Steven Pinker on Noam Chomsky's theory of Linguistics & Politics (Part 1)

32 thoughts on “Steven Pinker on Noam Chomsky's theory of Linguistics & Politics (Part 1)”

1. @Entropy56 At the risk of straining your patience, I'm afraid I still didn't quite make that out.
   I feign no ignorance, I swear, but I do hope you'll not hesitate to unmask my knowledge for fear of making a fool of me.
   While your forbearance is admirable, my curiosity of the truth gets the better of my pride, and so I grant you full dispensation to make me look like an ass, should frankness and honesty require it.
   I'll try to listen still harder.

2. The New York Times won't touch Chomsky now and haven't for decades.

3. @bobloblawrobslawblog – Does Chomsky ever argue, implicitly or explicitly, that a child 'consciously' realizes that 'ran' is processed as 'rin'? Deep structure is at more of a subconscious level, surely? That's the whole point.

4. @minzhide – I agree. I've seen what he's like in a discussion.

5. @minzhide
   I find your comment insulting.

6. What of the external forces (physical, military, power structures, geography, happenstance, mistakes in writing/printing etc.) that made run, ran, run the most common verb forms regardless of how the brain interprets and stores and becomes fluent in modern language forms?

7. sociolinguistics is for pussies

8. the entire vowel-shift system did not arise out of a series of orthographic and political coincidences. that power structures a priori structured language is one of those weak uninformed arguments that gets tired fast.

9. that's a very observant observation , thinking about some chomsky videos i've seen, you're right.

10. i think chomsky is saying that the different meanings of sentences will still be inherent to children when you switch words around or delete words. i never heard him say that different tenses were inherent. that would definitely be impossible…

11. Peven Stinker.

12. seems legit

13. What is really key is the method of what kick-starts how infant's mimecry of human sounds become meaningful words. Perhaps the most meaningful word repeated to a child is its own name. Our name creates a unique template for the mind to develop myriad words and phrases. Without, that particular name which we come to identify as "I am", we have no point of reference for the development of character, personality or ego.

14. This is a very effective argument. You must me very influential. Many people must have reversed their views on Noam Chomsky based on this comment. Thank you for the enormous contribution you've made to this discourse. Someone as insightful as you must be heavily published, where can I read more of your work? I'd love to know more about your views. It will be a great help on ridding myself of all my ignorance.

15. who the fuck is steven pinker?

16. Actually the general argument isn't that language is innate, rather that there are properties and principles underlying grammar that the brain has wired into it from birth. Calling it an 'instinct' is pretty spot on, however some confuse the semantics of 'instinct' with things like birds flying and animals calling, but the complexity and intricacy of language can't really be compared to natural instincts like these. Also, Chomsky doesn't hypothesize that the children 'realize' that – its s.cons.

17. who the fuck is badmothafuka mulder?

18. When/where/how/wtf did Chomsky say that children "consciously realize" that "ran" is processed as "rin"? I'm calling bullshit. Quote and citation, please. Thanks.

19. Does anyone know the name if the interviewer?

20. For a guy who is talking about linguistics, he has a lot of brain farts!

21. the field of linguistics can get pretty obscure, i dont think we can condemn someone talking about the words themselves feeling it difficult to word themselves.

22. He's accessible 🙂

23. You came back after being on the receiving end of my frank comment. You should have committed suicide you shameless DOUCHEBAG.

24. Stop fighting children and learn something.

25. None of these "fameous thinkers" thought any human was free of "innate tendencies"… We are talking post-darwinism here, geneology was also relatively well understood then. It was on specifically some mechanisms of language.

    Forexample Skinner would never have said that a chimpanze had as much chance to learn language as a human… that's not the dispute in the 50s

    Unfortunately, it is a little bit deeper than that.

26. Wikipedia: "Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-born experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author. He is a Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University,[2] and is known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind." — He's been cited more than 40000 times in scientific papers.

27. Pinker is a genius.

28. Beware of those who discuss Chomsky in isolation. They are much different when they are there in person with him. Chomsky gave a talk in front of Pinker some time in 2010, which was open to full discussion, and no one heard word one from Pinker.

29. i'm thinkin' pig latin would flummox this guy, it being entirely regular but artificial and not 'innate', at all. or how one learns a 2nd language with entirely different syntax and/or tense structures (regular vs irregular, ex). and pinker never addresses developmental factors and language windows that all but close if child hasn't been exposed to language before puberty (roughly). useless jabber, that's what we're listening to. 

30. I would love to see a 4 hour unmoderated language discussion between Chomsky and Pinker.

31. I think Pinker is genius.

32. I wish this linguist could talk without say "ahhh" so often. Kind of defeats the purpose of being a word expert, to lard his sentences with so many non-words.

Comments are closed.