Professor Noam Chomsky - April 8, 2011

Institute of Cognitive Science and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
The Andrew Brook Distinguished Lecture Series presents: Language and the Cognitive Science Revolution(s)

[@TheAbraxasNexus]

I am truly sad that he is in his twilight years, will be a great loss when he passes :(

[@joevero4568]

10 years later he's still kicking

[@musicmathieu]

Thank you, much appreciated Chomsky!!

[@difairhurst]

I cant believe how clever this man is. His brain is different from the rest of us :p

[@asderc1]

Chomsky at 7:20

[@dorianwinslow9884]

This man possesses some remarkable knowledge. Great information!

[@tarnopol]

Q&A starts at 1:10:00.

[@TheGodlessGuitarist]

If it is possible love a man without having met him, then that is what I do.

[@borjon23]

@rochha A shrewd argument, compellingly made.

[@pneudmatic]

@Diosukekun I think that he actually misspoke and meant to say "Are eagles that fly swim". He's talking about the structural distance between the auxiliary 'are' and 'swim'. He likes to point out that language users don't have trouble keeping track of the connection between 'are' and 'swimming' even in convoluted sentences like 'Are eagles that fly over the Pacific while they hunt for fish in the... (and on and on) swimming?' This is the only way it makes sense to me.

[@excitedaboutlearning1639]

I used to struggle with these kinds of long noun phrases before I was introduced to the whole concept of noun phrase as opposed to just the regular SVO. The academic world is full of sentences that have extremely long noun phrases as subjects in sentences, not to mention Cicero's Latin. By understanding the concept of a noun phrase I could easily understand how to divide a sentence into phrases correctly in order to read and understand very complex sentences. "Are eagles that fly swimming?" "Eagles that fly" are swimming Noun phrase + verb phrase.

[@Diosukekun]

55:00 i never really got that "are eagles that fly swimming?" thing. it asks the question whether all eagles that fly in general are swimming right now. i see nothing wrong with that. stuff like "can eagles that are flying swim?" etc also seems to work fine for me.

[@excitedaboutlearning1639]

It's been ten years, but I might as well respond to your doubts as ai had similar ones less than a year ago. The context in which Chomsky is talking about "Instinctively, eagles that fly swim," he's talking about an important property of language: Words in a sentence don't refer to the next or previous word in a sentence. When they do, it is because of another thing called structure dependence. "Instinctively eagles that fly swim." Does the sentences mean instinctively fly or instinctively swim? If language followed a linear rule, instinctively would always link up with the closest verb. In the case of the previous example, instinctively is closer to "fly" than "swim". Therefore, if linear distance is the deciding factor, then the right meaning is "instinctively fly". However, Chomsky points out that this is not so. In reality, instinctively links up to "swim" rather than "fly". Instinctively, eagles that fly swim. In many languages such as Finnish and German, a relative clause is separated from the noun it describes with a comma both after the noun and after the relative clause. In Finnish and German, the sentence would be written as "Instinctively, eagles, that fly, swim". Here we really have three different components: the one doing the verb, a speciation of that actor and a specification of how that verb is performed. Instinctively links up to the closest constituent, not to the linearly closest verb. Adverb + Noun phrase + specification of the noun phrase + Verb phrase. I hope my answer gave some clarity. It's not a perfect explanation by any means.

[@lodproductions90]

O Holy KZbin! :-)

[@MarkoKraguljac]

@lordennis01 Number is irrelevant. Existence of proper answer shows that question is meaningful.

[@BigMikeMcBastard]

7:18

[@MarkoKraguljac]

@lordennis01 Sentence is: "He wondered whether the mechanics fixed the cars". We want to construct most straightforward question to find out how many mechanics were there (their number is irrelevant, linguistic structure of that question is what we examine). That question would be: "How many mechanics did he wonder whether fixed the cars?" Just listen to that abomination. Point is that question is meaningful but language structure gets in its way and we are unable to pose it straightforwardly.

[@ariekanibalie]

@ehudnold9 one thing's for sure, and that's 'this jew' won't make YOU a more proficient writer. I've heard it said that, in order for the gentiles to recognize you as an 'intellectual messiah', it helps to be able to spell properly...

[@NlHILIST]

Eagles flying etc....... By the same token you shouldn't be able to say 'the thing is is that such and such'. But the fact is that people are increasingly saying it and it is becoming acceptable language use.. Same goes for 'I'm loving it' which contravenes the basic rule that verbs of state cannot use the progressive form. So I think Chomsky may be wrong about fixed grammatical properties which cannot be contravened. Social networking is likely to accelerate this process.

[@excitedaboutlearning1639]

The thing is is a fixed expression that acts as a kind of noun phrase. A-large-lion ate a man. The-thing-is is a lion. In both cases the words that have - between them act as a kind of single part. Saying,"I'm loving it" instead of "I love it" is not the level of language that Chomsky's talking about. I remember him saying,"We don't know how we formulate questions." I thought to myself, "This guy can't be serious! Of course, we know! We make a question by inverting the noun phrase and a verb in q sentence in English." But that's not the level he was talking about. I was thinking about the "resulting sentences" whereas he was talking about the actual, specific process that takes place in our brains that makes thar inversion in the first place. Similarky, saying, "I'm loving it " instead of "I love it" has nothing to do with the neurological level that Chomsky's talking about: it has everything to do with societal, speech-community level of language use, but not with the biological/neurological nature of language.

[@EM0208F]

He is a genius, without a question, but I have to admit that because of his insistence to avoid pathos at any cost, he makes brilliant yet very monotonous speeches,

[@geniemist]

too bad he can't live for 1000 years....imagine the knowledge he would posses

[@protipz]

God WHY is Chomsky so monotonous? I'm extremely interested in these ideas, but he talks like HE's about to fall asleep.

[@OscarGeronimo]

He's always been in favor of simple uses of language (unless it is required so) and against rhetoric and all it's different manifestations, cause if you study it is all about manipulation and pushing forward irrationality in conversation at the end. Totally the oposite of a lecture, in which we're supposed to be presented with information and arguments in a way that allows us to follow the logical conclusions and criticize if necessary. And his voice has deteriorated over the years too.

[@asderc1]

Michael Huttner He's in his 90's tbf. I remember whenever I first started listening to him a couple of years ago it took me a while to tune in, but once you realise the value of his words it's no longer difficult to engage, for me anyway.