Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) major point is that human languages are intriguingly diverse rather than (like animal communication systems) uniform within the species. This does not establish a about language universals, or advance the ill-framed pseudo-debate over universal grammar. The target article does, however, repeat a troublesome myth about Fitch and Hauser's (2004) work on pattern learning in cotton-top tamarins.

Two kinds of theoretical framework for syntax are encountered in current linguistics. One emerged from the mathematization of proof theory, and is referred to here as generative-enumerative syntax (GES). A less explored alternative stems from the semantic side of logic, and is here called model-theoretic syntax (MTS). I sketch the outlines of each, and give a capsule summary of some mathematical results pertaining to the latter. I then briefly survey some diverse types of evidence suggesting that in some ways MTS (...) seems better suited to theorizing about the relevant linguistic phenomena. (shrink)

Notice that this paper has not claimed that all natural languages are CFL's. What it has shown is that every published argument purporting to demonstrate the non-context-freeness of some natural language is invalid, either formally or empirically or both.18 Whether non-context-free characteristics can be found in the stringset of some natural language remains an open question, just as it was a quarter century ago.Whether the question is ultimately answered in the negative or the affirmative, there will be interesting further questions (...) to ask. If it turns out that natural languages are indeed always CFL's, it will be reasonable to ask whether this helps to explain why speakers apparently recognize so quickly whether a presented utterance corresponds to a grammatical sentence or not, and to associate structural and semantic details with it. It might also be reasonable to speculate about the explanation for the universally context-free character of the languages used by humans, and to wonder whether evolutionary biological factors are implicated in some way (Sampson (1979) could be read in this light). And naturally, it will be reasonable to pursue the program put forward by Gazdar (1981, in press) to see to what extent CFL-inducing grammatical devices can be exploited to yield insightful descriptions of natural languages that capture generalizations in revealing ways.If a human language that is not a CFL is proved to exist, on the other hand, a different question will be raised: give the non-context-free character of human languages in general, why has this property been so hard to demonstrate that it has taken over twenty-five years to bring it to light since the issue was first explicitly posed? If human languages do not have to be CFL's, why do so many (most?) of them come so close to having the property of context-freeness? And, since the CFL's certainly constitute a very broad class of mathematically natural and computationally tractable languages, what property of human beings or their communicative or cognitive needs is it that has caused some linguistic communities to reach beyond the boundaries of this class in the course of evolving a linguistic system?Either way, we shall be interested to see our initial question resolved, and further questions raised. One cautionary word should be said, however, about the implications (or lack of them) that the answer will have for grammatical studies. Chomsky has repeatedly stated that he does not see weak generative capacity as a theme of central importance in the theory of grammar, and we agree. It is very far from being the case that the recent resurgence of interest in exploring the potential of CF-PSG or equivalent systems will, or should, be halted dead in its tracks by the discovery (if it is ever forthcoming) that some natural language is not a CFL. In the area of parsing, for instance, it seems possible that natural languages are not only parsed on the basis of constituent structure such as a CF-PSG would assign, but are parsed as if they were finite state languages (see Langendoen (1975) and Church (1980) for discussion along these lines). That is, precisely those construction-types that figure in the various proofs that English is not an FSL appear to cause massive difficulty in the human processing system; the sentences crucial to the proofs are for the most part unprocessable unless they are extremely short (yet the arguments for English not being and FSL only go through if length is not an issue). This means that in practice properties of finite state grammars are still of great potential importance to linguistic theory despite the fact that they do not provide the framework for defining the total class of grammatical sentences. The same would almost certannly be true of CF-PSG's if they were shown to be inadequate in a similar sense. It is highly unlikely that the advances made so far in far in phrase structure description could be nullified by a discovery about weak generative capacity. Moreover, there are known to be numerous ways in which the power of CF-PSG's can be marginally enhanced to permit, for example, xx languages to be generated without allowing anything like the full class of recursively enumerable or even context-sensitive languages (see Hopcroft and Ullmann (1979), Chapter 14) for an introduction to this topic, noting especially Figure 14.7 on p. 393. The obvious thing to do if natural languages were ever shown not to be CFL's in the general case would be to start exploring such minimal enhancements of expressive power to determine exactly what natural languages call for in this regard and how it could be effectively but parsimoniously provided in a way that closely modelled human linguistic capacities.In the meantime, it seems reasonable to assume that the natural languages are a proper subset of the infinite-cardinality CFL's until such time as they are validly shown not to be. (shrink)

