I'm delighted to introduce Noam Chomsky

widely regarded as one of the leading

thinkers in human history the chomskyan

revolution in place language study in a

psychobiological setting and played a

critical role in fueling the modern

reemergence of the cognitive sciences

Chomsky Scientific Revolution

resurrected 17th century rationalist

principles and then implemented them by

analyzing human cognition in terms of a

formally explicit computational

representational theory of mind the idea

being to study the properties of human

beings including human cognitive

capacities as part of the physical world

using the methods of normal science

Chomsky's latest incarnation of the

generative Enterprise the minimalist

program further advanced linguistic

theory as normal science by continued

endorsement of Galilean experimental

method and by articulating goals

fundamental in the natural sciences

including the central goal of seeking

explanation through theoretical

simplicity and by possible unification

with related fields

Chomsky's understanding of and

commitments to normal science

rationality abstraction and explanation

continue to this day to pioneer human

understanding of human nature of course

who we are as vitally important

humanitarian implications regarding how

humans should be treated with

repercussions in philosophical ethical

social political psychological and

economic arenas fields to which Noam has

also made profound contributions for

well over a half a century while

continued to do so to this very day the

title of his talk tonight is what

language and why does it matter Chomsky

Chomsky:

Well the title that was supposed to be

announced on our that was added a

personal perspective and yes it's a

personal perspective because not only is

there no consensus about what I'm going

to talk about but actually it's a

distinctly minority view and the whole

range of fields that kind of converge

around this topic there is consensus on

one manner from the second half of the

20th century there's been a huge

explosion of inquiry into language by

any measure you take skill character

depth of anything far more penetrating

work is going on into a vastly greater

array of theoretical issues conceptual

issues and

just psychologically varied languages

far beyond anything before many new

topics have been opened the questions

that students are working on the day

could not even be formulated or even

imagined a half a century ago or that

matter much more recently and new

problems and puzzles are coming into

view more rapidly than old ones or being

at least partially resolved now these

are all very positive signs of a lively

exciting array of entertaining

disciplines I've got my own reservations

about things with Joe balloon as I

continue I think it's fair to trace this

sharp and unmistakable change in large

part to new options that became

available in the mid 20th century

options for considering more seriously

the most fundamental question about

language and they leave what is it

by that time advances in the formal

Sciences had enabled a clear formulation

understanding of what we ought to

recognize to be the most basic property

of line

so refer to it from now on it's just the

basic property namely that each language

provides an unbounded array of

hierarchically structured expressions

that receive interpretations of both

internally and externally externally

through the sensorimotor system

internally as some rather obscure system

thought that we know is there but not

much about conceptual intentional

interface sometimes called for mental

processes that allows the ability to

formulate this for the first time really

allows a substantive formulation of

classical dictum goes back at least to

Aristotle that language is sound with

meaning before that you could say

exactly nor demand especially the word

with was obscure was it mean sound with

mean work of recent years as I'm sure

shows that sounds much dinero but all

keep do it for simplicity and I think

there's a pretty good reason all

returned to it to suggest that the

classic formulation is misleading and

important ways and ought to be revised

well just given that much follows that

each language incorporates a

computational procedure which satisfies

the basic property when I just mentioned

and therefore by definition a theory of

each language is what's called a

generative grammar and each language is

what's been called an I like I here

stands for internal an individual

internal individual and intentional

intentional here with an S means you're

interested in discovering the actual

computational procedure not some set of

objects that it enumerates technically

that would be what it strongly generates

there was another there are other

notions like weak Jenner capacity and

what some people not may call a language

whatever that is these are derivative

notion

have to apologize for that term it's

actually my term but it's not used the

way I would ever use do not understand

how it's used frankly it seems to me

something like something like that but

that's not a coherent notion I don't

know if a generative capacity in the e

language or whatever it is or even

definable for natural language these are

questions that were discussed quite a

lot about in the 1950s so laate seems to

have been forgotten on judging by the

literature well correspondingly every

approach to the language no matter what

it is such a linguistic whatever should

recognize at least that one perfectly

obvious fact each language is a property

of an individual it's internal to that

individual mostly to the mind brain

that's what sometimes now called the

wild linguistic framework

should be a truism and whatever this

core concept must be understood to be a

prerequisite to any further enquiries

there plenty of further engrams they

doing all kinds of topics of acquisition

use origin of languages like Josiah the

internal mechanisms that implement the

systems that means both the system

knowledge competences and the various

uses the performance too distinct but

related tasks well evidently

investigation of these further topics

that relies on guidelines may be there

at least tacit that they have to be

there somewhere which are provided by

the answer to the question of what

language is that shouldn't be considered

controversial so for example no

biologist would dream of proposing an

account for the development or the

evolution of the eye without telling for

something pretty definite about what an

eye is and the same truism truism should

whole of enquiries into language

regrettably

but it should in earlier years before

this shift became possible the basic

property did resist clear formulation in

fact it was also even true in

mathematics even the notion of proof

basic notion wasn't really closely

understood until a little over a century

ago the quest accede morsel so you take

some of the classical literature for

example the serve centenary coming up

right now for him language in the

relevant sense of language is a

storehouse of words and images in the

brains of a collectivity of individuals

founded on what he called a sort of

contract for Bluefield language and

quoting is an array of habits to respond

to situations with conventional speech

sounds and to respond to these sounds

with actions I think it's another

difficult definition

his postulates for the science of

language 1920s here are languages the

totality of utterances made in a speech

community that's something like William

Dwight Whitney's traditional conception

of language as the sum of words and

phrases by which any man expresses his

thought that's what he called audible

thinking that's a slightly different

conception and ways to which I'll return

Edward Sapir defines language as a

purely human and non distinctive method

