http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2329718

Thank you.

Hello there

There's a highly interesting article partly doubting Chomsky and
partly supporting Whorf in this week's Economist. It's still up'free
to air' at

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2329718
....

Hello there

There's a highly interesting article partly doubting Chomsky and
partly supporting Whorf in this week's Economist. It's still up'free
to air' at

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2329718

The article also challenges the LANGUAGE hypothesis popular in many
linguistician watering holes i.e. the notion that the study of
LANGUAGE can dispense with the study of foreign languages in the
plural.

Regards

Paul Wood

Hello there

There's a highly interesting article partly doubting Chomsky and
partly supporting Whorf in this week's Economist. It's still up'free
to air' at

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2329718

The article also challenges the LANGUAGE hypothesis popular in many
linguistician watering holes i.e. the notion that the study of
LANGUAGE can dispense with the study of foreign languages in the
plural.

Regards

Paul Wood

Hm. First I've heard of the "LANGUAGE hypothesis". Could you give a
reference to someone who has put forward this hypothesis?

Hello there

There's a highly interesting article partly doubting Chomsky and
partly supporting Whorf in this week's Economist. It's still up'free
to air' at

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2329718

The article also challenges the LANGUAGE hypothesis popular in many
linguistician watering holes i.e. the notion that the study of
LANGUAGE can dispense with the study of foreign languages in the
plural.

Regards

Paul Wood

benlizross wrote:

Hm. First I've heard of the "LANGUAGE hypothesis". Could you give a
reference to someone who has put forward this hypothesis?

Don't play stupid.

contest.

here by "LANGUAGE hypothesis".

Even if it were not
abundantly clear from the post,

and the article,

the capitals in "LANGUAGE hypothesis" would
give it away: the hypothesis peddled by LANGUAGE for
the past what... 20 years? 30 years?

In other words:

S -> NP VP or any suchlike grand-looking formula for
all and sundry, one size fits all, come back for your
free fittings.

Paul Wood <pfwood@t-online.de> wrote:
Hello there

There's a highly interesting article partly doubting Chomsky and
partly supporting Whorf in this week's Economist. It's still up'free
to air' at

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2329718
...

Thanks for the reference. I really don't see the Chomsky connection.
The author says "Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not
clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably
be one of its minimum requirements." However, I don't see why
that would be a requirement from a Chomskyan view, or from any
view. Has Chomsky ever said such a thing?

Jacques Guy wrote:

benlizross wrote:

Hm. First I've heard of the "LANGUAGE hypothesis". Could you give a
reference to someone who has put forward this hypothesis?

Don't play stupid.

No mate, stupid is not the game I am playing.

You are not at a Jaycees debating
contest.

What on earth is a Jaycees debating contest? I'm sure I've never been to
one.

You know perfectly well what is meant
here by "LANGUAGE hypothesis".

No I don't. That's why I asked. The expression is entirely new to me.

Even if it were not
abundantly clear from the post,

Well, it is given a paraphrase in the post. But you'll note that what I
was asking for was evidence that someone actually advanced such a
hypothesis.

and the article,

My dear Jacques, NOTHING is clear from that article.

the capitals in "LANGUAGE hypothesis" would
give it away: the hypothesis peddled by LANGUAGE for
the past what... 20 years? 30 years?

It had not occurred to me that LANGUAGE was capitalized in reference to
the well known journal of that name. Paul? Alex? Is he right?

In other words:

S -> NP VP or any suchlike grand-looking formula for
all and sundry, one size fits all, come back for your
free fittings.

Really? "In other words"? I note that Mr Wood paraphrases in the
following terms: "the notion that the study of LANGUAGE can dispense
with the study of foreign languages in the plural."
(Note that it's hard to read that with LANGUAGE referring to a journal.)
You consider that equivalent to S --> NP VP?
I think you might be confirming the "abysmal level of discussion"
charges.
(If I've missed another blast of Gallic wit, I apologize. But that's my
job.)

Ross Clark

benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message news:<4002459C.1FDC@ihug.co.nz>...
Jacques Guy wrote:

benlizross wrote:

Hm. First I've heard of the "LANGUAGE hypothesis". Could you give a
reference to someone who has put forward this hypothesis?

Don't play stupid.

No mate, stupid is not the game I am playing.

You are not at a Jaycees debating
contest.

What on earth is a Jaycees debating contest? I'm sure I've never been to
one.

You know perfectly well what is meant
here by "LANGUAGE hypothesis".

No I don't. That's why I asked. The expression is entirely new to me.

Even if it were not
abundantly clear from the post,

Well, it is given a paraphrase in the post. But you'll note that what I
was asking for was evidence that someone actually advanced such a
hypothesis.

and the article,

My dear Jacques, NOTHING is clear from that article.

the capitals in "LANGUAGE hypothesis" would
give it away: the hypothesis peddled by LANGUAGE for
the past what... 20 years? 30 years?