Chomsky’s highly influential Syntactic Structures ( SS ) has been much praised its originality, explicitness, and relevance for subsequent cognitive science. Such claims are greatly overstated. SS contains no proof that English is beyond the power of finite state description (it is not clear that Chomsky ever gave a sound mathematical argument for that claim). The approach advocated by SS springs directly out of the work of the mathematical logician Emil Post on formalizing proof, but few linguists are aware of (...) this, because Post’s papers are not cited. Chomsky’s extensions to Post’s systems are not clearly defined, and the arguments for their necessity are weak. Linguists have also overlooked Post’s proofs of the first two theorems about effects of rule format restrictions on generative capacity, published more than ten years before SS was published. (shrink)

We examine an argument for the non-context-freeness of English that has received virtually no discussion in the literature. It is based on adjuncts of the form 'X or no X', where X is a nominal. The construction has been held to exemplify unbounded syntactic reduplication. We argue that although the argument can be made in a mathematically valid form, its empirical basis is not secure. First, the claimed unbounded syntactic identity between nominals does not always hold in attested cases, and (...) second, an understanding of the semantics of the construction removes the necessity of making reference to any syntactic reduplication. (shrink)

We explore the formal foundations of recent studies comparing aural pattern recognition capabilities of populations of human and non-human animals. To date, these experiments have focused on the boundary between the Regular and Context-Free stringsets. We argue that experiments directed at distinguishing capabilities with respect to the Subregular Hierarchy, which subdivides the class of Regular stringsets, are likely to provide better evidence about the distinctions between the cognitive mechanisms of humans and those of other species. Moreover, the classes of the (...) Subregular Hierarchy have the advantage of fully abstract descriptive (model-theoretic) characterizations in addition to characterizations in more familiar grammar- and automata-theoretic terms. Because the descriptive characterizations make no assumptions about implementation, they provide a sound basis for drawing conclusions about potential cognitive mechanisms from the experimental results. We review the Subregular Hierarchy and provide a concrete set of principles for the design and interpretation of these experiments. (shrink)

Modern weaponry is often too complex for unaided human operation, and is largely or totally controlled by computers. But modern software, particularly artificial intelligence software, exhibits such complexity and inscrutability that there are grave dangers associated with its use in non-benign applications. Recent efforts to make computer systems more accessible to military personnel through natural language processing systems, as proposed in the Strategic Computing Initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, increases rather than decreases the dangers of unpredictable behavior. (...) Defense systems constitute, in fact, a paradigm case of the wrong kind of application for this technology. This cannot be expected to change, since the unpredictability stems from inherent properties of computer systems and of natural languages. (shrink)

Cet article discute l’analyse en termes de DP qui domine actuellement dans la grammaire générative chomskienne, à savoir, l’idée que la tête du groupe nominal est le déterminant, plutôt que le nom. Nous commençons par une discussion des notions de tête et de dépendance et passons en revue différents critères classiques permettant de décider quel élément est la tête dans une construction donnée. Sur base de ceux-ci, nous proposons une série d’arguments suggérant que la position classique est en réalité la (...) bonne et que c’est bien le nom qui est la tête du groupe nominal. Nous étudions ensuite une série d’arguments et d’analyses spécifiques qui ont été avancés en faveur de l’analyse en termes de DP et montrons pourquoi nous ne les considérons pas comme convaincants. En conclusion, nous notons que le choix entre les analyses NP et DP n’est peut-être pas une question empiriquement décidable si l’on s’autorise les représentations syntaxiques très abstraites qui sont actuellement en vogue dans le cadre de la linguistique générative chomskienne. (shrink)

