Noam Chomsky is a genius. He does not have to defend his stance, because the proof is written in his many books -- which if you illiterate people would read, you would find your questions and challenges to his conclusions are baseless.

Horoshi,

Thanks for the comment!

Noam Chomsky is a genius.

Quite a number of us are geniuses. So what? Being a genius doesn't innoculate you from criticism, nor does guarantee your infallibility. Bertrand Russell was also a genius, math-wise, but was significantly wrong about a great many things.

He does not have to defend his stance, because the proof is written in his many books...

Simply writing your opinion does not mean it requires no defense. It's possible that the written exposition is ambiguous, incomplete, contradictory, or in factual error. The mere fact of it being written in no way shows it is a complete, correct argument. All kinds of tripe gets written down.

... which if you illiterate people would read ..

Good! Always go in for the ad hominem argument! Very persuasive. (To the opposite point.)

i’m interested in your perspective on Chomsky’s linguistics and politics. i know practically nothing about linguistics but maybe i can learn something.

first in response to your question -

you wrote: "Did the US, under the Clinton administration, really slaughter 500,000 Iraqi children with the approval of Madeline Albright, as Noam alleges? Where is the reference and context of Albright's quote so that the reader can judge for themselves? And a reference for the statistic would be helpful, also."

here is some of what i have found: the Albright quote is from May 12th 1996 on CBS’s Sixty Minutes program. The quote and the context, her response to a question from Leslie Stahl, have both been described everywhere. just put +albright and +"worth it" in a google search and you'll find thousands of references instantly.

large death tolls, and the responsibilities for them, are almost always heavily disputed in predictable directions. that's practically automatic. you can't just say "yeah i support massive loss of life" - you have to oppose that. the Albright performance horrified people because it was an exception to that general rule.

as for the 500,000 figure - that comes from Anupama Rao Singh, director of UNICEF's Iraq operations, and from Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, as well as from the people at the top of the UN Sanctions administration.

the responsibility for the sharp escalation in infant and child mortality during the sanctions years is of course disputed by predictable parties in the USA and UK, but the people who have the most information, that is the top europeans in charge of administering the sanctions regime and relief efforts, these top people ultimately resigned in protest against the sanctions, bitterly condemning the existing policies in very clear and horrifying terms: “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that ... Five thousand children are dying every month ... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these.” and “I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that... Saddam Hussein is not paying the price for economic sanctions; on the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of untreated water. What is clear is that the Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. History will slaughter those responsible." that’s just some of what Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, had to say as he resigned.

soon afterwards his successor as Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq - Hans Von Sponeck - also resigned. read about some of his important experiences in this outraged letter:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,417598,00.html

you should look all this information up and see for yourself- it’s easy to find in mainstream as well as independent sources.

.....i’m afraid maybe i’ve spent too much time on that first part of my message - responding to your inquiry concerning the sanctions against Iraq. what i am more interested in is the linguistics discussion....

your point #3: “Dogmatic assumption of a ‘universal grammar’ underlying all language. I agree with Marc, in that there must be something universal among all grammars, since similar brains the organs produce speech, but as they say: ‘to the extent its universal, its not grammar; to the extent is grammar, its not universal.’

oddly, i don’t see how your perspective differs (in essence) from Chomsky’s here. you all seem to share a belief in an underlying “universal grammar”. in fact i think this assumption is shared not just by you and Chomsky and Marc but much more widely among perfectly normal people - arising i suspect from simple observations about the attributes of species that appear to be inherent. if so, why is it “dogmatic” when Chomsky assumes it and not when you or anyone else assumes it. some explanations suggest themselves but i’m wondering what you think. i also don’t understand the last point you make: “to the extent its universal, its not grammar; to the extent is grammar, its not universal”. can you please explain the meaning and significance of that?

your point #6: “Assumption that language arises, in children, in a ‘poverty of stimulus’ (what planet are these people from?).... Sometime, I'll go looking hard for his ‘proof’ that language arises in children amongst a ‘poverty of stimulus’. But at the moment, since I fully participate in the real world, I notice children are raised amongst a plethora of stimuli.”

