EPSTEIN
page 1 / 388 . OCR, unverified
Dataset92 458
--- SOURCE: 0458__EFTA01052854.txt ---
METADATA_SOURCE: 0458
METADATA_FILENAME: EFTA01052854.pdf
----------------------------------------
From: "Jeffrey E." <jeevacation®gmail.com>
To: Joscha Bach ‹.
Subject: Re:
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:08:48 +0000
yes , confidentiL
On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 2:29 PM, Joscha Bach <
> wrote:
Thank you, Jeffrey! This is from Noam, right? I would be very interested in reading the responses of linguists
and computational language modelers to this.
May I forward it to a friend at Google X?
Some notes:
> basic assumptions about human language that should I think be uncontroversial, extensively discussed
elsewhere, then turning to a sample of challenges. A person's language is an internal system, part of human
biology, based on configurations of the brain, developing in each person through interaction of specific
biological endowment (the topic of UG — universal grammar in contemporary terminology), external
environment, and general properties and principles of growth and development that are independent of
language.
As far as I understand, there is not yet an agreement among linguists wrt. UG, i.e. how much is innate vs. do
humans just converge on the simplest type 3 grammar that is consistent with the constraints they observe in
their local environment. I think Noam argues that we have very specific circuitry for language, whereas the
other camp would suggest that we are general learners, with specific rewards that bias us towards
compositionality and systematicity. OTOH, this might also be read as a variant of Noam's "Strong Minimalist
Thesis" (SMT).
The controversy will be eventually resolved by progress in building systems that learn natural language.
> The acquired system is an "internal language" (I-language), a computational system that yields an infinite
array of hierarchically structured expressions that are interpreted at the conceptual-intentional CI interface as,
in effect, a "language of thought" (LOT), and that can be externalized to one or another sensorymotor system,
typically sound. Also relevant are some considerations about evolution of language.
> Little is known about the evolution of cognitive faculties, a matter discussed in an important article by
Richard Lewontin, whose own view for the prospects was dim
Most folks in cognitive science would probably agree that most cortical activity is devoted to building a
generative simulation of the outside world by a process of hierarchical learning. These simulations can be
mapped on a conceptual manifold, something like an address space of our sensory motor representations of the
world, which we can use to evoke and shape our mental simulations. Language is our interface to that
conceptual space, and external language allows us to synchronize concepts even in the absence of matching
sensory motor representations, i.e. we can build mental simulations of things that we never experienced, by
interpolating between concepts that address mental simulations we know.
It seems that Noam's approach is unique in that he focuses entirely on language and concepts, while treating
the understanding of the underlying cognitive faculties as hopeless, while many others would argue that
understanding language without first understanding pre-linguistic mental representations might be impossible.
That said, Noam's characterization of I-language and LOT at the "conceptual-intentional" interface, with an
externalization through generative mechanisms, is probably a useful basis, regardless of where individual
researchers come from.
EFTA01052854
--- PAGE 2 ---
> [i] Anatomically modem humans (AMH) appear about 200 thousand years ago.
> [ii] The faculty of language FL appears to be a true species property: shared among human groups (with
limited individual differences) and in all essential respects, unique to humans. In particular, there is no
meaningful evidence for existence of language prior to AMH.
> [iii] Recent genomic studies indicate that some human groups (San people) separated from other humans
about 150kya. As far as we know, they share FL with other human groups.
> [iv] The San languages are all and only those that have the curious property of phonetic clicks, and there
may be some articulatory adaptation to producing them (See Huijbregts, forthcoming).
Nguni languages have clicks, too, but they seem to have imported them from Khoisan.
> [v] The first (very limited) indication of some form of symbolic behavior appears at about 75kya. Not long
after that, we have rich evidence of quite extraordinary creative achievements (Lascaux, etc.).
This is consistent with another observation: Modern humans had a population bottleneck of 2000-3000
individuals ca 75000 years ago, which coincides with the Tonga eruption. This does not necessarily mean that
the volcano killed off almost all hominids, but it increased the evolutionary pressure, and it is possible that our
ancestors evolved a mutation that enabled them to outcompete and kill most of the hominid competition