訊息: 26
語言: English
sudanglo (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月21日上午11:38:25
Looks like the tide has turned and myth is being dethroned. See The Language Myth
bartlett22183 (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月21日下午7:50:28
nornen (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月21日下午7:59:07
The fact, that even decades after the postulation of his various theses and theories, Chomsky is still being a topic of books seeking to refute his works, shows clearly how exceptional and ground-breaking his work was and is.
sudanglo (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月22日上午10:11:37
Alkanadi:I don't quite understand. Is this a "nature vs nurture" debate?The idea, which has been put forward by some academic heavy-hitters is that human beings have built-in some sort of grammar engine and that at some level all languages conform to a universal grammar.
But of course the very existence of Esperanto, which by any reasonable criterion, is a human language, makes explicit the extent to which language is a cultural phenomenon. Learning a language is like learning the rules of a game.
The biological equipment to make the sounds of a language is inherited, and the brain capacity (intelligence) to cope with a language is apparently uniquely human. But that's not the issue that language as an instinct is dealing with.
I haven't yet got hold of a copy of the book I mentioned, but the review in the New Scientists suggests a paradigm revolution is under way and is supported by evidence.
The thrust of the thesis in the book appears to be that grammar develops from use, rather than being a consequence of a grammar engine common to all homo sapiens. For anybody who knows the history of the development of Esperanto, I suggest that this is a common sense idea.
Alkanadi (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月23日上午8:16:14
For example, every language has a definite article, a way to identify plurals, pronouns, verbs, conjunctions, ect...
Kirilo81 (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月23日上午9:28:41
nornen:The fact, that even decades after the postulation of his various theses and theories, Chomsky is still being a topic of books seeking to refute his works, shows clearly how exceptional and ground-breaking his work was and is.It's rather like communism: The idea sounds too good to be wrong, although there is little evidence to its support. Maybe neurolinguistics will solve this in one direction or the other.
On the development on grammar cognitive linguistics in my opinion gives better insights, cf. this recent paper.
nornen (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月23日下午5:59:16
Alkanadi:I agree that all languages have some type of language engine or framework because of common characteristics within all of them.Not every language has a definite article. Not every language has a way to identify plurals (taking "identify" as "determine if something is plural by examining it" ). Not every language has pronouns...
For example, every language has a definite article, a way to identify plurals, pronouns, verbs, conjunctions, ect...
Linguistic universals are a tad more abstract in general. At the same time any list of those universals is highly disputed and you won't find two lists by two different scientists that match.
marbuljon (顯示個人資料) 2014年10月24日下午8:18:53
Alkanadi:For example, every language has a definite article, a way to identify plurals, pronouns, verbs, conjunctions, ect...Don't worry, I got that you were joking!
nornen:.....Chomsky is still being a topic of books seeking to refute his works, shows clearly how exceptional and ground-breaking his work was and is.Here, they talk about how his political views more than they talk about his linguistic ideas. His ideas never caught on much here to begin with. Anyway, he's introduced in your very first linguistics course, but not exactly as The One Authority.
The general consensus seems to be "he said many things that were wrong, some that were right, and didn't say a lot that could have been said. He also didn't exactly look at many different languages (he basically only focused on English). His work is important because it helped diversify linguistics. A few people still believe in what he said."
(Before Chomsky, apparently, to study linguistics in Europe was basically to compare languages between each other, and to study linguistics in the USA was to "map out" languages that we didn't know much about, by living in communities where the languages were spoken and trying to document them. The question of "how did languages come to exist?" and so on was for philosophers and psychologists, not linguists.)
So, um, is he still big in the USA but not big in Europe, or what is it...? I know the US doesn't look at stuff from outside the US as often, but it's kind of weird.