move on to more interesting questions."
>
>*Diversity in mind*
>
>Among the most important of these is what the 
>Evans-Levinson approach says about our species. 
>The diversity of human language sets it apart 
>from the communication systems of all other 
>animals, which tend to be the same for any group 
>in any species, no matter where on the globe 
>they live. True, some animals, including 
>songbirds and higher primates, do have a range 
>of learned expressions that can vary from one 
>population to another, but none is remotely as 
>diverse as human language. Evans and Levinson 
>attribute our linguistic exuberance to the 
>plasticity of the human brain, and they say it 
>changes how we should think about human thought.
>
>The standard modern metaphor for cognition is 
>the "toolbox", with humans sharing some tools 
>with other animals while having others that are 
>exclusive to us. For Evans and Levinson, 
>cognition is more like "a machine tool, capable 
>of manufacturing special tools for special 
>jobs... like calculating, playing the piano, 
>reading right to left, or speaking Arabic". In 
>this view, the brain of a child does not arrive 
>pre-programmed with abstract linguistic rules. 
>Instead, its initial setting is much simpler: 
>the first job of the brain is to build a more 
>complicated brain. This it does using any input 
>that it gets, including language. This could 
>mean that speakers of very different languages 
>have quite different brains, says Levinson.
>
>Each of the world's 7000 or so languages 
>contains its own unique clues to the mysteries of human existence
>
>Taking diversity at face value also gives 
>linguists an opportunity to re-examine old 
>dogmas. For example, it is assumed that all 
>languages are equally easy to learn, yet this 
>has never been tested. Evans believes that given 
>the number of variable factors that shape 
>languages, there might well be differences in 
>how quickly infants reach particular linguistic 
>milestones depending on the idiosyncrasies of 
>their mother tongue. "We need to revisit this idea," he says.
>
>Another classic dogma is that we all master the 
>fundamental structure of our native language by 
>early childhood. Indeed, one of the most 
>compelling aspects of the UG-language-instinct 
>idea was that it seemed to explain how infants 
>do this with such ease. However, it turns out 
>that in some languages there are some aspects 
>that are not mastered until later in life, such 
>as the triangular kin terms of the Indigenous 
>Australian language, Bininj Gun-wok 
><http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_bbw>. 
>These situate the speaker, listener and a third 
>party relative all at once. For example 
>"al-doingu" means "the one who is my mother and 
>your daughter, you being my maternal 
>grandmother". And this is not an oddity; there 
>are hundreds of such structures in the language. 
>The speakers of Bininj Gun-wok only begin to 
>acquire this part of the language in their twenties.
>
>Focusing on language diversity also highlights 
>the tragedy of language extinction. In the old 
>model, all languages are merely variations on 
>the same underlying theme. In the new model, 
>however, each of the world's 7000 or so 
>languages contains its own unique clues to some 
>of the mysteries of human existence. 
>"Observations about animal species, 
>distinctness, behaviour and ecological 
>relationships which are captured in the 
>vocabulary of some languages distil millennia of 
>close observation by the speakers of those 
>languages," says Evans. For example, some 
>languages spoken in Arnhem Land, in Australia's 
>Northern Territory, have words for five species 
>of bee not yet described by science. "A typical 
>language in [that area] will contain a veritable 
>library shelf of ethnobiology that is on the 
>verge of being lost without us ever knowing what books were there," says Evans.
>
>In the diversity of the world's languages we 
>find facts about ancient human history, the path 
>of languages through time, and deep knowledge of 
>the planet. Seen in this light, languages and 
>their speakers offer a scientific bonanza to 
>anyone trying to understand human evolution, behaviour and cognition.
>
>*Read more:* UNESCO interactive atlas of the 
>world's languages in danger 
><http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206>
>
>*Tower of Babel*
>
>After half a century of trying to find a common 
>pattern among all languages it is increasingly 
>clear that they are not the same.
>
>§ Some languages have 11 distinct sounds with 
>which to make words, while others have 144. Sign 
>languages have none. As sounds that were once 
>thought impossible are discovered, the idea that 
>there is a fixed set of speech sounds is being abandoned.
>
>§ Some languages use a single word where others 
>need an entire sentence. In English, for 
>example, you might say "I cooked the wrong meat 
>for them again". In the Indigenous Australian 
>language Bininj Gun-wok you would say 
>"abanyawoihwarrgahmarneganjginjeng". The more we 
>know about language processing, the less likely 
>it seems that these two structures are processed in the same way.
>
>§ Even plurals are not straightforward. The 
>Kiowa 
><http://wals.info/languoid/lect/wals_code_kio> 
>people of North America use a plural marker that 
>means "of unexpected number". Attached to "leg", 
>the marker means "one or more than two". 
>Attached to "stone", it means "just two".
>
>§ Some major word classes are not found in all 
>languages. English, for example, lacks 
>"ideophones" where diverse feelings about an 
>event and its participants are jammed into one 
>word - as in "rawa-dawa" from the Mundari 
>language of the Indian subcontinent meaning "the 
>sensation of suddenly realising you can do 
>something reprehensible, and no one is there to witness it".
>
>/Christine Kenneally is a science writer and 
>author of The First Word: The search for the 
>origins of language (Viking Adult, 2007)/
>
>http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627621.000-language-lessons-you-are-what-you-speak.html?full=true
>
>
>
>Professor Raphael Salkie,       Tel: (+44) 01273 643335
>
>School of Humanities,            Tel: (+44) 01273 643337
>
>University of Brighton            Tel: (+44) 01273 600900
>
>Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9PH
>
>England.
>
>
>Fax: (+44) 01273 641873
>
>Email: r.m.salkie at brighton.ac.uk <mailto:r.m.salkie at brighton.ac.uk>
>
>
>Home page: http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/research/academic/salkie

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