At the very beginning of L’Homme-Machine, La Mettrie claims that Leibnizians with their monads have “rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul”; a few years later Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of ‘genetic’ information, conceived of living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence,” in his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés. This text first (...) appeared in Latin in 1751 under the title Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturae systemate, with the pseudonym Dr Baumann; it was translated by Maupertuis in 1754 as Essai sur la formation des corps organisés and was later included in his 1756 Œuvres under the title Système de la nature. Now, it is clear that Maupertuis was a kind of Leibnizian; and that his molecule possessed higher-level, ‘mental’ properties. In that sense he falls under the first category described by La Mettrie. But he was also involved in a debate on this issue with Diderot, who put forth a sustained critique of Maupertuis’ theory of the molecule in the additions to his 1753 Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature. Where Maupertuis attributes higher-level properties to his living minima, Diderot argues that these properties are ‘organizational’, i.e., they can only be properties of the whole. At issue here is the degree of commitment to a form of materialism. (shrink)

In his Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717), the English deist Anthony Collins proposed a complete determinist account of the human mind and action, partly inspired by his mentor Locke, but also by elements from Bayle, Leibniz and other Continental sources. It is a determinism which does not neglect the question of the specific status of the mind but rather seeks to provide a causal account of mental activity and volition in particular; it is a ‘volitional determinism’. Some decades later, (...) Diderot articulates a very similar determinism, which seeks to recognize the existence of “causes proper to man” (as he says in the Réfutation d’Helvétius). The difference with Collins is that now biological factors are being taken into account. Obviously both the ‘volitional’ and the ‘biological’ forms of determinism are noteworthy inasmuch as they change our picture of the nature of determinism itself, but my interest here is to compare these two determinist arguments, both of which are broadly Spinozist in nature – and as such belong to what Jonathan Israel called in his recent book “the radical Enlightenment,” i.e. a kind of underground Enlightenment constituted by Spinozism – and to see how Collins’ specifically psychological vision and Diderot’s specifically biological vision correspond to their two separate national contexts: determinism in France in the mid-1750s was a much more medico-biological affair than English determinism, which appears to be on a ‘path’ leading to Mill and associationist psychology. (shrink)

This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern (...) medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories. (shrink)

Ce livre étudie, à travers une série d'épisodes allant de la philosophie des Lumières à notre époque, le problème du matérialisme dans l'histoire de la philosophie et l’histoire des sciences. Comment comprendre les spécificités de l’histoire du matérialisme, des Lumières à nos jours, au sein de la grande histoire de la philosophie et de l’histoire des sciences ? Quelle est l’actualité de l’opposition classique entre le corps et l’esprit ? Qu’est-ce que le rire ou le rêve peuvent nous apprendre du (...) matérialisme ? En traversant l’histoire de ce concept jusqu’à l’émergence d’un « nouveau matérialisme » contemporain, l’ouvrage vise à revitaliser le matérialisme et sa lecture. -/- . (shrink)

The living body appears like an endlessly renewable reservoir of authenticity, hope, and taboo. But, for the sake of conceptual clarity, we are often been told that the (mere) body should be distinguished from the flesh. That is, it’s undeniable that I have a body; that I notice yours; that we worry about their birth and death and upkeep. But the flesh is a more transcendentalized, loaded concept – not least given its frequently religious background (incarnation: the Word made Flesh). (...) It is the body ‘kicked upstairs’, ‘bumped up’ one ontological level. Flesh is like a mantra, an obsessive leitmotif. Is the difference just one of abstraction? Indeed, crucial to the narrative of phenomenology (most obviously in Merleau-Ponty but really, throughout, including in enactivism), to the story of ancestor worship and identity it tells itself and its acolytes around the campfire, is a basic distinction between the merely physical body and the flesh as something requiring ‘mineness’, namely, an understanding of it as uniquely ‘my own’, a feeling of ‘what it is like to be embodied’. This goes back to the Husserlian distinction between Körper, ‘body’ in the sense of one body among others in a vast mechanistic universe of bodies, and Leib, ‘flesh’ in the sense of a subjectivity which is the locus of experience. In this essay I reflect on this vision of the body’s authenticity and its costs, and contrast it with insights derived from Georges Canguilhem, whose critique of mechanism/mechanicism is not done in the name of a wholescale organicism and/or an unproblematized éloge of embodiment and privacy. (shrink)