Pinker+and+Jackendoff


 * The Faculty of Language: What's Special About It?**

Summary:

Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch suggest that the only unique aspect of human language is recursion, with all other aspects being unique to humans, but not to language, or simply not unique to humans. Pinker and Jackendoff disagree. Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch either believe that conceptual structure, speech perception, speech production, phonology, words, and syntax are not unique to human language, or simply do not mention them. Pinker and Jackendoff believe that their evidence is insufficient to suggest that recursion is the only special concept of human language. Instead, they argue that language was evolved slowly by natural selection and is built on many concepts and abilities, not just recursion. They suggest that the "recursion-only" hypothesis is based on the premise of Chomsky's Minimalist Program, which they call a "decade-long attempt at a grand unified theory for linguistics" (p. 17). The Minimalist Program, however, fails to take into account many important linguistic phenomena.

Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch believe that language does not exist because it was evolved for the purpose of communication, but that is more for the understanding of concepts in one's own mind. They also believe that the capacity for language exists because it came from some other ability, and that language is actually "bad" for use as a communication device. They also believe that it is unusually "perfect" at connecting sound and meaning, which makes it unique among biological systems. Pinker and Jackendoff disagree with these things, too. They argue that language is certainly "for" communication, and not for personal thoughts, because the language a person uses is learned and because what we say in our heads is nowhere near as structured as what we say out loud (I would say I have an issue with this idea: the structure of my mind is verrueckt/crazy complex when compared to my verbalization's. What about when there doesn't exist a way to say what you truly mean?). They also say that language cannot be considered a "perfect" system of connecting sound and meaning because there is no real way to define what "perfect" or "optimal" mean in this situation. The idea that language capacity exists because of another ability, they say, is acceptable, but refute the idea that the evolution of the capacity for one thing and the subsequent evolution of that capacity for another thing are mutually exclusive.

Vocabulary:
 * Narrow Language Faculty (FLN): components of language ability that are specific to language only.
 * Broad Language Faculty (FLB): components of language which can be shared with other abilities.
 * Homologous: inherited by different animals from a common ancestor.
 * Analogous: existing as a result of parallel evolution, not common ancestral background.
 * Senorimotor: relating to the control of the nerves or the sensory and motor coordination of an organism.
 * Pure word deafness: a condition in which a person can recognize different sounds, but does not have the ability to process speech.
 * Auditory agnosia: a condition in which a person can understand speech, but cannot recognize other sounds or appreciate music.
 * Recursion is the process of repeating items in a self-similar way. Think repetition, mirroring, et cetera.

Notes:

Recursion >> "in linguistics enables 'discrete infinity' by embedding phrases within phrases of the same type in a hierarchical structure"

Concludes on 15-16... Summary of evidence against the recursion-only hypothesis (other parts of language unique to humans): speech perception, speech production, phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax. HCF either did not discuss many of these or did not provide evidence against them being uniquely human.

Speech perception: tests not comparable to human speech capacity, differences between humans and monkeys not discussed Speech production: humans are better equipped to produce language because vocal tract is far more complex, vocal imitation and learning limited to humans Phonology: not discussed Lexicon: evidence not discussed Morphology: not discussed Syntax: not discussed except for recursion- HCF says it is unique to humans, but they don't make a distinction between recursive systems

Is phonology uniquely human? Stated in article, “So overall, major characteristics of phonology are specific to language (or to language and music), uniquely human, discretely infinite, and not recursive” (11). Is language an adaptation? >> recursion cannot be considered an adaptation to communication... though not found in other ACSs, it is found in visual cognition >> cannot be the only evolutionary development for language in humans >> “that communication among kin (especially between parents and offspring) played a crucial but neglected role in driving language evolution”

(Pinker and Jackendoff) “They argue that language is certainly "for" communication, and not for personal thoughts, because the language a person uses is learned and because what we say in our heads is nowhere near as structured as what we say out loud" >> also, out thoughts are much more abstract and visual, rather than spelled out... do we say more in our head or see more in our head?

"A second question is what parts of a person's language ability (learned or built-in) are specific to language and what parts belong to more general abilities" (p. 202). - What is a part that is functionally involved with language that isn't specifically for language by itself, and what is built in?

