🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sep 8, 8:45 am, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:1189191791.027037.214690@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
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> > On Sep 7, 8:11 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >> On Sep 7, 7:09 am, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> >> > messagenews:1189133690.355293.289220@r29g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> >> > On Sep 6, 6:00 pm, "Glen M. Sizemore" <gmsizemo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> > >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
>
> >> > >> > And thus whatever it is "behaviorism" has to say about "verbal
> >> > >> > behavior" is thus also of little or no interest to linguists.
>
> >> > >> But what Skinner had to say about VB was of interest to Chomsky.
> >> > >> Wasn't
> >> > >> Chomsky a linguist?
>
> >> > > Well, _someone_ had to point out that what Skinner had to say about
> >> > > that was not of interest to linguists!
>
> >> > But that isn't what Chomsky said. Chomsky said Skinner was wrong, and
> >> > that
> >> > the principles were inadequate, not that explaining individual "speech
> >> > acts"
> >> > (to avoid technical terminology) was of no interest. Did you ever even
> >> > read
> >> > the review?
>
> >> Er, "speech act" is a technicat term. Emerging from J. L. Austin's
> >> *How to Do Things with Words* (1962), one of the founding documents of
> >> the branch of linguistics known as "pragmatics."
>
> >> I was thinking of taking it with me to the doctor's office this
> >> morning. I've never had a reason to read it before.
>
> > So I did. And when I got back, I printed the MacCorquodale attempt at
> > a reply, eleven years later.
>
> > What Chomsky said in 1959 is thoroughly unexceptionable today, though
> > doubtless it was baffling in its time. (He appended to it an outline
> > -- perhaps the first published outline; _Syntactic Structures_ covered
> > only a small part of it  -- of his program for linguistics). All he
> > does is show that Skinner's notion of language is absurdly simple-
> > minded:
>
> He did no such thing, since what he wrote about has little or nothing to do
> with what Skinner wrote.

What I took to the doctor's office was not the (rather fragile)
journal issue containing the review, but Fodor & Katz's 1964
collection *The Structure of Language*. Had I instead taken Jakobovits
& Miron's 1967 collection *Readings in the Psychology of Language*, I
would have found Chomsky's little-known headnote to the reprint, which
says in part:

"I had intended this review not specifically as a criticism of
Skinner's speculations regarding language, but rather as a more
general critique of beaviorist (I would now perfer to say
"empiricist") speculations as to the nature of higher mental
processes. My reason for discussing Skinner's book in such detail was
that it was the most careful and thoroughgoing presentation of such
speculations, an evaluation that I feel is still accurate. Therefore,
if the conclusions I attepted to substantiate in the review are
correct, as I believe they are, then Skinner's work can be regarded
as, in effect, a _reductio ad absurdum_ of behaviorist assumptions."

> >Skinner doesn't even know that such a thing as syntactic
> > structure exists.
>
> On the contrary, Skinner spends a great deal of time talking about it,
> especially Chapter Thirteen: Grammar and Syntax as Autoclitic Processes.

Saporta's 1961 collection *Psycholinguistics: A Book of Readings*
includes extensive excerpts from Skinner, as well as quite a few
behaviorist articles (and most of _Syntactic Structures_, at the time
Chomsky's only publication on the topic). Perhaps if I have some
leisure time, I'll look through them.

> >One of the things Chomsky and his early students
> > investigated was the things that one _can't_ say -- "sentences" that
> > would appear to be perfectly reasonable ways to say things, but that
> > simply don't occur and, when uttered, are perceived to be distinctly
> > odd.
>
> Yeah, how could a view based on exposure to, and reinforcement of, REAL
> utterances ever explain why algorithmically-generated ones seem "odd"?

It couldn't. The question had never arisen within American
Descriptivism (the approach, incidentally, in which I was trained at
Cornell).

Skinner offers only the most simple, and simplistic, examples of
utterances. Chomsky adduces many sorts of uses of language that have
nothing to do with anything Skinner discusses.

And as you said yourself, Skinner's approach is _not_ based on the
examination of communicating humans, but on the assumption that
language is no different from any animal behavior.

> > What M'CQ has to say (I struggled through the first ten pages and
> > skimmed the other seven) is utterly bankrupt.
>
> Good "argument."
>
> >Principally, he assumes
> > what he intends to prove;
>
> Another good "argument."

No, assuming what one attempts to prove is _not_ a good argument. It's
also called "begging the question."

> > but also, eleven years on, he had every
> > opportunity to examine Chomsky's published work (notably *Aspects of
> > the Theory of Syntax*, 1965) to get some idea of the complexity of
> > language;
>
> The Wikipedia entry under Verbal Behavior" is not perfect, but you should at
> least give it a look. It is clear that you have no clue about what Skinner
> has said about anything.

No. I do not consult wikipedia.

> which already by 1970 was searching for ways to simplify,
>
> > simplify, simplify the mental machinery involved -- the simplicity he
> > himself desiderates.
>
> "Mental machinery"? Isn't such machinery powered by Pixies and Unicorns
> running in wheels?

What's your term, smartass, for what goes on when one is thinking and/
or communicating?

As long as you think there is no qualitative difference between human
and animal, you can embrace all the "behaviorism" and sociobiology you
want. Linguists, who investigate the quinetessentially human
characteristic, know better.

I take it you concur that M'CQ was remiss in not familiarizing himself
with contemporary linguistic theory before he attempted to refute it.