Dear Phillip and John, (01)
Thanks for the Langacker article; it made vivid
how wide is the context of Floyd’s and his
sisters’ actions and observations surrounding that
one event of glass breaking. That is a great
example of how context flows from the interaction
of objects and actions in ANY way related to the
sample sentence. (02)
The actual mechanism of detecting events, and the
placing the cleavage between events, using the
shared objects at action interfaces, isn’t so
clear though. Langacker’s sample is only one
possible slice of the context sentences. Others
may be in the memories of the two agents as
experienced years before, and remembered when
somehow associated with the events of the moment. (03)
Phil, the last time you posted your dissertation
and the overview briefing, I couldn’t get the
dissertation link to work. You might want to
check it. All I got was a blank document. (04)
-Rich (05)
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Philip Jackson
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2014 7:10 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Barbara Partee on
Formal Semantics (06)
John,
To be clear, I also do not subscribe to Chomsky's
universal grammar hypothesis. My thesis does not
depend on it, nor make any claims about how humans
acquire and develop natural language.
The TalaMind approach supports Langacker's
discussion of "Floyd broke the glass" (page 214
"Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis
of Grammar"). In creating or processing a Tala
sentence corresponding to "Floyd broke the glass",
a Tala agent could also process related Tala
sentences, such as those discussed by Langacker.
Its processing would not be limited to Tala
sentences, but could use other representations for
meaning and context at the linguistic, archetype,
and associative levels of an embodied TalaMind
architecture.
Phil
> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 00:53:13 -0500
> From: sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Barbara Partee on
Formal Semantics
>
> Phil and Simon,
>
> When I read Chomsky's first book (Syntactic
Structures), I was very
> impressed. I even considered his second book
(Aspects) an important
> contribution. But I agree with Marvin Minsky
that linguistics would
> have progressed much faster if Chomsky had never
returned to the field
> after his politicking against the Vietnam war.
>
> Phil
> > John's interpretation of "Floyd broke the
glass" illustrates the
> > pervasive importance of metaphor in natural
language, and also
> > reminds us of the importance of Robert Floyd's
work.
>
> Yes. I should have googled that sentence to find
the example.
> Instead, I tried to interpret it as a metaphor
that considered
> Robert Floyd's work on the semantics of
programming languages as
> anticipating the later developments in
attempting to formalize NLs.
>
> Simon
> > A repeat of of "Floyd broke the poi-jar" is of
course "I declare
> > it it it Floyd do it Floyd cause it it poi-jar
be it poi-jar break
> > i happen have to you"
>
> That is the kind of reductio ad absurdum that
drove me (and nearly
> everybody else in computational linguistics) to
reject the works
> and pomps of Chomsky and some (not all) of his
former students.
>
> What I find incredible is that Chomsky is still
trying to defend
> the following fantasies:
>
> 1. NL syntax is a formal system that
miraculously arose in a
> perfect or nearly perfect form as a result of a
magical
> mutation about 50 thousand years ago.
>
> 2. The fact that people with any genetic
background can learn
> to speak any NL with native competence implies
that the
> magic mutation gave rise to a universal grammar
(UG), which
> underlies the special syntaxes of every NL.
>
> 3. No further mutations arose since then that
might have caused
> any degradation in that perfect UG.
>
> 4. The UG is so complex that children could
never master it from
> the limited amount of language they hear in
their first few years.
> (The so-called "poverty of the stimulus"
principle.)
>
> 5. The mutation that created UG was independent
of the use of
> language for communication. Any attempt to
analyze language
> as a system of communication is unscientific.
>
> If you think those points are an exaggeration,
you can hear them
> directly from the horse's mouth in a two-hour
lecture:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urrNTVxuCxs
>
> I turned it off after 20 minutes, because I did
not want to
> throw up on my keyboard.
>
> For an alternative, I recommend lectures by
Michael Halliday and
> his colleague Christian Matthiessen:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC-blhaIUCk
>
> Halliday and Chomsky were born in the same year,
but they never
> cite one another. Halliday began his career in
Chinese linguistics,
> and he spent a few years in China to develop
proficiency in the
> language. He was also a co-founder of CLRU
(Cambridge Language
> Research Unit), which was a pioneering center
for machine
> translation and computational linguistics. For a
summary of
> their approach, see the review I wrote of their
book:
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/Halliday.pdf
>
> That same YouTube page has a link to a lecture
by Terrance Deacon
> about genetics and the evolution of language. He
points out that
> Chomsky's assumptions about a language gene that
spontaneously
> arose from a magic mutation is hopelessly
unrealistic.
>
> John
>
>
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