of communication communicating ideas

emotions and desires by means of the

system of voluntarily produced symbols

those are the classics there's others

from less famous figures which are

similar and with such conceptions it's

perfectly natural to follow what the

Martin Joe's called the bow as Ian

tradition referring to Franz boas

holding that languages can differ

arbitrarily and that every new language

should be studied without any

preconceptions obviously can't be

literally true but something like that

seemed natural so accordingly linguistic

theory can consist of nothing more than

collection of modes of analysis

procedures of analytic procedures to

reduce corpus to some organized form

basically procedures of segmentation

classification worked out considerable

detail both in European and American

structure linguistics
well the shift of perspective to

generative grammar within the bio

linguistic framework opened the way to

much more far-reaching inquiry into

language and language related topics and

also greatly enriched the variety of

evidence

that bears on the study of each

individual language so it's not just a

matter of organizing the date of that

language but she's studying say Japanese

you can study acquisition neuroscience

dissociations of linguistic and other

cognitive capacities much else and you

can also tree studying Japanese have

learned from what's discovered in the

study of you know well any other

language that's all on the basis of a

pretty obvious and quite well confirmed

assumption that the capacity for

language relies on shared biological

properties as far as we know virtually

totally share in group differences

that's the topic of ug universal grammar

contemporary adaptation of a traditional

phrase doesn't mean what it meant

traditionally well in earlier years it

was understandable that the question

what is language it received only such

indefinite answers as the ones I've just

alluded to ignoring completely the basic

property it's however I think kind of

surprising to find that similar answers

remain current in contemporary cognitive

science not untypical as a study in a

current journal frontiers of psychology

study of evolution of language at

characterizes language only the despite

two well-known people skip the names

characterizes language as the full suite

of abilities to map sound to meaning

that's language that's basically a

reiteration of Aristotle's dictum it's

much too empty to ground any further

inquiry again no biologist would study

evolution of the visual

system assuming no more about the

phenotype then that it provides

paraphrase the full suite of suite of

abilities to map stimuli to percept

couldn't get off the ground that way or

in this case well there are also broader

reasons to be concerned with the

question what is language is a fairly

clear indication of these and some

interesting comments by one of the

leading scientists who studies human

evolution recent book by Ian Tattersall

it's a review of currently available

scientific evidence he observes that it

was once believed that the evolutionary

record would yield early harbingers of

our later selves the reality however is

otherwise for it's becoming increasingly

clear that the acquisition of the

uniquely modern human sensibility was

instead an abrupt and recent event he

actually dates it in the very narrow

window of about fifty two hundred

thousand years ago and goes on to say

that the expression of this new

sensibility was almost certainly

crucially abetted by the invention of

what is perhaps the single most

remarkable thing about our modern selves

namely language therefore an answer to

the question what is language matters

are greatly to anyone concerned with

understanding our modern selves Homo

sapiens the founders of modern biology

of course they lacked the evidence of

current science that Tattersall is

reviewing but they adopted kind of a

similar view so Darwin for example wrote

that man differs from animals solely in

his almost infinitely larger power of

associating the most diversified sounds

and ideas that's an infinite version

of Aristotle's dictum of course the

phrase almost infinite that's a

traditional phrase but we should

interpret it as meaning infinite because

there's no sense to almost infinite

you can't and it also similarly makes no

sense I'm sorry if this offends lovers

of big data but it makes no sense to

contemplate huge finite non extendable

lists that's close to meaningless

something else that should be kept in

mind unfortunately well even earlier

than Darwin at the origins of modern

science Galileo it was entranced by what

he called a marvelous invention that

provides the means to construct from 25

or 30 sounds the infinity of expressions

that enable us to reveal everything we

think and all the movements of our soul

of our mental acts we would say that's

audible thought and Whitney's phrase but

Galileo went beyond by recognizing the

unbounded character of each language

it's unusual it's an obvious point in

fact if you look over the whole history

of 2500 years of history of inquiry and

the language extremely hard I've been

able to find four or five cases where

anything actually pointed this out

explicitly maybe they knew it well the

same recognition as Galileo's and a much

deeper concern for the creative

character of language use normal use of

language now that pretty soon became a

core element of cartesian science what

we call philosophy there's no reason

today to doubt the fundamental insight

of Descartes that use of language has

creative character it's unbounded

typically innovative no limits it's it's

appropriate to situations but not caused

by them that's quite a crucial

distinction and it can engender thoughts

and others that they could have they

recognized they could have expressed

themselves without limits it's a

critical insight crucial for the history

of philosophy but for modern should be

for modern cognitive science and

linguistics today we should also bear in

mind that a an aphorism of Humboldt

that's often quoted these days neighbor

that language he said that language

involves infinite use of finite means

he's talking about use there's been a

lot of progress in understanding the

finite means that are that make possible

infinite use but the latter notion

infinite and appropriate use that

remains as much of making mystery as

it's ever been though there has been

some progress in understanding

conventions that guide appropriate use

well a century ago Otto Jespersen raised

the question of how the elements of

language and quoting him come into

existence in the mind of a speaker on

the basis of finite experience yielding

a notion of structure that's definite

enough to guide him in framing sentences

of his own crucially he said free

expressions typically new to speaker and

hearer so again he's alluding to the

infinite unbounded character of language

so the task of the linguist then is to

discover those making

how they arise in the mind go beyond

that to unearth what yes person called

the great principles underlying the

grammars of all languages Eugene are

terms and by unearthing these great

principles to gain a deeper insight into

the innermost nature of human language

and of human thought those are ideas

that sound much less strange today than

they did during the structuralist

behavioral science europe that came to

dominate much of the field marginalized

Jefferson's insights
well reformulating yes persons program

today the basic task is to investigate

the true nature of the interfaces and

the generative procedures that relate

them to determine how they arise in the

mind how they're used if we can ever get

that far the primary focus of concern of

course being free expressions well as

soon as the earliest attempts were made

