Comment by losvedir
15 years ago
>In the case of language, observing and reporting statistical probabilities in written/spoken language output does very little to explain the cognitive systems used in acquiring and using language.
Unless, of course, those cognitive systems are nothing more than some statistical probabilistic mechanism. I don't know anything about the field, but the article was interesting to me in that it seemed to at least partly argue that. I know, for me at least, I'll frequently produce a sentence and then repeat it to myself a few times to see if it "sounds right." Now, I don't know what is happening to determine that, but perhaps I'm comparing it to some statistical probabilistic model I have in my head?
> Even one statistical anomaly serves to show that statistical learning is NOT the entire picture when it comes to language development.
1) Does it? Maybe it shows the specific statistical probabilistic model in question is wrong. Consider, as Chomsky did, a model which predicts zero probability for a novel sentence. Clearly, as you say, one anomalous novel sentence is all it takes to disprove such a model. But what about other models which can handle them? The "anomaly" may not be an anomaly anymore.
2) Do you have some anomaly in mind which shows statistical probabilistic models don't work?
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The article was very interesting to me, but I don't know anything about the field. I guess my main question boils down to: Is it possible that language acquisition and production is nothing more inside our heads than a simple statistical probabilistic model?
"Now, I don't know what is happening to determine that, but perhaps I'm comparing it to some statistical probabilistic model I have in my head?"
I had a non-native Japanese teacher once who, when asked a question on proper Japanese usage, would often stop for a second, clearly playing the sentence or phrase over again in his head, and way "no, they don't really say that" or "yes, they do say it that way."
Clearly, he was using his extensive experience listening to Japanese over many years to determine grammaticality, so at least a statistical model, if not conclusively a probabilistic one.
A simple statistical model is probably not the only thing human infants are using when they learn language. Linguists make a pretty good case that there must be some structure in-place for infants to acquire language robustly, quickly, and with the kinds of noisy input (overheard speech) they have to work with.
It's not my field so I can't give examples off the top of my head, but the argument involves rapid acquisition of syntax and near-complete absence of errors that you'd expect to see in a simple statistical model.
Exactly. Almost everyone can identify recursive grammar (except people in a small South American tribe who speak a non-recursive language).
You don't need a raw MC to assess the likelihood of "The DOG ate my homework", "My WASHING MACHINE ate my homework", and "MY LEGALLY ate my homework". You need P(WASHING MACHINE = NOUN), and P("My NOUN ate my homework").
But that's not right. You could also have P(WASHING MACHINE = NOUN THAT CAN EAT STUFF). Or maybe P(EAT = HUMOROUS TERM FOR DESTROYED), P(HUMOROUS SENTENCE), P(WASHING MACHINE = OBJECT THAT CAN DESTROY HOMEWORK).
Anyway, it's really bloody hard to put it all together. But that's what humans do. I'd imagine that we store it in our short term memory, then make a few quick parses of it, under varying assumptions, and keep the ones that are most consistent.
In reality, Chomsky is fighting the same sort of battle that happened when Newton and Leibnitz were around (no, not the battle between Newton and ... the rest of the world really). OK, you have gravity. But what causes it? Why? It's an interesting question, but not necessarily one that will lead anywhere.
In the case of "my washing machine ate my homework" and other non-standard expressions, many people will be confused by making the obvious associations. It's only when the new rules are explained to them that they come to understand what was meant.
The failure of a machine to understand a sentence given a set of rules, may simple mean that it needs to be taught new rules.
If that was true, then why did humans evolve to speak at all? Why, if speech is simply a reaction to statistics we are tracking and behaviours that have been rewarded, would the first utterances have been made? And how do we make completely novel utterances that attempt to express our otherwise abstract thoughts?
> Why, if speech is simply a reaction to statistics we are tracking and behaviours that have been rewarded, would the first utterances have been made?
Why not? Look at it from the bottom up:
Communication is a fundament of life, from intra-cellular to inter-cellular to inter-organism interactions (another fundament is the ability to keep oneself in a low entropy state, at the expense of the rest of the world).
Human speech is an evolution of mammal communication. It grew up in complexity, from grunts and other basic noises, along with our way of living, up to what we have now.
> And how do we make completely novel utterances that attempt to express our otherwise abstract thoughts?
Speech is a big collage. New is either the result of
* a recombination of the sub-parts of past speech
* the definition of a new word in terms of older words, or sometimes arbitrarily (for proper nouns).
Nothing fancy AFAICT.
There's a big difference between "grunts and basic noises" and language. Or at least, that's my opinion. In this same line, I don't believe dogs/monkeys/birds/bees have language, despite the ability to communicate.
This view is just to simplistic to hold its weight when you really look at the intricacies of language and its evolutionary history which, by the way, I would suggest comes from manual gesture and not grunting.
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Why, if speech is simply a reaction to statistics we are tracking and behaviours that have been rewarded, would the first utterances have been made?
That criticism can be lobbed at all abilities that we claim came about due to evolution - which, to be clear, is all of them. The statistical model would be the mechanism, but it wouldn't be the reason why it evolved. That answer is relatively boring, and is the same one as all evolutionary processes: it appeared randomly from mutation, and it provided benefit to those that had it.
"That answer is relatively boring, and is the same one as all evolutionary processes: it appeared randomly from mutation, and it provided benefit to those that had it."
Not just boring, but a totally banal and useless answer.
What kinds of mutations? In what sequence? How did it provide a survival benefit? What were the earlier forms of language like, and how did they become the languages spoken today?
Just saying "evolution did it" is about as informative as saying "God did it."
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