Unsurprisingly, Chomsky was wrong

Opty

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This may not come as any kind of a mild shock to some in this forum or anyone who doesn't study cognition/learning or doesn't already read a lot on this subject (for the fun of it?), but Chomsky's (in)famous theories on language learning (specifically, his idea of "universal grammar") are being increasingly refuted via actual evidence that has been building for at least the past two decades.

Scientific American recently published a pretty decent write-up about it this week:

The research suggests a radically different view, in which learning of a child’s first language does not rely on an innate grammar module. Instead the new research shows that young children use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all—such as the ability to classify the world into categories (people or objects, for instance) and to understand the relations among things. These capabilities, coupled with a unique hu***man ability to grasp what others intend to communicate, allow language to happen. The new findings indicate that if researchers truly want to understand how children, and others, learn languages, they need to look outside of Chomsky’s theory for guidance.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/#
 

ColoradoGuy

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Nice article. I particularly liked this bit:

But evidence has overtaken Chomsky’s theory, which has been inching toward a slow death for years. It is dying so slowly because, as physicist Max Planck once noted, older scholars tend to hang on to the old ways: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
 

Prince Anpiel

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When I first saw that statement about "grammar modules" as a person who just learns bits of languages for fun, I was flabbergasted by how it didn't come with an explanation as to why, if we all have the same "grammar module" in our head, I have had to shorten language related conversations by learning phrases like "SOV," "SVO," "tonal," etc. If it was all done by a thing we all have that is the same, grammar across the world would not be so radically different and learning language would just be as easy as learning vocab.

And when you leave the comfort of your first language, grammar learning is like a jungle. It is so exciting you want to throw a party when there is no grammatical gender. In French the adjective placement has exceptions based upon which adjective you are using. Russian has no articles but the word being S or O changes the end of the word. German has S or O based and grammatical gender based articles. And I don't even feel qualified to explain some of the weird stuff you see in Kurdish.
 

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I am a radical behavioral and thus much more on the Skinner side of this enduring debate, but I would not say Chomsky was blanket "wrong". The tendency of research and academia to bow down to one particular influence in a field leads to that being over applied in overly absolute terms. Skinner was not right about language being purely learned, and Chomsky was not right about it being purely innate. The truth, and the interesting research, is about how those influences combine.
 

Opty

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I am a radical behavioral and thus much more on the Skinner side of this enduring debate, but I would not say Chomsky was blanket "wrong".
But when it comes to his specific claim (which is what that article was addressing) that our language ability is the result of his proposed LAD containing some sort of "universal grammar" (UG), where our brains somehow, magically already know grammar rules, he absolutely was wrong. There's no wiggle room there. He didn't say it was "this and a little bit of that." He said it was "this." He seemed totally ignorant of the amazing plasticity of children's brains as an explanation for how they pick up language so quickly.

He made a specific, definitive assertion and it was an incorrect one.

Just like if he'd said the sky is green (though, he would have probably said it was a "colorless green").

The tendency of research and academia to bow down to one particular influence in a field leads to that being over applied in overly absolute terms. Skinner was not right about language being purely learned, and Chomsky was not right about it being purely innate. The truth, and the interesting research, is about how those influences combine.

Of the two, Skinner wins this one, imo. People love to dump on him for some reason, but he gets way more hate than he deserves especially in language debates. He acknowledged that there are other variables involved in language acquisition - such as the neurophysiological component and the social environment - but he felt those were best left for people who specialized in those areas to figure out. He was only interested in studying the behavior of language from a functionalist perspective.

Chomsky's LAD/UG theory offers no coherent explanation for someone such as "Genie, the Wild Child." Skinner's, at least, partially does.
 
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atthebeach

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I am a radical behavioral and thus much more on the Skinner side of this enduring debate, but I would not say Chomsky was blanket "wrong". The tendency of research and academia to bow down to one particular influence in a field leads to that being over applied in overly absolute terms. Skinner was not right about language being purely learned, and Chomsky was not right about it being purely innate. The truth, and the interesting research, is about how those influences combine.

^this. And research into signed languages shed light onto even more of how we acquire and process language, and what appears innate vs. learned.
 
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veinglory

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And I think there is more similarity in grammars between language than would be predicted by pure chance. So, no there is not a single universal grammar, but there are grammar patterns beyond what direct transfer would explain.
 

ColoradoGuy

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And I think there is more similarity in grammars between language than would be predicted by pure chance. So, no there is not a single universal grammar, but there are grammar patterns beyond what direct transfer would explain.

Yes, I think this is an important observation.
 

dinky_dau

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I have to say that the title of this thread is very odd-sounding to me. "Unsurprisingly, Chomsky was wrong?"
This rather makes it sounds as if he is a yahoo, reckless or irresponsible; some kind of person we should always assume (beforehand) to be wrong. Like a newscaster or a weatherman or something. Who goes around assuming Chomsky is usually inaccurate? Anyone? People who (perhaps) dislike his views on governments?

Otherwise, I can't imagine anyone slighting him. I'd never be surprised that Noam Chomsky is right about something; I naturally expect him to be right about most things he comes up with. He's one of the foremost intellectuals we have.

The last book I read on linguistics (sometime in the past 8 months) was by Steven Pinker. Pinker dwells on Chomsky quite a bit and seems to favor at least sifting through his theories for their various merits. Is Pinker also someone who is usually in error? He's going to have to do a lot of editing of his books, I guess. Whole chapters touch on Chomsky.

Oh well. If Chomsky's theory (of universal grammar) is outmoded; then so be it. I'm pretty sure his ego isn't wounded by this turn-of-events. Happens all the time in science. If it's no longer relevant, that's fine. But this not to say that Chomsky's early work nor his career was useless, or not undertaken in good faith. He still helped the field progress; he still took a step forward into an unknown territory. It was a theory, after all. Theories provoke research. I feel the guy still deserves all our respect.

Just my opinion, of course.
 
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BagfootBandit

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So thought comes out of work and not the other way around? Heh.

Makes sense, considering we think with our bodies. The whole mind/body separation in western philosophy and psychology is kinda odd if we think about it that way.

Oh well. If Chomsky's theory (of universal grammar) is outmoded; then so be it. I'm pretty sure his ego isn't wounded by this turn-of-events. Happens all the time in science. If it's no longer relevant, that's fine. But this not to say that Chomsky's early work nor his career was useless, or not undertaken in good faith. He still helped the field progress; he still took a step forward into an unknown territory. It was a theory, after all. Theories provoke research. I feel the guy still deserves all our respect.

Just my opinion, of course.

Absolutely. Most founders of various scientific fields have been proven wrong to great degree, but they're still honored. He helped advance science, and that is no mean feat. All scientists are wrong even when they're right, and that's what makes discovering the unknown so exciting!
 
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