to construct explicit generative

grammars roughly 60 years ago

immediately many very puzzling phenomena

were discovered they never really been

noticed as long as the basic property

was not clearly formulated and addressed

and cinta there was syntax of course but

it was considered just use of words

determined by convention and analogy

which gets you nowhere actually this is

you go back sixty years ago it's kind of

reminiscent of the very earliest days of

modern science around 1600 for millennia

scientists had been the greatest

scientists had been satisfied with

simple explanations for familiar

phenomenon so for example rocks fall and

steam rises because they're seeking

their natural place objects interact

because of what we're called sympathies

and
we perceive a triangle because its shape

floats through the air literally and

implants itself in our brain and so on

those were the received answers in the

sciences as soon as Galileo others

allowed themselves to be puzzled about

these facts modern science began and it

was quickly discovered that our beliefs

are all senseless and our intuitions are

mostly wrong the willingness to be

puzzled is a very valuable trait to

cultivate it's from early education to

advanced inquiry unfortunately that's

much too little recognized in the human

sciences in the physical sciences by now

it's routine but it wasn't not very long

ago

well one puzzle that came to light about

sixty years ago and remains alive and I

think highly significant has to do with

very simple but curious fact so consider

the sentence Eagles that fly swim simple

enough so enough to write it on the

non-existent blackboard over there

and then put a word in front of it

say the word instinctively instinctively

Eagles that fly swim or the word can-can

Eagles and fly swim well there's a

evident fact about that the words

instinctively and can they link to a

verb but they link to swim not to fly

so the thought takes sentence can Eagles

the fly swim there's a thought that it

can't express with can being associated

with fly and that's pretty difficult to

formulate it's a fine thought but try to

formulate it even with circumlocution

very hard and it impedes communication

one of many such cases but it's somehow

part of the design of language

well what's puzzling about this is that

the Association of the clause initial

element instinctively or kin to the verb

is remote and based on structural

properties not proximal and based on

linear properties linear procedures are

far easier to compute so language makes

use of a property of minimal structural

distance it never uses the much simpler

operation of minimal linear distance

that's sometimes called structure

dependence of rules and the puzzle is

why it should be so not just for English

but for every language not for these

constructions but for every construction

and even where data for the child's

learning the language is ludicrously

small or in the case of instinctively

non-existent totally never any errors no

no alternatives this is just reflexive

so why well there is a very simple

explanation for it namely the child take

the child reflexively knows the right

answer in these cases in all the cases

because even though the evidence is slim

or non-existent and the reason is that

linear order is simply not available to

the language learner who's confronted

with such examples the language learners

is guided by a principle of ug one of

those great general principles that yes

person was alluding to didn't think of

this one a principle of ug that

restricts search to structural distance

minimal structural distance that's a

plausible explanation and as far as I

know it's unique I don't have any other

proposed explanation I mean there's

proposals with the quickly shot down

it's somehow resistant it's the

explanation is resistant in fact

dismissed which i think is a sign of the

immaturity of the field I think it's

kind of like the sciences in the 14th

century or something

you have a fine explanation but for

ideological reasons you can't can't

accept it the prince the general

principle of minimal distance is used

all over the place in language design

it's presumably one instance of a much

more general principle that enters into

design and acquisition of language and

elsewhere to call it minimal computation

computation tries to be as as as a

efficient as possible and the evidence

shows strikingly that human language

invariably makes use of minimal

structural distance rather than linear

distance in every relevant cases no non

exception now despite the far greater

simplicity of linear distance which is a

puzzle but I think the answer is what I

stated there is some supporting evidence

in this case from the neurosciences

there's a research group in Milan

Andre Mauro many of you know as the

linguist involved they studied brain

activity of subjects who are presented

with two types of stimuli these are all

invented languages some of the invented

languages satisfied ug minimal

structural distance and other ug

principles others were designed so as to

violate ug principles so for example a

rule of negation that places the

negative element after the third word

it's a linear distance much very simple

computation much simpler than the ones

in natural language well what they found

is that in the case of Conformity to ug

there's normal activation in the length

and the standard language areas but when

linear orders used it's just diffuse

activation over the large parts of the

brain and that task case the test is

apparently being treated it can be

solved but treated as a non linguistic

puzzle

there's analogous work by Neil Smith and

Jung theme Mariya simply is colleague

who work because maybe you know with a

cognitively impaired but linguistically

fluent subject and similar experiments

reached the same conclusion actually

there's a small industry and

computational cognitive science trying

to show that these properties of

language can be learned by statistical

analysis of massive data large number of

papers on this every attempt that's

clear enough to investigate has been

shown to fail and irremediably

can't can't do anything with them which

is but it really doesn't matter because

the efforts are beside the point in

first place suppose they were to succeed

which happens to be a virtual

impossibility but suppose

they were that would leave entirely

untouched

the only question namely why does

language invariably use the complex

computational property of minimal

structural distance and why does it

never employ the far simpler option of

minimal linear distance actually that's

it that question somehow can't be seen

that's I think a good illustration of

the unwillingness to be puzzled that I

mentioned earlier the first step in

serious scientific inquiry was

recognized in the hard sciences since

Galileo and until it penetrates the

cognitive sciences they're never going

to get off the ground I think that's

pretty evident well a broader thesis

still is that linear order is never

available for computation not just this

kind of case but never at least in the

parts of language that involve syntax

and semantics so-called semantics the

core parts so why do you have linear

order

well there's obvious reason for it the

sensorimotor system requires it you

can't talk in parallel so you talk

linearly but so that requires somehow

that whatever's going on the mind be

sent through a pass some kind of a

filter that makes it come out with

linear order that's the sensorimotor

system which is not specifically adapt

at the language bender the parts that

are essential for external authorization

of language and perception they appear

to have been in place hundreds of

thousands of years before language

emerged in fact the chimpanzees have

apparently pretty close to the same

