Chomsky's computational approach to LA (and thus, to HN) debunked?

[Jochen Stremmel]

Everett's book is an attempt to deliver, if not a fatal blow, then at least
a solid right cross to Universal Grammar. He believes that the structure of
language doesn't spring from the mind but is instead largely formed by
culture, and he points to the Amazonian tribe he studied for 30 years as
evidence. It's not that Everett thinks our brains don't play a role—they
obviously do. But he argues that just because we are capable of language
does not mean it is necessarily prewired. As he writes in his book: "The
discovery that humans are better at building human houses than porpoises
tells us nothing about whether the architecture of human houses is innate."

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Angry-Words/131260?cid=rclink



2016-09-14 12:20 GMT+02:00 ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>:

> Thanks, man. Actually not a surprised that Wolfe would write on this
> and do a good job of it.
>
> ESSAY — From the August 2016 issue
>
> The Origins of Speech
>
> In the beginning was Chomsky
>
> By Tom Wolfe
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 10:22 AM, Michel <bulb at vheissu.net> wrote:
> > Was an excellent article on this in Harper's, I think last or current
> month,
> > written by -surprise, surprise- Tom Wolfe.
> >
> > ---
> > Michel
> >
> >
> > On 2016-09-12 13:59, Keith Davis wrote:
> >>
> >> That's a great quote, and could easily be applied in lots of areas...
> >>
> >> Www.innergroovemusic.com
> >>
> >>> On Sep 12, 2016, at 7:08 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> As Chomsky was developing his computational theories, he was
> >>> simultaneously proposing that they were rooted in human biology. In
> >>> the second half of the 20th century, it was becoming ever clearer that
> >>> our unique evolutionary history was responsible for many aspects of
> >>> our unique human psychology, and so the theory resonated on that level
> >>> as well. His universal grammar was put forward as an innate component
> >>> of the human mind—and it promised to reveal the deep biological
> >>> underpinnings of the world’s 6,000-plus human languages. The most
> >>> powerful, not to mention the most beautiful, theories in science
> >>> reveal hidden unity underneath surface diversity, and so this theory
> >>> held immediate appeal.
> >>>
> >>> But evidence has overtaken Chomsky’s theory, which has been inching
> >>> toward a slow death for years. It is dying so slowly because, as
> >>> physicist Max Planck once noted, older scholars tend to hang on to the
> >>> old ways: “Science progresses one funeral at a time.”
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-
> chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/
> >>> -
> >>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >>
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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