i’m not sure but i think Chomsky’s point here is pretty simple. imagine a two year old baby who cannot yet say even his own name. now let’s suppose i am going to race with this two year old to see which of us can acquire language faster and better. if i were to try to learn a new language as quickly and thoroughly as possible i would put myself in a place where that language was spoken exclusively and i would practice conversing as much as possible and i would study with books and dictionaries and get lessons and do excercises and so on. even so, after three years of constant study and immersion i would still have less fluency than the child, now five years old. many adults in fact never fully catch up. and the five year old would have learned without books, lessons, exercises, and without any previous language experience. i’m not sure but i think Chomsky’s point is only that the input is very limited compared with the output. the stimuli experienced by young children is relatively very limited compared with the quantity, diversity, and complexity of the language that they quickly acquire. it seems to me that calling it “poverty of stimulus” may just be a negative re-statement of the common observation that young children acquire language much better than adults in similar situations. i’ve read some interviews where he has addressed this issue very briefly. when it comes to language acquisition, young children get more for less. does anybody reject this general idea?

here and elsewhere i think the most remarkable thing about Chomsky’s position is that he is not proclaiming any discovery nor even any unusual insight. rather, he seems to be hinting that the reason his perspectives may seem novel is only because entire territories of normal thought are systematically suppressed and prohibited by repressive institutional and intellectual structures. by that logic, Chomsky achieves notoriety mainly for breaking in and demonstrating why nativist approaches to linguistics are taboo in academia - even while the same nativist insights are commonplace and uncelebrated in the general population. in other words the same idea will be interpreted as trivial or “revolutionary” (or “dogmatic”) depending who and where you are. but disregarding all the hype and notoriety, maybe the degree of Chomsky’s real constructive influence, as opposed to mere notoriety, is very large not because of any “revolutionary” novelty in the ideas underlying his work but mainly because he has worked harder and in greater quantity and stated his ideas (at least in politics) in clearer language than others. those options are open to any other privileged educated people, i would imagine.

Anyone who writes a paper that deals with grammar or anything linguistic-related would do well to learn how to use "its" and "it's" properly in a sentence...furthermore, there is no such thing as "impiricism"...perhaps you meant "empiricism"

such elementary clumsiness severely curtails any import the work might have had

ps. kudos to the remarks regarding the Universal Grammar by The Noticer...quite astute

despising imprecision,

Yup. There are a number of typos and mispellings on my blog -- usually, I know better, but it constantly comes out that way anyway.

So -- is that your entire retort? "You spelled something wrong -- who needs to address the argument?" Puhlease. Not a blog in the world you couldn't do that with.

Of course, I don't believe you anyway: "the noticer" mispelled "exercises" as well -- and you both show flagrant disregard for the basic rules of punctuation and capitalization -- yet apparently you would regard that rather more pro-Chomsky observation as "astute".

Playing by two different sets of rules, are we?

Lucas,

Thanks for your intelligent comments on the topic. I certainly agree that children -- and people -- have an inherant ability/predisposition to do language. I think everyone can agree on that. Chomsky's own critics agree, when they reply: "To the extent it's a grammar, it's not universal, and to the extent it's universal, it's not a grammar."

But your own example illustrates the problem exactly: You describe a child's sententence as: "subject - verb - direct object - preposition - indirect object." Yet many languages don't use this order at all. Nor, I think, would we find their children start by uttering English-style sentences.

Of course, you could claim there was a universal grammar hiding down in there anyway, and that all the child was doing was picking up the proper transformation rules before speaking. But that would seem to dispute the "poverty of stimulus" contention, then, wouldn't it, since we are admitting the child is learning something from their environment now, aren't we?

To you, it simply "makes sense" that children emerge with the lexical structure of the english language already programmed into their brains. To me, watching children imitate their parents and parrot each word and sentence fragment, it seems some sort of learning is going on, and that the child is looking for patterns between what is said, and what is happening around them, and learning the language from that.

A mother points her child's head and body at a fire truck. She points her hand. She says, clearly, "Yellow fire engine." She repeats it several times. Another time, it's "Yellow ball." Another time it's: "Red fire engine." The child begins to notice that the color-word changes when the object's color changes, and that the color is said before the object name (in English; it would be the other way around in, say, French).