auditory system that humans do they even

pick out pretty much the same

phonological features but it's just

noise as far as they're concerned well

the matter isn't settled but

- there's very considerable evidence

that this broader thesis may in fact be

correct so if so the basic property is

not the way I formulated it before and

the way it's formulated in the technical

literature my papers - rather the basic

property should be the generation of an

unbounded array of hierarchically

structured expressions that map to the

conceptual intentional interface to the

mental system system of thought and the

rest is kind of ancillary tacked on

well if that's correct and it seems to

be there's a good reason to return to a

traditional conception of language as an

instrument of thought it's to revise

Aristotle's dictum accordingly language

is not sound with meaning

but meaning occasionally with sound more

generally some form of externalization

typically sound though by now pretty

clear that it's modality independent and

in fact externalization is rarely used

if you think about it by far

overwhelmingly the most use of language

is never externalized it's what

sometimes called internal dialogue is

very limited research into that so it

could be studying I think the reasons

there's limited researchers again kind

of ideological not intellectual it's

interesting topic but if so most of the

research is basically introspection

yours is as good as anyone elses

at least my introspection you can think

about it yourself is that what reaches

consciousness in internal dialogue

walking long thinking or something what

reaches consciousness is just fragments

tiny fragments and then since the

fragments come a fully formed expression

can be formed in your mind usually is

can do it complicated fully-formed

expression and it's instant it's far too

quick for articulate errs to be involved

or probably even instructions to

articulate errs and so often not

produced even internally so it's all

going on somewhere inaccessible to

consciousness that's an interesting

topic and it could be studied could be

explored and thick waste doing it but

basically hasn't been little but not

much

well issues like that aside

investigation of the design of language

which is the starting point for any

further inquiry gives pretty good

reasons to take seriously the intuitions

of Galileo and others that language is

essentially an instrument of thought an

externalization then would be just an

ancillary process tacked on now an end

and there's plenty of further

investigation that supports that

conclusion

won't go through it but if it's

established at least to me it looks

pretty sound it follows that particular

uses of expose language that depend on

external ization are even more

peripheral aspects of language one of

them is communication that's actually

contrary to a virtual dogma in all the

related fields that has no support that

I know of but that just pervasive

languages commonly describe this print

somehow in essence a means of

communication it seems to be anything

but that would also follow that much of

the extensive speculation about language

origins about evolution of language is

just on the wrong track to begin with

it's treating it almost always as

something about speculations about the

evolution of communication is a totally

different topic well the matter this

matter hasn't been studied either though

it could be but I suspect that the

modern doctrine the

that communication is somehow the

essential form of language function of

language it probably derives from the

powerful influence of association

estándares assumptions they retain a

very strong grip even when people who

publicly reject them along with that

there can easily find highly

oversimplified and quite untenable

interpretations of modern evolutionary

biology it's an interesting topic but on

put it aside well let's return to the

basic property now we reformulate it the

computational system of I language

yields an unbounded array of

hierarchically structured expressions

mapping to the mental system the

conceptual intentional interface there

are ancillary processes that may or may

not externalize them in some sensory

modality naturally we seek the simplest

theory of the basic property of the

theory with the fewest arbitrary

stipulations any such stipulation of

part being from being unwanted justum

normal methodological grounds is also a

barrier to some eventual account of

origin of language and I stress eventual

because we're not even close well this

is standard scientific method we ask how

much can we how far will that carry us

the simplest there's simple simplest of

all computational operations it's

embedded in some manner in every

relevant computational procedure is an

operation that takes objects column X

and y that have already been constructed

and forms a new object call it Z that's

that's the operation it's now sometimes

called

and the question is what is it what's

the operation that does this well the

principle of minimal computation entails

that neither X nor Y should be modified

in this this this process that's minimal

computation and that they should be on

order ordering would add further

complication and as I just mentioned

that's a conclusion that's quite

strongly supported on other grounds well

what that means is that merge is just

set formation so merge of x and y just

gives you the set containing x and y now

of course that doesn't mean that the

brain contains says I reason I mentioned

that is that there misinterpretations

and the current literature which dwell

on this topic fulminate about it in fact

what it means is that fundamental

whatever is going on in the brain which

we don't know has properties that can be

characterized in these terms this is

again commonplace in Sciences like

chemists that don't expect to find the

calculated diagram for benzene and a

test to know they're not confused about

that only linguists are confused about

such things suppose x and y are merged

and neither as part of the other so as

in combining say read and that book to

form the syntactic object wherever it is

the corresponds to read that book that's

called external merge I suppose that one

is part of the other so say Y is part of

X so you combine say which book and John

read which book and you form which book

John read which book that surfaces is

which book - John breed by further

operations all come back to them that's

an example of the ubiquitous phenomenon

and natural

language displacement phrases are heard

in one place but they're understood both

in that place and somewhere else so the

sentence which book the John read is

understood something like for which book

X John read the book X now in this case

the result of merges again the set X Y

but now there are two copies of Y one is

the original one remaining inside wha X

the others the copy that's merged with X

ok that operation is called internal

merge notice incidentally contrary to

some confusions about this that there is

no operation of copy formation and no

operation of reemerge that exists it's

just plain urge simplest possible ways

set formation internal merge and

external merge are the only possible

cases of binary merge so if we assume

the merge is a binary operation these

are the two options there's nothing else

and notice that both of them come free

it would take a arbitrary stipulation to

bar either one of them and that's a

pretty important fact it's important as

importance has only been gradually

sinking in for some years since it was

noticed in the late 90s by he's a Keith

ihara first which I just discovered for

many years it was assumed by me in

particular that displacement is a kind

of an imperfection of language some

strange thing that has to be explained

