Correct. Which leads to your next part:
<< Language, not capacity for language, is a learned skill that shapes our consciousness. ... >>
To call language acquisition "learning" in any meaningful sense of the word "learning" doesn't stand up to how language acquisition actually works. What Chomsky proved (and I stress the word *proved*, through an elegant mathematically-based reductio argument) is that humans *cannot* pick up all the rules for language through their environment; in fact, their exposure to language is relatively impoverished, and only through hypothesizing an internal language-generating organ (Chomsky's preferred word) can one explain this infinitely-generating marvel known as human language.
And it then follows that your distinction between "language" and "capacity for language" is a distinction without a meaning.
My reference to the ass-kicking was meant in fun, but it should be noted that Chomsky is in fact unsentimentally ruthless with any intellectual challenger (much rougher than in his political discussions). He's lost more than a few people who may have been convinced if he would have employed a kinder touch. So watch out...
----Original Message Follows---- From: Adam Pressler <adampopulist at yahoo.com> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: Race Math & Language Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2000 08:29:49 -0800 (PST)
--- Gregory Geboski <ggeboski at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Briefly:
>
> > -- No. Language is a fundamental component of
> humans, much of its function
> pre-determined, largely universal throughout the
> human population, very
> possibly forming the basis of all that we consider
> "consciousness." It's
> much more than "symbol manipulation."
>
Okay, I grant you that my one sentence summary is a gross oversimplification. But that said, my question goes to the heart of how language affects our consciousness.
As far as it being a fundamental component of humans, my understanding is all humans have a capacity to learn language during the first few years of life, but if one doesn't learn it during this window, one never will.
Which brings me back to my original question. Language, not capacity for language, is a learned skill that shapes our consciousness. Is this process intertwined with learning math? You seem to be saying we don't know enough about the brain to address this question, which is, in a way, an answer. Thanks.
> --No. The old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Right up there
> with the ether theory
> in physics, just more hardy.
>
I'm not familiar with this hypothesis, but I will be soon!
> Should you have any arguments with this, you should
> come up to Cambridge,
> MA, and see Prof. N. Chomsky, MIT, who will then
> proceed to entertain any
> argument you may have, disassemble it, and shove it
> up your arse -
> rhetorically, of course. Granted, others (Lakoff, I
> think, most prominently
> among current linguists) may support your premises,
> but I think Chomsky
> holds the intellectual cards.
Nothing sounds more fun than drinking beer with Noam Chomsky and having him shove my arguments up my ass - as long as it is rhetorically ;-)
(That little bit of Texan literary braggadoccio referred to my unwillingness to concede a racial basis for intelligence - which I don't _think_ you are arguing. Maybe we'll come back to that after I research this Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis)
Adam
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