The ability to form concepts is necessary to language, but is not specific to language (p. 202).

Language might be by chance and just and extra that came with some other "evolutionary mechanisms" (p. 202).

Language's primary purpose is to pass along knowledge and information about intentions (p. 231).

Pinker & Jackendoff argue: once again the argument is focused on the evolutionary and adaptive process of language. They combat Chomsky's Minimalist program in his recent approach to syntax, arguing that it conflicts with the theory of evolution and lacks evidence to back it up.

4. Language, Communication, and Evolution: HCF's three themes of language refuted by Pinker and Jackendoff

Language not designed for communication, but for expressing thought- P&J disagree, say language must be for communication, language "allows one person to get a meaning into a second person's head by making a sound with his or her vocal tract" (p. 23). To me, the argument seems to be between whether language is for more than one person (communication) or just ourselves (expressing thought). Yet expressing thought seems like it could easily become a kind of communication-- sometimes the words I say are not to communicate a specific thing to another person, but that I just want another human to listen to my thoughts- which seems like a combination of communication and thought expression.

Language is "perfect", Chomsky uses invented languages as an example of imperfection- P&J: "Rather than being useless but perfect, language is useful but imperfect, just like other biological systems" (p. 27).

NFL faculty evolved for reasons other than language, HCF say recursion did not evolve to be used for language, but for something else- P&J say it could have evolved for one thing as well as another thing- "...it [language] appears to be a kind of interface or connective tissue among partly preexisting recursive systems, mapping among them in an evolutionary novel matter" (p. 29).

--- I haven't understood this article as fully as someone with more linguistic knowledge would. Even though I am getting the gist of what they are saying, there is a lot of jargon that even with a basic understanding of the terms is hard to understand in context. I feel like linguistics is one of the hardest areas of science for me to understand as far as the terms/concepts being used. That being said, I learned a lot from this.

The sentence “vast domains of human understanding...can only be acquired with the help of language” (pg. 6) makes me wonder what would be the conceptual limitations of other species if they could use language? Maybe others species wouldn't have the capacity to understand time as humans do, but might be able to communicate about and understand their social relationships in more detail. I am assuming language has increased our cognitive ability for ages, how many generations with language would it take other species to catch up to ours?

Pure word deafness is the loss ability to analyze speech but noise is still heard? This must be incredibly depressing. I wonder if to a certain extent the ability to appreciate music is lost as well, for me music is mostly about recognizing patterns. It is more complex than interpreting environmental sounds, so I wonder if the faculty that processes language helps process musical sounds to any degree. This echoes what is said following the discussion about pure word deafness, amusia, and auditory agnosia, “a given sound can be percieved simultaneously as part of a syllable and as a nonspeechlike chirp, or a stretch of sound can be heard to flip qualitatively between speech and nonspeech” (pg 7)

“For example, most humans lack the ability (found in some birds) to convincingly reproduce environmental sounds.” learned about the lyrebird last week []

Pinker and Jackendoff are doing exactly what peer review is meant to do and I love it. They do a good job of showing that HCF doesn't seem to have done their research as thoroughly as they could have or are cherry picking the information they use to construct their argument. A clear example of this is at the end of pg 12 continued to pg 13 when discussing the mechanism for word learning.

Barely understood the entire Minimalist Program section.

Completely agree with the idea that inner speech is the likely by product of language. Makes me curious to experience inner speech without language, something that is probably nearly impossible to test even if The Forbidden Experiment was conducted by linguists. How much more clear or unclear would inner thoughts be without language?

HCF main point that ability to maintain syntactic relationship defines language challenged by need for physical adaptations to reach a syntactic cognisance. Example brain stem adaptations not present in proto sapien or non human lifeforms. Syntax: page 14 1 collection of words 2 organized words 3 agreement of words (they relate to each other) 4 assignment of words (used to relate to situation) Bickertons ideas are cited. The sound reasoning that stems from the concept of functional evolution. "There is a progression of functionality, not a dichotomy between one system that is ―"perfect" and other systems that are ―"not usable at all." pg 25 Is the idea that if it can't change it is not perfect, a sound necessity of evolution. I do not agree that language is not a reduntant adaptation. pg 26