Noam Chomsky - The Merge Function In Thought And Speech

[@dahoonkim1985]

What a fascinating lecture this is. A very succinct and clear explanation of his design of MP.

[@freakiest421]

Full video link, please?

[@SamJCopeland-gj1vg]

We’re right back to a priori syntheses folks.

[@goedelite]

This is not an introductory discussion.

[@chiraggupta7580]

This is not even a discussion to be honest

[@mendali]

1:35 "a system of digital infinity."

[@benthebenevolent1001]

Getting all William Gibson on yo' ass.

[@teacherfranky]

I am reading comments about the video written in very bad English. How refreshing!

[@OscarGeronimo]

Where does this come from?/What's the source? (name of the talk and place) Thanks.

[@hugh4035]

His own research.

[@hywelevans3293]

A mysterious recursive operation that somehow entered human evolutionary history - yet is so simple that it exists in every system? Sounds like it’s NOT special to language, then, and didn’t HAVE to enter our evolutionary history

[@SeanPi314]

Poverty of Stimulus: Some Unfinished Business

[@ashanti_emporium]

Nice lecture

[@ThePurpleMangoWorld]

6:51 ... watch closely, one frame randomly inserted; gold coins to whoever finds out who that philosophical/historical figure is. freaked me the fuck out lol

[@benthebenevolent1001]

Since it's just a silhouette, I'm pretty sure that it's only an error in the film, especially since it looks a lot like the guy in front of the camera. Good eye, though- that one completely passed my notice.

[@mahirdursunoglu]

isn't that chomsky's shadow

[@pigslave3]

Mahir- it is, someone took a picture with the camera's flash enabled.

[@Simulera]

Where was this presentation given?

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

this merge function looks like a set join, but it's seems unclear whether A and B are sets or elements. and i don't see how you can construct sentences from it. if we'd just apply a join to the words of the sentence in some fashion their sequence wouldn't matter because joins are commutative. "the dog ate the cat" would be the same as "the cat ate the dog". so yeah, i don't get it.. ._.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

okay rewatched it, it's definately not a join, i'm not sure what external and internal merge is, then..

[@meta2006]

External merge is when a word enters in the formation of a sentence, for example in "I love Mary" to form this sentence basically we need to get these words as in (Mary), (love(Mary)), (I (love(Mary))) -- I have not included soem details like agreement -- Internal merge is about moving words around the sentence as in "Who can I call?", "who" is the object of the verb "call" and it will be first placed in its place which according to English syntax is after the verb (I (can (call (who)))) but in order to have a question in English we need who and can before the subject I, so that is Internal merge (can (I (can (call (who))))), (who (can (I (can (call (who)))))) and the words in their original position are said to be erased (not pronounced).

[@metatron4890]

Is any of this falsifiable or empirical? It sounds more like rationalism than empirical.

[@meta2006]

Chomksyan theories in linguistics are primarely rationalist than empirical, there is a book called "Cartesian Linguistics" where he lays down his approach.

[@davidwuhrer6704]

I think he confused computational efficiency and communications efficiency. Having to parse a sentence to restore the original thought is certainly more computationally expensive than just reading it in, while communicating a compressed form is cheaper communication-wise than transmitting each symbol in all its places. So communication efficiency trumps computational efficiency, because while the latter is expensive, the former is more so. From that I can't see how the purpose of language isn't externalisation. I am probably missing something fundamental here.

[@stephenschumacher7876]

David Wührer I'm not sure I understand your response, and I hope you will expand on it, but I think he is just saying that while our linguistic abilities do offer certain externalization possibilities, the externalization is by no means the primary function of the language capacity. He then calls for evidence by introspection to realize that nearly all of the language a person uses is entirely internal, and aka thought. Thus, our linguistic abilities are primarily an instrument of thought in Chomsky's views. Of course there are more details and reasons as to why he believes this, but I hope this helped.

[@davidwuhrer6704]

*Stephen Schumacher* It does make a difference if we are talking about language, or the capacity for language. I was of the impression that it was about language itself.

[@stephenschumacher7876]

David Wührer they're kind-of inseparable because language wouldn't exist without the capacity to create it being prevalent in some sort of creative machine (in this case the human mind).

[@sasinuntsupakitjumnong627]

Thank you so much sir. You makes me understand that math is the language of the cosmos while English is the language of man. Both are under the same rule of universal grammar.

[@whowereweagain]

Sasinunt Supakitjumnong the idea that math is a language of the cosmos is simply wrong. math is nothing but a system of formalizations that can be used to model the cosmos, but certainly not all of it. at least in what we call classical mathmatics. language is just a certain type of semiotic, a logic using signs, signs which are something that stands for something in respect to someone who understands it. semiotic is a thing all living things posses the differences between physio-chemical perception and communication among bacteria and human language is mostly just a matter of scaffolding and symbols, they both work the same way. Chomsky reduces grammar to biological determinism, and makes it into an anthropomorphism the way it really works is biologic is determined by grammar.

[@democratictotalitariansoci1462]

light, magnetism and gravity are the languages of cosmos. math is language of numbers and symbols invented by humans

[@whowereweagain]

that diagram. ohh don't you kbow, Peirce's reduction thesis is true . A-B-C can only be a ternary relation, it can't be expressed as pairs of diads. existential graphs(particularly the recent formalizations)> vein diagrams, symbolic logic. the tragedy of the neglect of C.S. Pierce's work in semiotics and phenomenology is very evident in Chomsky's thoughts. if only that work was rediscovered sooner so that academics of Noam's generation could have partaken in proper scholarship. Noam is seriously lacking in the semiotics department, not just from Peirce but from people like jakob uexkull as well. it makes me sad. I'm excited about the recent work in semiotics however, particularly out of the biosemiotics community

[@codectified]

Dankberry Crunch powerful comment. i dont know the names you mention but i have always felt the same about noam. can you recommend a text?

[@jones1351]

Your comment assumes a couple of things for which you produce no evidence. That (1) he's ignorant of the work you've sited. Or, (2) he hasn't given it adequate consideration and simply dismissed it out of hand. A simple resolution would be to write to the man. As I understand it he's very good about getting back to people. Especially if they pose interesting questions. My guess, he could/would explain how and where he may or may not disagree with the work you allude to. After all it is his field, n'est-ce pas?

[@brandgardner211]

audio

[@benthebenevolent1001]

I agree.

[@mohinderkumar7298]

B O R I N G

[@kamoans]

It requires a real genius to inject an anti-Judaism comment (on Samson) into a very abstract account of linguistics.

[@stevenhines5550]

It's not anti Judaism. It's anti hypocrisy and racist propaganda.

[@kamoans]

@@stevenhines5550 Including the racist accusations in the mathematics talk is a worst type of propaganda (which is by itself -- as 'propaganda' -- is not worthy of a scientist).

[@stevenhines5550]

But since we are on the topic, presumably you consider murder to be wrong?

[@maueflcoach1506]

​@@kamoansit's antihypocrysy, as stated above