In your world, the parent doesn't instruct the child, who exists in a "poverty of stimulus." As I see it, there are loads of stimuli happening, and the child is learning from that all the time.

But, hey, what would I know, since I'm basing my thinking on direct observations, rather than a gut feeling that my specific language is the basis for all others in the world, and is genetically encoded into all children.

Two big problems Chomsky's critics raise are touched on here: (a) that Chomsky's "universal" grammar looks suspiciously like English, (b) the UG argument isn't disprovable, so it's hard to take it seriously as a scientific statement.

Well Lucas,

All I can say is "thank you" for what has to be one of the most interesting conversations on this blog for a while. Politics gets so boring at times.

I guess where I vary in my opinion is that I don't believe English is the basis for UG

Since I personally don't believe in a UG at all, I (of course) also don't think English would be the basis for one. But many of Chomsky's critics point out that most formulations of UG look suspiciously English or at least European.

For example, there are features of other languages which english lacks -- tenses and persons which have no mapping in english. So these would all have to be part of the UG, with transformations that drop them when converting to English. Of course, things get really hairy going backward: the backward transformation would then insert these missing features, even though the information isn't even present in English.

However, we've looked at studies where infants learning language's as foreign as Mardarin 'evolve' employing the same basic steps...

It sounds like you are saying infants tend to learn nouns first, then verbs -- and their relation to the noun, etc. Of course: again, I believe there is an inherant ability to learn grammars. Since that's basicly hardware-driven, we'd also expect the learning sequence to be somewhat universal.

(Also, it just makes sense. You can't learn about direct objects or pronouns without already knowning nouns. Concrete objects are the most obvious things, modifiers and actions next, etc...)

But that's not at all the same thing as saying there is a universal grammar. It sounds as though you might be again confusing the two.

That something will click in the brain as it receives enough input, hardening the 'UG machine' to one or two specific grammars, whether they are SVO, SOV, VOS, etc.

You're speaking as though Chomsky claims children come preprogrammed with all possible grammars. UG implies one grammar, not a series of them.

I see: You don't even know what a transform is, do you? This, and another statement below seem to imply that.

Chomsky doesn't say we have all possible grammars in our head. He says there is one "universal" grammar, and that we convert to and from it using "transforms" in order to form or read langage.

I would also note your proposal is functionally identical to what you seem to be refuting (the idea that people learn grammars), other than by looking at the physical implications of what you're claiming.

For example, I could argue that people learn to drive vehicles as follows: there are instructions already pre-coded in each person's brain for how to drive every possible vehicle. Horses, powerboats, helicopters, motorcycles, skateboards, spacecraft -- it's all in there. Then, when the person learns, the brain just slowly learns to choose which pre-programmed driving behavior matches the current environment by "hardening" those pathways.

Or we could do the same thing with vocabulary: all possible words are in there at birth. During the child's development, they just learn to use the ones which are right in their locale.

Hey, if it's wrong in these cases, you'll have to explain why: you just argued it made sense for all possible grammars to be pre-encoded, so why not all other kinds of activities?

On the other hand, I'll tell you why it doesn't make sense: It's unnecessarily complex. The person is born, you apparently propose, with a dictionary of all grammatical possibilities already put in their heads, and then the non-working ones are simply thrown away or ignored, wasting all that information.

In my little, insane world, when a child learns "ball" it's associated with the place in the brain where other physical objects go. Likewise with "blue" as there are undoubtedly color-recognition circuits in there. So grammar production and decoding is just a matter of building neurons to sequence these properly.

We already believe children "learn" other skills, such as bouncing a ball, or putting together a puzzle in the right order. All these involve task-sequencing. So we already know a mechanism for doing such exists.

But in your world, we don't consider that mechanism, and assume instead that all possible grammar circuits are pre-built (even though the nouns, verb, adjective, (etc.) slots aren't even populated yet!) and then re-enforced or killed off.

Yes, that makes tons of sense.