away by some more complex devices and

assumptions of ug but that turns out to

be incorrect displacement is what you

expect on the simplest assumptions it

would be a problem if it didn't appear

that would be a

affection it can in fact be plausibly

argued that internal merge is actually

simpler than external emerge if you

think it through it requires much less

memory but essentially they're both

they're free and it's a problem with the

language doesn't have either one of them

there's another important fact about a

internal merge in its simplest form that

is satisfying the principle of minimal

computation it yields the structures

that are appropriate for semantic

interpretation in a quite a broad

variety of cases it's illustrated in the

simple case of which book did John read

as I said it really means which book for

which book X John didn't read the book X

which is what you get for an internal

merge however of course that's the wrong

structure for sensorimotor system the

sensorimotor system drops the copy

universally in language only the

structurally most prominent copy is

pronounced the lower copies deleted

acted as a revealing class of exceptions

at which in fact support the general

thesis but put that to the side why do

you have deletion of copies

well that follows from another

application of the same overriding

principle of minimal computation namely

essentially pronounced as little as

possible

got to pronounce one of them there's no

evidence that the operation took place

would do as little as possible there's a

result the result is that the

articulated sentences have gaps and the

hearer has to figure out where the

missing element is well it's well known

in the study of perception in parsing

that that yields quite difficult

problems of interpretation fact these

are some of the most standard parsing

problems filler gap problems are cool so

in this quite broad class of cases

language design favors

computation and disregards complication

in the use of language right so it said

language designed to be computationally

perfect but no good for communication

that fits the other things that I say

notice that any linguistic theory that

replaces internal merge by other

mechanisms has a double burden of proof

to bear first it has to explain why it's

tip why does it have the stipulation

barring internal merge and second it has

to give a justification for whatever no

mechanisms are yielded are in design to

yield the displacement phenomenon in

fact displacement with coffee is noticed

because that's generally the right forms

for semantic interpretation well this

holds interestingly for much more

complex cases but I'll skip them that

would require a blackboard but just as

the but they're quite an interesting

class of complex cases that work exactly

like this but and just as in the simpler

cases like say instinctively eagles fly

swim

it's absolutely inconceivable that any

form of data processing yields these

outcomes relevant data simply are not

available to the language learner and

the results therefore must derive from

what David Hume called the original hand

of nature our terms genetic endowment

specifically ug universal grammar and in

ways like these we can derive quite

far-reaching and firm conclusions about

the nature of ug side comment on the

literature linguistics philosophy

psychology very common claims and

current literature technical literature

that there are no genuine linguistic

universals the no ug the reference is

not the ug just confusion the reference

is the descriptive generalizations so

for example Joseph greenberg famous

universities which are quite interesting

but they're generalizations and

generalizations are quite likely to have

exceptions that's the nature of

generalizations so for example the

generalization I mentioned about the

leading copies it has some exceptions

quite interesting ones which strengthen

the principle behind it and that's all

over the sciences in the standard

sciences that's understood so for

example 19th century there were take a

famous case there was discovery of

perturbations in the orbit of Uranus if

that had been linguistics not astronomy

would have led to the conclusion ok

let's throw out physics because there's

a generalization and they here there's a

problem about the perturbations that

shouldn't be there well since this is

science and not linguistics it

scientists went on to try to figure out

why and sooner or later they found that

tune explained the perturbations and

exceptions to largely valid

generalizations played a similar role

all over the place in the sciences and

repeatedly in the study of language too

but there is a strange curious pre

scientific belief that if you find

exceptions to generally valid

generalizations of a means they've got

to throw out everything you can find

plenty of that in the literature well

putting those I think perversions aside

you can conclude I think that if

language is optimally designed it's

going to provide structures that are

appropriate for semantic interpretation

but that yield difficulties for

perception hence for communication and

there are many other kinds of examples

that illustrate the same conclusion

structural ambiguities for example or

garden path sentences particularly

interesting cases islands there aren't

too well understood partially understood

so take say we're called ECP

constructions so take the sentence they

asked if the mechanics fix the cars you

can ask how many cars and you can ask

how many mechanics the sentences are how

many cars did the mechanics fix how many

mechanics how many mechanic does it say

how many cars did they ask if the

mechanics fixed how many cars did they

ask how many mechanics today as they fix

the cars they're different strikingly

different that's an e CP violation and

the one that you can't say is a fine

thought but you have to express it

through some kind of circumlocution

again that impedes communication all

islands are like that plenty of similar

cases they're partially understood it's

a big task to study them completely but

insofar as they're understood these

structures follow from the simplest free

application of the simplest rules yields

difficulties for perception and quite

generally to repeat where there are

conflicts between communicative

efficiency and computational efficiency

in every known case communicative

efficiency is simply disregarded

sacrificed and that lends further

support to the revision of the common

sense Aristotelian dictum and support

for the view of for wreckage action of

that and support for the alternative

traditional view of language as an

instrument of thought with communication

and other uses being side properties

ancillary properties actually that

conclusion fits pretty well with the

very limited evidence we have about the

emergence of language this Tattersall

pointed out its

apparently quite sudden and very recent

than the evolutionary time skill that's

a fair guess just looking at that and we

know quite confidently that there's been

no change no evolutionary change no

detectable change ever since humans

began to scatter around the earth that's

5060 thousand years ago few left Africa

and quickly we're all over the place

there's no detectable change since then

so what you seem to have is no

detectable change in maybe 50 60 70

thousand years and nothing around maybe

twenty or thirty thousand years before

that you can change the numbers a little

if you like it doesn't matter much

that's a very narrow window in

evolutionary time and a pretty fair

guess and that's about all we know about

evolution of language I should say huge

literature based on absolutely nothing

these are the only things that are known

the rest is fantasy it's an interesting

kind of pathology in the field well I

think a fair guess is that some slight

