Comments for Replicated Typo

Comment on The Forgotten Linguist: Mikołaj Kruszewski by Wintz

Wintz — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:35:09 +0000

I beg differ Fred, if Kruszewski appeared on the front cover of SpecGram first, then we can clearly see who was the innovator and who was the scrounger…

But, seriously, judging from the article it appears that Silverman sides with Kruszewski being the central progenitor, at least in some areas. That’s what I gleaned: I’m not really in much of a position to judge the veracity of this claim.

Comment on The Forgotten Linguist: Mikołaj Kruszewski by Fred Mailhot

Fred Mailhot — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:19:29 +0000

I’ll be interested to read this, as it’s never been clear to me how many of these insights & prefigurings came from Kruszewski vs Baudouin de Courtenay. It seems clear from Anderson 1985 and the Stankewicz(?) translation of de Courtenay’s work that there was at least some professional rivalry (and perhaps even bitterness on the mentor’s part), but reading de Courtenay’s work, it really looks to me like a lot of these ideas came from him.

Comment on The Great Mystery of the Vanishing Phonemes by ohwilleke

ohwilleke — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:25:33 +0000

The Keren Rice paper, exploring a well developed linguistically, but still prehistoric example looks particularly interesting.

Comment on The Forgotten Linguist: Mikołaj Kruszewski by Trey

Trey — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:03:36 +0000

D’oh. Forgot the link: http://specgram.com/CXLVII.2/

Comment on The Forgotten Linguist: Mikołaj Kruszewski by Trey

Trey — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:00:13 +0000

We at SpecGram gave Kruszewski his due—in the form of the coveted cover picture—*nineteen* years ago this month!

Comment on A random walk model of linguistic complexity by Wintz

Wintz — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:34:51 +0000

Hi Doug, thanks for spotting this. There are probably going to be broken links in most of our posts. We were hacked a few weeks ago, and this is some of the fallout I’m afraid.

Comment on A random walk model of linguistic complexity by Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:27:37 +0000

The link at the top is broken. It should go here: http://www.replicatedtypo.com/language-evolves-in-r-not-python-an-appology/3834.html

Comment on Everett, Pirahã and Recursion: The Latest by Darryl McAdams

Darryl McAdams — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:53:08 +0000

@Wintz, oh yes, definitely, and I think Chomsky is simply wrong on this matter — I think there’s good reason to think that recursion is necessary for all sorts of complex cognition that animals do, especially in things like planning hunts, or ferreting food out of places that it’s hidden. I mean, just look at crows — they can do some absolutely amazing cognitive feats, looking at a series of tubes with tools in them, and without trying anything, take out the right tools in the right order so that they end up with the tool they need to eventually get the food (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE4BT8QSgZk). I don’t know how crows can do this if not by having some recursively structured problem solving techniques.

However, Chomsky might be right in that *recursive mental representations* might be uniquely linguistic — there’s a difference between recursive *thoughts* and recursive *computations*. But I think that this is an empirical matter that is completely distinct from the Pirahã question, because the Pirahã question is about whether language is or isn’t recursive, either necessarily or potentially, which is clearly not the same question as is recursion unique to humans. It could still be unique to humans, and the Pirahã don’t have to make use of it, in the same way that honeybee dance is unique to a handful of species of honeybees but no honeybee will ever use the dance if it’s isolated from birth from any other honeybee.

Comment on Everett, Pirahã and Recursion: The Latest by Wintz

Wintz — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:37:33 +0000

@Darryl McAdams: Doesn’t that surely bring the debate back to whether recursion is unique or not to language? In the sense your describing it, then there is no reason why we should expect it to be — and it is instead a domain-general (or domain-independent) heuristic device (something I don’t think Everett would necessarily disagree with).

@Luke McCrohon: That’ll be great if you can get some videos up. I’m sure one or two of the people here will be able to provide some coverage of the conference for the blog.

Comment on Everett, Pirahã and Recursion: The Latest by Luke McCrohon

Luke McCrohon — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:13:39 +0000

It was a pity about Chomsky’ s evolang cancellation, but I’m sure the topic of recursion will come up anyway (most likely multiple times!). Unfortunately can’t afford to shout anyone a ticket, but I am hopeful we will be able to record some of the discussions and put them online.