Of course, we can see that they are functionally equivalent if we noticed that "harden" can simply be replaced with "grow" or "form". "Hardening" of selected existing combinations, from a set of all possible ones, is just the same as "forming" or "growing" connections in an environment which allows unlimited possibilities.

The difference is that the second (latter) alternative is much, much simpler, physically. And your phrasing definitely implies the former.

He or she is learning the lexical category of the word due to its positioning and context, not specifically the grammar...

Well, is the relative position of noun and verb (for example) learned or not? Either the child approaches it already knowing (say) adjectives come before nouns, or they don't. Please choose.

Of course you know the child must first learn which comes first. Proposing a specific mechanism for learning doesn't stop it from being "learning" grammar, and thus being against Chomsky's idea of a UG.

Again, I think this entire conversation is happening because you didn't know what transforms are and what role they allegedly play.

And I don't see how you can even say: "positioning, not grammar" since positioning IS a huge part of grammar. I don't see how you can say they're learning "positioning" but not grammar. That''s like saying you're learning to read notes, not music.

Now that may not be a case for UG in itself, but it certainly doesn't hurt the theory.

This argument also looks like it arises from the same confusion I think I'm seeing, above: Verb agreement is very much a part of (English) grammar, and thus would have to be part of the universal grammar, or enforced through a transformation step.

The definition of UG is: all languages have the same basic underlying structure, and specific languages have rules that transform these underlying structures into the specific patterns found in given languages.

What Chomsky is saying is that our brains are hard-wired with this innate ability to learn language (in general); ie: we have the ability to learn subjects, objects, and verbs, but whatever language you are emmersed in and its various Parameters of Variation (Chomsky), will dictate the order which you put these in.

Poverty of Stimulus is somewhat confusing for me. This view is: even if a child is without language stimulus he/she will still acquire language from bits and pieces heard because of his innate inclincation for language (langauge acquisition device; chomsky).

But MY question is: what grammar do they adapt to? SVO, SOV etc... which one is innate?

Regarding SLP_Canada's comments:

I really hate to keep hitting this over and over again, but I guess there's a need...

[a] The definition of UG is: all languages have the same basic underlying [hidden, deep, invisible and unspoken] structure... [b] What Chomsky is saying is that our brains are hard-wired with this innate ability to learn language (in general) ...

Once again, there is a world of difference between saying [b] we have an innate ability to learn language (which I think pretty much everyone agreess with), and [a] saying that we are all born with a specific, detailed, hidden, common "universal grammar" pre-programmed into our brains.

Please, folks, I beg you, stop conflating these two very different statements. Again, to kick this particular should-be-rotting horse one more time:

Imagine I proposed that we all learned to drive a car in the following manner: We are all born with knowledge of how to drive a "universal vehicle" in our head. Maybe this "universal vehicle" is like a car; maybe it's like a spacecraft; maybe it's like an atomic submarine; maybe it's like a hang glider.

But regardless, I propose that we all acquire "transforms" to convert the means of driving specific vehicles into that "universal vehicle."

Say I propose the "universal vehicle" is really like a hang glider. Then I'd argue that as I learn to drive a Ford Pinto, my brain builds a "transform" to map turning the steering wheel of a car onto the "universal" mechanism of mentally shifting my weight right or left to turn the glider. Likewise, for accelerating, I learn a transform which ignores the vertical component of glider flight, and transforms my "universal" mental model of shifting my weight forward into increasing pressuing on the accelerator pedal.

Could that happen? Sure. [Who can disprove it?] But is that the only possible way in which we might learn to drive a car? Is such a theory identical with saying we have an ability to learn how to drive vehicles??? Is it true that no other possible mechanism could be proposed?

No. Of course not. I could say we're each born with a different "deep", "underlying" vehicle pre-programmed in our heads (yours is a skateboard; mine is a pogo stick). I could argue (as a previous commenter seems to have) that we're all born with a zillion different vechicles pre-programmed into our heads. I could even propose (gasp!) we simply learn directly.

All these assume we have the ability to learn to operate different vehicles. Yet not all of them are the "universal vehicle" theory. Okay?