rewiring of the brain in an individual

of course yielded merge unbounded merge

that provided the basis for unbounded

and creative thought sometimes called

the great leap forward which

archaeologists find in the

archaeological record and they very

remarkable differences that separate

humans from their predecessors and from

the rest of the animal kingdom as far as

we know it is just as the Cartesians

recognized at extremely sharp divide

nothing mystical about it that's things

like that happen in biology no no well

these remarks all stop here only scratch

the surface what I hope they can do is

to illustrate why the answer to the

question what is language matters quite

a lot and close attention to this

fundamental question can yield

conclusions that have many ramifications

for the study of what kind of creatures

humans are

okay so we have about 40 minutes for

Question and Answer and there's

microphones two microphones one there

and one there so if you want to step up

and ask a question please feel free to

do so

hi I'd like to ask about how do you see

how would you like to see the

surrounding fields interact with

linguistics given that linguistics

formal linguistics has become quite

technical a lot of philosophy looks very

exotic to a lot of linguists a lot of

people are content to work on their own

very specific technical work how would

you like to see philosophy psychology

other cognitive sciences linked in with

linguistics well all of these are

philosophical issues in fact they go

back centuries they Carter it's called

the philosopher humans golda philosophy

a lot was a philosopher they dealt with

these problems in interesting ways

and modern philosophy may not deal with

them but if so that's a comment about

modern philosophy not about philosophy

there are obviously psychological

questions as far as I can see

linguistics just is part of psychology

so can't ask what the relation is it's

like asking how is perception

related to psychology so I don't see a

question these are psychological

problems by definition and throughout

the whole history of philosophy until

pretty modern times there's been core

philosophical problems they still are to

some extent but not the way they were in

the throughout the tradition I think the

tradition is worth saving in this case I

first ah thank you very much for your

talk at this evening and I my question

is about the third factor principles you

proposed in recent papers and in those

papers you hold that

the third factor principles include

principles of efficient computing

computational efficiency and principles

of natural law so I like to hear your

thoughts on principle organism

independent principles of natural law

that are likely to so what is position

law would apply the language yeah well I

mentioned one which I suspect as a

general principle of international of

wrong topic some of it that's why I have

two sides of the brain so the principle

of minimal computation that probably is

all over the least organic world maybe

the entire world

with different kinds of application and

I assume there are others after all

weird you know this is the language is

just you know it's kind of like an organ

of the body

it's a subsystem of the organism which

is develops out of the normal ways and

is subject to whatever laws hold of

organisms not not too much is known even

in general biology about this general

biology is pretty much a descriptive

field it's just it's not a field that

has a lot of theory or laws because it's

too complicated but a principles like

this probably do apply maybe others you

can find something that's great yeah

thank you I should say that even simple

ones like this carry it pretty far you

can go quite far with just pursuing the

few things that we sort of partially

understand try to give some indication I

think it goes far enough to show that an

awful lot of what goes on in the field

is just seriously misguided hi I have a

two-part question so the first question

is if I understood your talk correctly

this evening the idea is that the

computation system is meant to feed the

CI interface and then sometimes this

comes out as an utterance but not always

so this might be a thought for example

one that doesn't map to the sensorimotor

interface is that correct

so if there's a mapping it's just a

generation of something at CI maybe it's

a mapping a narrow synth ecstasy or

maybe some other thing but it ends up at

that interface then it's a thought okay

so then does that mean that on this in

fact an interesting case is whether this

exhausts thoughts I mean has been

suppose that that exhausts thoughts so

he reads say from Humboldt again he

argues you know suggests that that is

the totality of thoughts the things that

could in principle be are too expressed

in language that's an interesting

question

okay so then part two would be then so

if we're trying to account for

ungrammatical ungrammatical sentences

that speakers are Derwood we have to

then say that the source of

ungrammaticality would have to be at the

sm interface where something is gone

wrong maybe the wrong copy has been

deleted or something like this and this

is where we would then find the locus of

ungrammaticality what does this have to

say about ungrammaticality yes

the first of all and romantic ality is

kind of a funny notion the whatever is

in your head assigns some kind of

interpretation even the word salad okay

that that means that that's generated we

can call it ungrammatical if we like but

that's a kind of a theory internal

notion among the various kinds of

expressions they have many different

dimensions some loosely are called more

or less dramatical others are called

more or less appropriate other many

dimensions but it's you know there isn't

a split between grammatical and

ungrammatical
that's incidentally one of the reasons

for those of you who know the technical

literature why the work on weak weak

generative capacity is mostly

meaningless because it assumes a sharp

break between what's grammatical and

what's ungrammatical and it's simply not

the way natural language works in fact

what are called and grammatical

expressions are used all the time

perfectly naturally perfectly

appropriately in fact every metaphor is

an ungrammatical expression if you say

say misery loves company or something

it's an ungrammatical expression but

it's certainly meaningful literature

uses on grammatical expressions all the

time

purposely because they're evocative they

force the hearer to construct you know

something in their own minds to kind of

fill out what's missing so they're

perfectly meaningful the part of

language they're determined just as much

as everything else is so

again this if you go back to work in the

50s this was discussed fair amount I

mean no real answers but it was

discussed and should be good okay well I

guess I might more and more of a

technical sense of like a derivation

crashing for example that maybe we would

we would we would think that this might

happen at the SM interface since we

wouldn't tend to think we would have

word salad thoughts for example I guess

we could could can you have word gel at

thought we'll try it I guess I can I

mean try reading to say Finnegan's Wake

or e Cummings it's pretty close it's not

of course it's not word salad it's

contrived and constructed but the first

time you read it it's word so you think

about it some more something comes

through maybe but it certainly means

something and in fact even with less

exotic examples literature just uses it

normally and so does normal speech often

not word salad but things that are

designed to violate principles and have

their own interpretations they take a

look sometime at a book like a books of

literary theory like William Empson

seven types of ambiguity about fifty

