{"id":2010,"date":"2020-01-10T02:33:42","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T02:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/?p=2010"},"modified":"2020-05-09T04:23:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T04:23:20","slug":"qa-with-noam-chomsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/2020\/01\/10\/qa-with-noam-chomsky\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A with Noam Chomsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here<\/strong><\/a> to read a Brazilian Portuguese version of the Q&A.
\nWe’d like to thank Antonio Codina for the translation.<\/p>\n

Paulo \u00c2ngelo Ara\u00fajo-Adriano & Williane Cor\u00f4a<\/strong><\/p>\n

ForMA<\/b>:\u00a0What do you think of the current stage of Generative Grammar as an approach to the Galilean challenge? Is there any need for a qualitative leap forward such as those from Transformational Grammar to GB and then to the MP?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Photographer: Duncan Rawlinson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chomsky<\/b>: Contemporary work addresses only part of the challenge: the task of accounting for the uniquely human capacity to create an unbounded array of structured expressions interpreted as thoughts, and the means by which they are externalized (in actual fact, very rarely).\u00a0 But the other part of the challenge has to do with the use of this capacity: what\u2019s been called \u201cthe creative aspect of language use\u201d \u2013 repeat, \u201cuse.\u201d That is, the ability to use language in a manner that we may be \u201cincited and inclined\u201d to do by circumstances, though we are not \u201ccompelled\u201d and might do otherwise — the ability to use language in ways that are appropriate to circumstances, but not caused by them, a fundamental distinction.\u00a0 These were the among the primary concerns that led Descartes to postulate a second substance, res cogitans.\u00a0 Sometimes commentators now quote Humboldt\u2019s aphorism about language involving \u201cinfinite use of finite means\u201d \u2013 usually overlooking the fact that he was talking about\u00a0<\/span>use<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 This gap in understanding is of course not specific to the study of language.\u00a0 Virtually nothing is understood about voluntary action even in far simpler cases, like the decision to lift your finger, matters often not properly recognized.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the specific and sufficiently awesome and significant task of accounting for the capacity to generate thoughts, the minimalist program seems to me to formulate the most far-reaching goals we can hope to attain, and in recent years, there has, I think, been substantial progress in establishing the plausibility of the \u201cstrong minimalist thesis,\u201d an idea that seemed outlandish not long ago.\u00a0 About 20 years ago I gave talks on language in Brasilia, organized by Lucia Lobato, which I think were published in Brazil at the time. In them, I speculated that we might discover someday that language is like a snowflake, that is, assuming its form by what amount to laws of nature in the simplest possible way.\u00a0 To put it picturesquely, we may discover that language is \u201cdesigned\u201d to be beautiful but not usable \u2013 more prosaically, that it favors computational efficiency over communicative efficiency.\u00a0 I think that by now we can provide interesting support for such speculations.\u00a0 There are of course enormous challenges ahead, among them to show that the apparent variety and diversity of language is only superficial, having to do mostly with matters of externalization, that is, with the effort to interconnect two unrelated systems, true language (I-language) and the sensorimotor system (and of course arbitrary lexical choice).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

ForMA: How did language get its phonetical counterpart if it evolved mainly as a cognitive tool?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chomsky<\/b>: There\u2019s quite interesting work on this by Riny Huijbregts (\u201cClick Phonemes, the emergence of language, and the mapping asymmetry\u201d;\u00a0<\/span>https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/28161511<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 It is now known, from genomic studies, that the San people separated from other Homo Sapiens about 125,000 years ago, hence not long after the species appeared (roughly 200,000 years ago).\u00a0 There is no evidence for language, in fact symbolic behavior generally, before that time.\u00a0 They share the general human language capacity, but their externalization system is interestingly different.\u00a0 Huijbregts shows convincingly that their languages are the only ones to use clicks (with exceptions that he effectively dismisses).\u00a0 His plausible conclusion is that the language capacity \u2013 I-language generating thoughts \u2013 emerged pretty much along with Homo Sapiens, but that externalization only took place some time later, after the separation, and in somewhat different ways.\u00a0 These conclusions accord with independent arguments to the same effect that Robert Berwick and I had given.\u00a0 As to how externalization developed, we have no idea, but it\u2019s not surprising that if a sufficient number of people in the small groups of humans that existed at the time shared the same internal language capacity, they would have hit upon means to relate it somehow to the sensorimotor systems that existed long before so that they could share their thoughts with others.<\/span><\/p>\n

ForMA<\/b>: What are your thoughts on describing the FLN\/FLB in neurobiological terms? Is it fundamental for the Minimalist Program? Is it a challenge?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chomsky<\/b>: Discovering the neural basis for language poses enormous challenges.\u00a0 That\u2019s true, in fact, even in vastly simpler cases: for example, finding the neural basis for the remarkable navigational capacities of insects (which far exceed our own).\u00a0 And the study of language poses unique problems because it is biologically isolated.\u00a0 We learn next to nothing about FLN from comparative work.\u00a0 A good deal has been learned about the neural basis for the visual system form invasive experiments with cats and monkeys, which have visual systems much like ours, but there are no other organisms with anything like the human language faculty, so comparative work of this kind is unavailable.<\/span><\/p>\n

ForMA<\/b>: If language is a system of thought, unrelated to communication, would communication be only a so-called bodily function of this particular system?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chomsky<\/b>: I think the phrase \u201cunrelated to communication\u201d is too strong.\u00a0 Certainly language is used for communication, in fact is by far the richest system that we have for communication.\u00a0 The significant conclusion that I think is becoming better and better established empirically is that externalization, relating internal (I-) language to some sensorimotor system is an ancillary process, and that exigencies of communication do not appear to enter into the evolution or basic nature of I-language, so that specific uses of externalized language, as for communication, would also be secondary features of language.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure what is intended by the phrase \u201cbodily function.\u201d I don\u2019t see any reason to question John Locke\u2019s thesis that mental processes are aspects of some form of organized matter, in particular the brain, hence \u201cbodily\u201d in the broad sense of the term.<\/span><\/p>\n

ForMA<\/b>: Should one take it literally that the linguistic device of the mind generates utterances unboundedly instead of being activated only when we want to say something?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Chomsky<\/b>: Those should not be regarded as alternatives, if the term \u201cgenerate\u201d is properly understood.\u00a0 Consider the simpler case of arithmetic.\u00a0 Some finite component of our mind\/brain \u2013 call it\u00a0<\/span>arithmetic competence AC<\/span><\/i>\u00a0— determines the properties of the natural numbers, say the triples (x,y,z) such that z is the product of x and y, for arbitrary integers x and y.\u00a0 In technical terms, AC generates this infinite set (and many others).\u00a0 But generation is different from the process of multiplying x and y (which might give the wrong answer, in practice).\u00a0 Same with language.\u00a0 I-language generates an unbounded array of internal expressions, interpreted as thoughts, and sometimes externalized as utterances.\u00a0 And when the I-language is activated it can produce utterances (and interpret what we perceive).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click here to read a Brazilian Portuguese version of the Q&A. We’d like to thank Antonio Codina for the translation. Paulo \u00c2ngelo Ara\u00fajo-Adriano & Williane […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":150,"featured_media":2017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,9],"tags":[329,328,327,266,331,330],"class_list":["post-2010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrevistas","category-linguagem-e-mente","tag-formal-syntax","tag-galilean-challenge","tag-language-acquisition","tag-noam-chomsky","tag-poverty-of-stimulus","tag-qa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2019\/12\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-31-at-19.44.44.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2010"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2049,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010\/revisions\/2049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogs.unicamp.br\/linguistica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}