Now please people, stop making the same assertion with grammar. UG is not simply saying we have the ability to learn language [That's obvious since we're having this conversation!] or even that such an ability is somehow "special". It is instead the proposal of a specific mechanism.

But MY question is: what grammar do they adapt to? SVO, SOV etc... which one is innate?

Ah, you see, that's the fun of it: since the UG is completely hidden and invisible, you can claim it's anything you want it to be. As one critic put it: "The practice of generative grammar [Chomskyanism] is the same as finding Easter eggs that you have hidden yourself."

Lucas,

On revision I think I'm arguing more for the pressence of an LAD (Language Acquisition Device, another of Chomsky's theories)...

As I understand it, Chomsky defines the "LAD" as a hypothetical brain structure which contains the universal grammar. So I don't see how your statement: "something will click in the brain as it receives enough input, hardening the 'UG machine' to one or two specific grammars, whether they are SVO, SOV, VOS, etc." -- which directly states you think we are born with multiple grammars -- is at all about Chomsky's "LAD", which is a mechanism he defines explicitly as containing only ONE grammar.

If, on the other hand, you are simply saying you think we are born with something in the brain which gives us an ability to acquire grammar, then please note I've been saying this to you from square one -- yet without accepting the UG or anything which is founded upon that.

[On Chomsky's proposing a "LAD" or "Language Acquisition Device": Part of the fun of being an academic is that you get to say really obvious things, in a really cryptic manner, and it impresses the heck out of people.

Back in the days when medicine was young, you'd go to a doctor and tell him your gut hurt. After probing you a bit, he'd announce the diagnoses: "Ah! You have dyspepsia!" Gosh, he's so smart!

Of course, all he's saying, in Latin, is that you're having a "bad digestion". That was completely obvious: you knew that already, or you wouldn't have gone to see him in the first place. But it sounds so much more impressive when said that way by the good doctor. Now, if only he could do something meaningful about that...

Of course we have something in the brain which causes us to acquire language. Or we wouldn't speak or write at all. What Chomksy is saying with his LAD is redundant: We have a UG, and something helps us learn mappings onto that. I.e. we have a UG and we speak. But given "we have a UG", that second part is obvious.]

How often do you hear a infant construst a sentence using incorrect word classes (i.e. verb-verb)?

Sigh. One more time...

Look, I think we can all agree we have an innate ability to learn and do language. But please note, again, the retort: "To the extent it is universal, it is not a grammar. To the extent it is a grammar, it is not universal."

In my response to you, notice how I proposed there is one area of the brain in which nouns are stored, and another in which (say) motions are stored.

Why is this happening?

Because we are born with a hard-wired understanding that objects move. In other words -- to translate "objects move" into linguistic jargon: We are all born with an innate understanding that nouns verb. (I rather like that, given that the noun is "noun" and the verb is "verb".) I would also say we are born with the idea that object have properties, such as colors. Or, again: that nouns have modifying adjectives. (The two statements are absolutely identical, but one makes you think of language, and one makes you think of getting around and survival.)

So yes, I, and many others, would agree we all are born with certain information hard-wired. (The fact a gazelle starts leaping about shortly after birth, and doesn't attempt to leap through tree trunks or other animals illustrates this.) And I would contend that we are born all knowing the nouns verb, or "objects do things", to use the vernacular.

But, again: "To the extent that is universal, it is not a grammar" -- knowing that "nouns verb" says nothing at all about whether we are born with the idea that in speech the noun must come first, or second.* Again, I would propose we learn that rule directly.

So there two answers to your objection, at least one of which (b) should be obvious:

(a) (More of an aside:) I rather think that if a child did do something arguably "ungrammatical" -- you propose verb-verb -- it would be ignored. If the child said: "run stop" or "run fly", (VV) we would hear that as being a sequence of two sentences with implied subjects.

(b) Regardless, if such utterances were uncommon (and I'd agree they probably are), the reason has already been explained: because we have an inherant understanding that nouns verb, that objects do stuff, and thus we don't tend to construct many sentences like VV because VV doesn't map to a meaningful underlying THOUGHT.

But mere THOUGHTS aren't grammars.

