🚀 go-pugleaf

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote in message 
news:1189260270.081759.37300@19g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
> 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...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > 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.

No, I did not say that. I agreed that it contained no LABORATORY 
examinations of verbal behavior. I may respond to the rest of your post, but 
I wanted to clear up this misrepresentation of what I said. VB contains many 
examples of complex utterances (i.e., an "examination of communicating 
humans") but, since you know ZERO about what he said, you continue to say 
all manner of erroneous things.



>
>> > 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.
>