i mean he’s been hugely influential in linguistics and it’d be dumb to pretend he hasn’t made contributions of value, but it’s fun to dunk on him and there’s definitely a fair bit that’s somewhat controversial and that i disagree with
Without being at all versed in linguistics myself, can you share some of what he's done in the field that you think is wrong or off the mark? I'm sure I can find some linguistics criticism of him on the web, but I'd be curious to read some criticism of Chomsky particularly from a hexbear's perspective.
edit: sorry, I only now saw that The_Jewish_Cuban already asked you the same question.
So Chomsky's theory, which currently holds true, is that only human beings can learn and use language. Don't be confused by this: plenty of animals communicate. Language is much more than communication. Language has structure, grammatical rules, is affected by culture, and so much more. Animal communication may have one of these elements but as far as we know there are absolutely no animals that can use language or have ever used language; it is simply not something that can be taught to them. A few animals can mimic elements of language but they don't really use it in any meaningful sense. They simply imitate and repeat and cannot interchange vocabulary to form new grammatically correct sentences and so on. There are many who have tried, such as teaching Koko the gorilla sign language, but ultimately have failed.
Additionally, Chomsky says that because language is so ingrained into the human condition and we have literally evolved to use it, we don't even have to "learn" it in the traditional sense. Language is acquired by human beings. We simply pick it up by hearing it. We don't just pick up on the words, we pick up on the grammar, the idiosyncrasies, the exceptions to the grammar, the whole of it. This method of learning second and third languages is a concept that has really taken off in language learning communities in the past 20 years: the language acquisition method. So he kind of has a point here. Animals we have attempted to get to use language (and have failed) we have tried desperately to teach them. They simply cannot nor have ever acquired language. So we can't teach it to them and they can't acquire it despite half a century of people trying to prove Chomsky wrong.
Sheila Adele Greibach (born 6 October 1939 in New York City) is an American researcher in formal languages in computing, automata, compiler theory and computer science. She is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and notable work include working with Seymour Ginsburg and Michael A. Harrison in context-sensitive parsing using the stack automaton model.
You learn something neg every day. I take it this is one among many instances of a man taking all the credit for something a woman played a much bigger part in creating/discovering?
I have no idea tbh. I forgot the specifics of what I was taught and only remember her + Chomsky because they got the normal forms of CFGs named after them.
Honestly it was shocking to learn that Chomsky did so much other stuff with politics and monkies because he will always be the CFG guy to me haha
IDK about natural languages, but his work has been useful in computing. We have him to thank for regex, for instance.
i mean he’s been hugely influential in linguistics and it’d be dumb to pretend he hasn’t made contributions of value, but it’s fun to dunk on him and there’s definitely a fair bit that’s somewhat controversial and that i disagree with
Without being at all versed in linguistics myself, can you share some of what he's done in the field that you think is wrong or off the mark? I'm sure I can find some linguistics criticism of him on the web, but I'd be curious to read some criticism of Chomsky particularly from a hexbear's perspective.
edit: sorry, I only now saw that The_Jewish_Cuban already asked you the same question.
So Chomsky's theory, which currently holds true, is that only human beings can learn and use language. Don't be confused by this: plenty of animals communicate. Language is much more than communication. Language has structure, grammatical rules, is affected by culture, and so much more. Animal communication may have one of these elements but as far as we know there are absolutely no animals that can use language or have ever used language; it is simply not something that can be taught to them. A few animals can mimic elements of language but they don't really use it in any meaningful sense. They simply imitate and repeat and cannot interchange vocabulary to form new grammatically correct sentences and so on. There are many who have tried, such as teaching Koko the gorilla sign language, but ultimately have failed.
Additionally, Chomsky says that because language is so ingrained into the human condition and we have literally evolved to use it, we don't even have to "learn" it in the traditional sense. Language is acquired by human beings. We simply pick it up by hearing it. We don't just pick up on the words, we pick up on the grammar, the idiosyncrasies, the exceptions to the grammar, the whole of it. This method of learning second and third languages is a concept that has really taken off in language learning communities in the past 20 years: the language acquisition method. So he kind of has a point here. Animals we have attempted to get to use language (and have failed) we have tried desperately to teach them. They simply cannot nor have ever acquired language. So we can't teach it to them and they can't acquire it despite half a century of people trying to prove Chomsky wrong.
Well now I know who to hate anyway
This is Sheila Greibach erasure
You learn something neg every day. I take it this is one among many instances of a man taking all the credit for something a woman played a much bigger part in creating/discovering?
I have no idea tbh. I forgot the specifics of what I was taught and only remember her + Chomsky because they got the normal forms of CFGs named after them.
Honestly it was shocking to learn that Chomsky did so much other stuff with politics and monkies because he will always be the CFG guy to me haha
Those are the same chomsky's??
My reaction exactly. That dude had a wild career
The Chomsky Hierarchy omits the recursive languages, which are one of the most useful and interesting.