It had not occurred to me that LANGUAGE was capitalized in reference to
the well known journal of that name. Paul? Alex? Is he right?

In other words:

S -> NP VP or any suchlike grand-looking formula for
all and sundry, one size fits all, come back for your
free fittings.

Really? "In other words"? I note that Mr Wood paraphrases in the
following terms: "the notion that the study of LANGUAGE can dispense
with the study of foreign languages in the plural."
(Note that it's hard to read that with LANGUAGE referring to a journal.)
You consider that equivalent to S --> NP VP?
I think you might be confirming the "abysmal level of discussion"
charges.
(If I've missed another blast of Gallic wit, I apologize. But that's my
job.)

Ross Clark

Actually, Ross, I formulated the 'Uppercase LANGUAGE Hypothesis'
yesterday afternoon about 12.30h Central European Time (110104).
Jacques understands.

A formulation thanks to your unwitting collaboration in the chatter
thread. It was first PTD asking when would Alex ever understand that
what he, Peter, was interested in all along was uppercased LANGUAGE
and not necessarily languages. Which oddly enough is what me and Alex
have been criticising, er, all along. Then you chimed in with your
polyglottism cracks.

As for the Economist article, I never suggested that it proves
anything.

anyway: it is a heavy concept. After all, Chomsky has not been
overgenerous with proof himself.

Chomsky's dominance may be under challenge anew.

dominance, as the other Chomsky would argue, can only be a good thing.

My counterfactual is this: If linguistician Chomsky had been a native
speaker of, say, Riau Indonesian, would his take on LANGUAGE have been
different?

The Economist article is plainly full of ignorant nonsense, some of it
apparently contributed by the journalist, but seemingly not all of it.

Anybody know what Riau Indonesian might be? The author's brief and
unhelpful comments make it sound like a pidgin.

The only interesting point in the article is this: is the noun/verb
contrast universal? Linguists have been debating this for decades.
Nouns and verbs are certainly the only parts of speech for which
anybody wants to claim universal status, and I have the impression
that most linguists would like to regard them as universal, but
dissenters have existed for at least half a century.

The Salishan and Wakashan languages are the favorite candidates for
languages lacking the noun/verb contrast, but there have been several
other proposals. Somebody proposed Tongan a few years ago. But it
would seem odd to me if Tongan lacked this distinction while other and
closely related Austronesian languages maintained it. And I find it
hard to believe that a dialect of Indonesian -- if that's what Riau
Indonesian is -- would have lost such a central feature of the
grammar.

Anyway, at least among English-speakers, there is neurolinguistic and
psycholinguistic evidence for the reality of the noun/verb contrast.
And I'm inclined to suspect that claims for the absence of this
contrast are a little overzealous.

Comments?

Larry Trask
larryt@sussex.ac.uk

Larry Trask wrote:

The Economist article is plainly full of ignorant nonsense, some of it
apparently contributed by the journalist, but seemingly not all of it.

Anybody know what Riau Indonesian might be? The author's brief and
unhelpful comments make it sound like a pidgin.

The only interesting point in the article is this: is the noun/verb
contrast universal? Linguists have been debating this for decades.
Nouns and verbs are certainly the only parts of speech for which
anybody wants to claim universal status, and I have the impression
that most linguists would like to regard them as universal, but
dissenters have existed for at least half a century.

The Salishan and Wakashan languages are the favorite candidates for
languages lacking the noun/verb contrast, but there have been several
other proposals. Somebody proposed Tongan a few years ago. But it
would seem odd to me if Tongan lacked this distinction while other and
closely related Austronesian languages maintained it. And I find it
hard to believe that a dialect of Indonesian -- if that's what Riau
Indonesian is -- would have lost such a central feature of the
grammar.

Anyway, at least among English-speakers, there is neurolinguistic and
psycholinguistic evidence for the reality of the noun/verb contrast.
And I'm inclined to suspect that claims for the absence of this
contrast are a little overzealous.

Comments?

Larry Trask
larryt@sussex.ac.uk

The Riau Islands are just south of Singapore. Gil is talking about the
most colloquial variety he hears there. But as I pointed out in another
post, we have no corpus of this language (let alone a "grammar"!) to
refer to, so all we have are the few examples that Gil gives. That's
what makes it hard to evaluate his claims.

I'm not sure if I ever saw the Tongan claim you mention. Can you
remember where it was? And have you got a reference for the neuro- and
psycho- evidence?

Paul Wood wrote:

benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message news:<4002459C.1FDC@ihug.co.nz>...
Jacques Guy wrote:

benlizross wrote:

Hm. First I've heard of the "LANGUAGE hypothesis". Could you give a
reference to someone who has put forward this hypothesis?

Don't play stupid.

No mate, stupid is not the game I am playing.

You are not at a Jaycees debating
contest.

What on earth is a Jaycees debating contest? I'm sure I've never been to
one.