Transneptune

I sat in on a seminar at Berkeley. Fantastic. I feel like a fish back in water, my mind latching on to novel approaches to familiar problems—the Problem, really. Human language, what is its form? What are its possible forms?

There are reasons I love Cyteen.

The department seems to offer the most wonderful mix of field work and cognitive theory. The brain is most certainly not a Von Neumann architecture computer, though I think that the arguments for considering it a species of computer are compelling. And to talk of Language, of course you need a broad spectrum of data.

Tags: berkeley, cognitive science, cyteen by kit
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This is kind of hilariously misguided, I think.

Also: moving east in two weeks.  Looking forward to seeing folks.

Tags: bad ideas, east by kit
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Mark Rosenfelder, over at Zompist’s E-Z Rant Page, has just posted a very interesting review indeed.  I’m glad to see him talking about this; Chomsky’s approach to data has been offending me for a while now, and Rosenfelder is one of my earliest linguistical influences, though essentially a lay one.  Check it out; I’m gonna see about getting the book.

Tags: data-driven linguistics, zompist by kit
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One can in fact view construction-based theories of syntax as upholding standards of grammar coverage that the original proponents of generative grammar abandoned, as they sought to reduce the theory’s dependence on linguistic facts. Chomsky (1995: 435) describes this shift in the goals of grammarians as follows:  “A look at the earliest work from the mid-1950s will show that many phenomena that fell within the rich descriptive apparatus then postulated, often with accounts of no little interest and insight, lack any serious analysis within the much narrower theories motivated by the search for explanatory adequacy, and remain among the huge mass of constructions for which no principled explanation exists—again, not an unusual concomitant of progress”. It seems safe to say that most proponents of construction-based syntax would not consider the loss of insightful and interesting accounts a mark of progress, and find the search for putatively narrower theories of explanatory adequacy unrequited.

From Kay & Michaelis, forthcoming.  I am in love with construction grammar.  Just re-read the first sentence there.  That is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long while.  I think I might just be an academic at heart.  (But it’s funny because it’s true!)

Tags: academic culture, construction grammar by kit
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I just met R.M.W. Dixon!  That’s the dude who wrote Ergativity, which I keep in an honored position at my bedside.  I kinda can’t deal with the awesome.  The worst part?  He’s been in Boulder all summer so far and is leaving tomorrow.

Tags: ergativity, famous people, rmw dixon by kit
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Of all the people in the lab whose native language is not English, only one* speaks an Indo-European language (German).  We have:

• Turkish
• Finnish
• Tamil
• Chinese (I’m not certain what specific languages Xin and Wei speak)

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* I say this a bit preemptively; I’m not certain what Dhaval’s native language is.  I had assumed it’s something Dravidian.

Tags: dravidian, finno-ugric, languages, sino-tibetan, turkic by kit
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Yesterday was good in many, many ways.  Primarily, I attended a talk at UC Boulder by Adele Goldberg, which was excellent.  She argued clearly, presented an interesting but convincing account of the facts observed in her studies (hear that, Chomsky?  Real data!) and also presented a theory that seemed maybe, just maybe, implementable in the context of Machine Learning.  This is all good.

Further, though, I got to have a bit of a talk with Leah, whom I’ve not talked with in too long, and also, finally, saw a red fox here—actually, two!  That is what I call an evening.

If I didn’t have to head off to work shortly, I’d write more.  Ask me about any of these things, and I’ll gladly elaborate.

Tags: construction grammar, foxes, linguistics by kit
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One quick note before I go to bed: I have just discovered that one of my idols, C.J. Cherryh* is on the board of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, the product of a near-idol of mine, Nicholas Ostler. And, of course, it is not just the conjunction of two people of Coolness, but also that they overlap in the domain of endangered language activism. Too much for me to handle!

Also worth noting, all of them have rather outdated-looking sites, except Ostler, for whom I cannot find a personal site at all.

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* Cherryh is actually responsible for my interest in linguistics. Lon story short, her introductory Latin lessons caused me to act on my passive earlier interest in Latin, which in turn got me interested in making up languages, which in turn got me interested in seeing how human language actually worked. And here I am today.

Tags: c.j. cherryh, endangered language, idols, linguistics, nicholas ostler by kit
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…which I keep wanting to type as “piranha”.

A mysterious commenter known only as “X” posted a link to this abstract.  I didn’t approve the comment, as the poster was too mysterious, but the article looks interesting, though in a somewhat dubious location on the internet.

However, one thing mentioned in the abstract seemed worth noting in particular: Everett makes many claims about how this one thing he sees in their culture (the Immediacy of Experience Principle, or IEP — gotta have your TLAs!) leads to all these grammatical features, or lacunae, really.  However, he provides no evidence of a general correlation; the linked-to article purports to show that there are other cultures with the same sort of “IEP” that do not have similarly constrained grammar.  That’s just the sort of research I want to see regarding Everett’s claims.

Tags: how to do science in a mushy field, linguistics, pirahã by kit
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So, I am reading Dan Everett’s very interesting book Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes. His data and observations I trust very much, but his analyses are bizarre, as the following indicates: [Read more →]

Tags: linguistics, linguists need to study math, pirahã by kit
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