years ago what he points out is that

that's the essence of poetry it's to try

to put things so narrowly and so

economically that the reader is forced

to contrive a world of interpretation

that's perfectly decent use of language

and normal speeches like that too it's

often highly elliptical for example the

hearers was just filthy thank you

Thank You professor Chomsky it's an

honor to have you here in as a student

of linguistics which I am

I love linguistics I enjoy studying it

very much and I think I believe strongly

that scientific inquiry is one of the

best things that we humans do I also

have no good answers for the for the

question about to ask which is given all

of the misery in our world all of the

social economic and other problems how

do we justify pursuing something so

comparatively esoteric I think I'll tell

you a story

battlin was that a linguistic Institute

I think maybe the first time I went to a

Summer Institute of linguistics was

probably the early 60s maybe 1962-63 was

in the Indiana I had just come back from

civil rights demonstrations in the South

one of Jackson Mississippi I don't know

how much of you know about this stuff

but they were pretty violent I mean the

State Police just went berserk you know

they were beating everyone bloody people

were fleeing to the steps of the federal

courthouse and the marshals who were

sent from Washington to protect the

demonstrators were throwing the

demonstrators back into the crowd so the

state police could smash of the pieces

in the evenings people would gather in

black churches try to get their courage

back up to go out the next day and this

went on for day after day anyway I was

there for a while I I came back and went

to the linguistic Institute at at

Indiana and I just happened to run into

a kid there who had come from the same

demonstration we we'd met down there and

we were walking across campus together

much and he suddenly turned to me and he

said how can they be so interested in

phonemes it's a good question it stuck

with me ever since I think that's your

question I think it can be I mean I

think you can both be concerned with the

problems of the world and the problems

of intellectual importance which tell us

in this case tell us something about

something I'm not directly related to

problems of the world but about as close

as you can come in the sciences what's

the nature of human beings okay I don't

think that's an answer to your questions

kind of question you have to answer for

yourself

thank you I was afraid about

so thank you very much for being here

this evening so it's fairly clear that

linguistic derivations rely on some

notion of economy and one of the

culminations of economy constraints is

phase based derivation and a common

critique to that type of thinking is

that the capacity for human memory has

been largely underestimated what would

your reply to be DS 2 - a critique like

that and we know if if you're talking

about you memory first of all with

distinguish between short-term memory

and long-term memory

okay so short-term memory is pretty

limited it's pretty much like other

animals that that there's research like

for example a lot of interest these days

that there shouldn't be but there is an

embedded sentences sentences with

embedded it's mostly misunderstood but

it was worked on 50 years ago and it was

found that in normal speech you almost

never have embedding very limited

embedding it's just too much

computations they can't do it

it doesn't mean you it's not there and

it's kind of like saving arithmetic if

you look at people's use of arithmetic

in their heads it's extremely limited if

numbers get big can't add them that

doesn't mean you don't know arithmetic

you know arithmetic just have to have

external memory it's kind of like a

computer's name the same is true of

embedding so if you listen to speech

you're not going to find much it's

mostly paratactic more or less because

too much memory limits that's short-term

memory but what about long-term memory

well that's pretty large like a normal

person may know say 50,000 words but

doesn't do you any good

George Miller who worked on memory lock

during the back in the old days he wants

just did a calculation of how many

pretty much grammatical sentences there

were of the length of the reader's

digest reader's digest is eighth grade

reading level okay so how many

grammatical sentences would you have of

eighth grade reading level it was

greater than number of particles in the

universe I mean you can't talk about

memory it's nowhere in the right

dimension so yeah you can memorize a lot

of words and you can recognize a lot of

people more or less they were

specialized kinds of memory but in this

domain it does nothing for you thank you

very much for this wonderful lecture

actually throughout your lecture I feel

that you somehow completely dismissed

the research program that is based on

characterizing the language language

based on some usage based or some mainly

communication efficiency and I find it

quite unfair because it I think nobody

nowadays denies that there is some

genetic basis for language and even if

we accept the hypothesis that language

is optimized for computation rather than

communication not all the grammars that

are allowed by ug for example are

actually implemented so there could be

some limitation or some constrain that

could be imposed by the necessity of the

communication so I'd like to have your

thoughts on this yeah so I've dismissed

communication you

basis studies if you want to carry them

out it's okay this wisdom I think it's

extremely unlikely than anything will be

learned from just as if say physicists

started say taking videotapes of things

happening outside my office window

leaves flying around and stuff like that

they could get a lot of data in fact

they could get a pretty good prediction

of what's going to happen next in fact

they do way better in the physics

department does but try to get a thesis

for that well in the sciences you can't

because they're not interested in

something in some kind of rough

generalization you can pick up by

looking at a lot of data they're

interested in understanding things okay

so even if that non-existent videotape

experiment couldn't get a better

prediction than the physics department

could which it certainly would that

nobody would care and I don't understand

why it should be any different in the

case of language I mean if anything can

be discovered from a data analysis fine

let's see it

it doesn't look very likely it hasn't

happened in other fields but if so okay

as far as communication is concerned you

know it's an activity language is one

languages sometimes used for

communication it's only one of the many

means of communication I mean everything

we do is a means of communication how

you comb your hair you know what clothes

you wear just about everything you do is

some kind of presentation yourself it's

saying something and language is one of

the ways of communicating it's not the

main thing in language but it's part of

it and you can study communication in

fact you can study evolution of

communication so for example Mark Howser

has a book called evolution of

communication he actually has a chapter

on language at the beginning and a

chapter and

which at the end but that's kind of to

sell the book it's really about you know

bats and location and stuff like that

and every organism from bacteria on up

has means of communication humans do to

lotsa so you can study you can't find

out anything much because evolutions are

hard topic but you can at least look at

I think the reason why people like to

look at it in the case of evolutions

communication you can kind of imagine

some kind of continuity from bacteria to

humans and that makes if you kind of