One more time, just to drive the point home, repeat after me, boys and girls: "To the extent it's universal, it's not a grammar. To the extent it's a grammar, it's not universal." This is not saying "nothing is universal." It is simply arguing out that language-related abilities can be something short of a "universal grammar".

Now I'm not saying you have to agree with that statement. Not at all. But it would be deeply encouraging if people could begin to understand that objection and take it into account in their arguments. If this is due to the fact that I have been somehow unclear, then I apologize, and hope these additional illustrations will clear that up.

[* Does the noun come first or second? The question itself presumes something not in evidence: that we can only think in terms of linear grammars. The phrasing itself is a filter which circularly conditions the thinker to accept the answer. Sign language is much "deeper" than spoken or writen language: even hearing children more readily acquire sign than speech. Yet sign language has phrases where the noun neither comes before nor after the verb: there are signs made by signing a noun or noun-designant with the hand(s), while moving the arms in a verb-motion at the same time. Map that onto the UG, eh? Since all Chomskyan grammars are inherantly sequential statements (X follows Y -- see BNF) this shows language can take on non-"grammatical" forms, and thus provides direct evidence that the "underlying" structure or mechanism is not a grammar at all. The brain is a three-dimensional, massively parallel-processing structure. So it seems rather unlikely that its core, "deep" controlling linguistic strategy or mechanism is a one-dimsenionsal, rigorously sequential-processing-only mechanism as it would have to be for a UG to exist. And, indeed, the evidence seems to reflect that.]

But watch an infant attempt to put 3D objects through similarly shaped slots and see how he or she forces them despite the fact they do no match.

True, the child doesn't look at the exact shape of the edges and automatically know, for example, how to distingush a hexagon from a square. So, you seem to argue, this proves there are no inherant abilities being used here, thus that language is somehow different than all other things.

But this strains out a gnat while swallowing a camel: The child is trying to push objects through holes. Even if the child misses, or chooses the wrong hole, it's obvious that the child understands solid objects don't pass directly through each other. The child is, after all, aiming for holes in the example you give.

This is selective thinking: you point out one detailed behavior which a child doesn't instantly have (in this case, size- and shape-identification and matching, which is a bit too detailed for the first run, I'd argue) and thus generalize that there must be no inherant behaviors or knowledge children have besides learning language.

While overlooking a really obvious one.

You have to prove there are no other inherant knowledges besides language to make your case, not just pick out one thing, point out it's aquired, and hope that shows there are no others. Even one non-linguistic example disproves the argument you're using here.

As for the claim that children contain all possible grammars, I don't think that's where I'm coming from.

Perhaps not. But you certainly implied the child was born with many pre-programmed grammars, when you said the structure in the mind eventually narrowed language possibilities to "one or two specific grammars". That implies there were multiple grammars to start with.

Now perhaps you didn't mean all possibilities were in there to start with. E.g. maybe you'd claim adjective and adverbs were learned while noun/verb/object were inherant. So your argument is "this far and no farther" -- there are a middling-size number of general frameworks, but other linguistic details are learned.

That leaves you with the worst of all possible positions, since you admit direct learning is occuring, but must now justify a claim that (for example) noun/verb order couldn't be learned, while verb/adverb order (for example), or agreement (an actual example you gave) could.

It looks to me like you're just trying to shore up a really bad position by trying to edit it back into something respectable. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem to have worked out very well.

My main reason for believing this ... is that I can learn to drive a car, ride a horse, etc. perfectly fine at the age of twenty, thirty, forty if I wanted. Yet evidence has shown time and time again that second language acquisition ... is usually a lost cause following the ages of ten to twelve. The process of learning language is different, cognitively, to any other we experience.

why guys did u stop posting and replying??! Lucas all due respect :) some people want to comment and disagree without having studied language acquistion...
this is one cool chapter u can read it will definitely give u more hints about why Chomsky spoke about pos, pov, ug... search for The Articulate Mammal by Aitchison...the chapter in this book is "chattering children" read it... besides when arguing with poor UG...i advise u to read about the history of English language... u get to see the point of UG ;) i wish i had been here last year :(