Mesaĝoj: 58
Lingvo: English
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 10:43:34
Give me one discovery made by linguistics that isn't common sense, and that has stood firm in the face of repeated testing. The hallmark of good science.
I don't think we should bother Chomsky, but given his interest in the relationship between mind and language, I think that Esperanto would be a very useful testing ground for any of his theories in this field.
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 10:56:36
Tamen pli serioze, oni povas sin demandi pri la taŭga rolo de la anglalingva forumo.
Ĉu ne prioritate ĝi estu por demandoj de lernantoj kies Esperanto ne sufiĉas por prezenti la demandon en la verda.
Ĉu ni eble fortimigas komencantojn per longa filozofiaj debatoj kiuj pli inde okazus en la Esperanto sekcio.
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 14:25:53
sudanglo:Razlem, vi demandis min en kiu lingvo estas verkita ĉi tiu retejo. Nu evidente ĝi estas multlingva.I meant the programming language.
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 15:56:23
sudanglo:Give me one discovery made by linguistics that isn't common sense, and that has stood firm in the face of repeated testing.Neurolinguistic work in speech pathology has helped form speech rehabilitation programs for stroke sufferers.
Linguistics isn't the study of the measurable world; language isn't quantitative. Like Todd said, it's a social science- one that studies human interactions (or in the case of computational linguistics, human-computer interactions).
T0dd (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 17:34:13
A couple of discoveries of linguistics:
1. ASL and other sign languages around the world are, in fact, full-fledged languages, with their own distinctive syntax and semantics. Lest this be written off as "common sense", I'd point out that until sometime in the latter half of the 20th century, scientists and lay people alike thought that sign language was nothing more than crude pantomime. It took theoretical breakthroughs in the actual theory of syntax and empirical work to demonstrate that sign language is as sophisticated as any spoken language.
2. Chomsky's discovery of generative grammar was a theoretical one, but very very important. Classical grammar classifies parts of speech and various sentential structures, but has nothing to say about how sentences are actually generated. Chomsky showed that most sentences in a language can be generated by recursive rules. This discovery has produced an entire research program--a paradigm, if you will--that is applied to languages all over the world. There are, of course, many in-house disputes about the right way to do generative grammar (and about its implications), but that's the way science is. No one in linguistics disputes the point that generative grammar was a groundbreaking discovery.
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 22:02:25
If study of the brain reveals actual generation in accord with the model imagined by Chomsky, then hats off to him for the intuition.
I thought that we were still a long way off knowing how people manage to speak grammatical sentences.
And I expect the discovery to be made from study of the brain - by real scientists.
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 22:27:03
sudanglo:Don't you mean invention, not discovery.What kind of 'discovery' are you looking for? Comparative linguists have discovered trends in related languages and have reconstructed the vocabulary of a Proto-IndoEuropean language.
If study of the brain reveals actual generation in accord with the model imagined by Chomsky, then hats off to him for the intuition.
I thought that we were still a long way off knowing how people manage to speak grammatical sentences.
And I expect the discovery to be made from study of the brain - by real scientists.
T0dd (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-10 23:03:36
sudanglo:Don't you mean invention, not discovery.Erm, no. Discovery implies that what was discovered was antecedently there. Prior to Chomsky's work, no one suspected that generative grammars existed.
If study of the brain reveals actual generation in accord with the model imagined by Chomsky, then hats off to him for the intuition.Grammar is a property of language, not the brain. The existence of generative grammar is a linguistic discovery, not a neuroscientific one. Yes, Chomsky believes that science will eventually connect the dots between the two, but the reality of generative grammar doesn't depend upon that.
I thought that we were still a long way off knowing how people manage to speak grammatical sentences.Indeed we are, but not quite as far away as we were before Chomsky's work.
And I expect the discovery to be made from study of the brain - by real scientists.That discovery cannot be made, even in principle, without a full understanding of what language is and how it works, and the latter will come from the scientists who are linguists.
You asked for examples of discoveries. Now you have them. There is simply no basis for insinuating that linguistics isn't a real science.
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-11 09:29:08
sudanglo:I thought that we were still a long way off knowing how people manage to speak grammatical sentences.That's not really to do with languages though (I'll ignore the "real scientists" part, not so much because it's insulting but because "scientist" inherently means one who professes in knowledge (sciisto)).
And I expect the discovery to be made from study of the brain - by real scientists.
Neuroscientists (correct word?) are needed to research how the brain works at a chemical, biological level. Linguists (along with psychologists, sociologists, etc) are needed to research what the brain outputs and make sense of it. Neuroscientists don't know what to look for if they have no symptomatic evidence that something's going on in the brain, and they need to know how that symptom works, so they can narrow the search. Otherwise, the job of studying the human mind would be inefficient and subject to trial and error.
A good comparison would be someone who builds computers, vs someone who programs computer software. Often the work becomes intertwined, in both cases. A similar case would be the manufacturer of a sewing machine and the local sewer's (
) club. The manufacturer knows how the machine works inside out, where as the sewers know how to make works of art out of it.Builders know how to build parts of buildings, architects know how to put those parts together into magnificent (albeit probably plain ugly in 30 years time) structures.
NASA rocket scientists build rockets, astronauts operate them.
And so forth.
Additionally, neuroscientists explore how the brain works physically, where as linguists and psychologists may (not all would have this objective) explore how the brain works via its output.
hoss:It's helpful to remember that Chomsky studies Language in general as a psychological phenomenon: he's interested in what native languages can reveal about how the mind works. That's quite different from an interest in becoming fluent in any one particular language, and it means he has little reason to care about Esperanto, which is overwhelmingly a second language.This makes me more forgiving of him
. 
Miland (Montri la profilon) 2011-marto-11 15:13:59
ceigered:I'll ignore the "real scientists" part, not so much because it's insulting but because "scientist" inherently means one who professes in knowledge..Ho saĝulo! Indeed the Esperanto word scienco is wider than the English word "science" commonly used for natural sciences or natursciencoj. It covers any field of scholarship, and the main requirement for a study to be "scientific" in this wider sense is not the use of experimental laboratories and measuring instruments, but rather that the object of study determine the method of investigation. For example astronomy is a science, even though it is not possible to put a planet into a test-tube and do experiments with it.
Linguistics is therefore a science because its method of enquiry is determined by the objects it seeks to understand. If for a given researcher this is, for example, living languages, anyone who does not include Esperanto in his enquiries is liable to have knowledge that is incomplete, since the objects of enquiry are not a complete set.