like this idea of you know evolution

taking place in tiny pieces doesn't

happen that way but if you like that

idea it can make you feel good but

that's because every organism has

communication systems but only one

organism has language and like

Tattersall said and if you're interested

in language it just doesn't tell

anything except gosh or like everything

else this is one of the means of

communication I mean I'm kind of

exaggerating there are some things you

can get so for example there's

interesting work on this a technical

question we're called neo greicy and

conventions it's quite interesting work

on that you know what are the proper

conventions for discourse and there is

quite interesting work that goes on on

that that's not what people are studying

when they do massive data of analysis

and try to find something out about

communication but it bears on

communication thank you starting many

years ago and often on your authority or

with an appeal to your authority

I was told that competence not

performance was the key problem of

linguistics now listening to your talk

today I hear you putting far more

emphasis on performance I wonder if you

could clarify
well I didn't performance in confidence

yes if I did I wasn't aware of it I

didn't intend to I mean this is all

about this is all about competence I

mean there is of course you know we use

that this is considered to be a

controversial distinction I haven't the

slightest idea why it's a very simple

conceptual distinction there's a

distinction between what you know and

what you do okay nothing controversial

about that like you know arithmetic we

could study what is it that you know you

know maybe what you know in your head

somewhere is Panos axioms or something

like that who knows we can study what

you do with it isn't it like what

happens if you're given you know you're

given a you're asked to multiply two big

numbers how do you do it we could ask

about that the second question is not a

very interesting one it because too many

factors enter into it like say

short-term memory too many things to

separate out an interesting question is

what's your knowledge of arithmetic and

we could ask the same question of any

other cognitive system in the case of

language that's competence performance

but everything I've talked about today

at least designer standard is basically

about what you know about competence

how's language design there are other

questions about how you use the language

and as I just mentioned here what you

use is a very small part of what you

know okay look for example takes

imbedded sentences you can embed

sentences indefinitely if you have

enough memory time space and so on you

want indefinitely easy to show that so

it's infinite but what you use is very

narrow because you just have too little

memory I heard I heard you referring a

great deal during your talk today about

what at least I interpreted as

performance but I may have been I may

have misinterpreted

well well my question I'm afraid that my

question might sound a little bit too

elementary but I like to see why well

the minimalist framework assumed that a

sentence is constructed from bottom to

top right through the cyclic merge but

at the same time we pronounce and

understand the sentence from top to

bottom because the minimalist framework

assumed that all human language so more

or less or right branching nature right

so I'd like to see why humor angry shows

such a mirror pattern you know how it's

not I mean how we process is very much

debated for example there are analysis

or synthesis models that argue that you

process top-down

we of course process linearly because

that's why we hear it you're stuck with

that you're just as you're forced to

produce through the articulatory

apparatus whatever is going on in your

head like for example it their peers

it's trying to argue I think that just

don't have linear order in the competent

system but of course you perform

linearly you have to and you're

perceived linearly so how you use the

system is determined by a lot of

cognitive systems that we have a memory

the structure of the auditory system the

sensory motor system that these are the

use of the internal knowledge got to be

processed through those things it just

as a user a rhythm ticket and if there

are and there are incompatibilities

you're correct in fact I tried to

emphasize one of the most striking ones

one of the most striking cases of

incompatibility
No is the sharp conflict between

computational efficiency and

communicative efficiency language is

just badly designed for communication

but well designed it to be efficient it

seems I mean that's a there's a kind of

a phrase that sometimes used for this it

drives people crazy language is

beautiful but unusable it's a kind of

true you know even if people don't like

it and there's a reason for it I think

probably the reason that I mentioned

let's do the weight evolved and the kind

of creature we are it's a system that

developed in a way which satisfies

apparently pretty narrow constraints on

what a well-designed system can be but

happens to be used by people who have

problems with this because we have some

sensory motor system memory system which

doesn't work for it so you struggle

through and if there are

incompatibilities like top-down and

bottom-up that's an element thank you

whatever you say we're going to wrap it

up thank everybody for coming

don't ask don't ask you to sing

okay could you hear what he's saying

so wait

reading a book you kind of process

thoughts in your head that allow you to

see what's happening in the book and I

was wondering everyone has a different

perspective of the characters or the

scene everyone has a slightly different

perspective of it and I was wondering

why

you you and a lot of other people with

that it's an interesting question and

there's some like in most of the

sciences there are little pieces of it

you can study one interesting case maybe

some of you know something about this is

autism it turns out that with autistic

children commonly they may be expanding

no cases where an autistic kid will be

mesmerised by children's cartoons you

know watch them over and over again same

cartoon and not understand anything

literally not understand because the kid

can't understand why the characters are

acting the way they are like why is this

character running away I'm not afraid

you know why is that character afraid

the ability to it's called theory of

mind you know nobody knows what that

means but the ability to a gain the

perspective of someone else which in

normal children is around three or four

words when kids start showing signs of

theory of mind so cool but the autistic

children often don't have it they cats

why they some people who are autistic

sometimes seem to be oblivious to the

way you think to feel you know they

don't know when you want to talk to them

or when you don't want to talk to them

they can't interpret your experiences as

being different from theirs and you see

it in things like what you're describing

like inability to watch cartoon or read

a book because when we do it normal

people do it you're you're just imposing

a lot of rich knowledge and structure on

the little bits and pieces that you're

seeing the bits and pieces that you're

seeing are kind of hints you know what

you read is a kind of a hint and you add

a kind of a rich interpretation and

array of knowledge to it that's why you

can read the same book over and over

again

to get more a richer experience each

time or a movie or anything else and the

extreme example is what I quoted from

absent on poetry the idea is to make you

impose quite a lot so it's an

interesting question and this you know

AB it's only barely understood bits and

pieces or research but you'll find out

you