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points by yed 1 day ago | 0 comments

You're forgetting the millions of years of evolution that "pre-trained" child brains for this task.

I agree that language is innate.

Yes but it can be both innate and built on statistical models, contrary to Chomksy.

We could innately have built-in statistical models, then everyone can be happy. Given how well statistics seems to work for language acquisition the brain is probably approximating a statistical formula at some level.

[–] jibalt 15 hours ago

A statistical model is approximating the brain at some level.

[–] theptip 1 day ago

Well, Chomsky wouldn’t be happy, that’s the point of OP; he explicitly argues against this.

[–] suddenlybananas 1 day ago

But the statistics only work well at vastly unrealistic scales of data, and the learning pattern doesn't match children's behaviour at all.

[–] suddenlybananas 1 day ago

The idea that there is some level of statistical inference involved in language acquisition is not contrary to generative thought, look at Charles Yang's work or Lidz or a fair number of other people. Chomsky just thinks this is uninteresting so he is dismissive of it as a central explanation for language acquisition.

[–] yed 1 day ago

The central question remains whether there are categorical rules built into the brain for grammar (plus "some" statistical inference possibly), or whether the entirety of our grammatical processing is statistical. It is entirely possible that evolution encoded statistical priors into our brains with grammar overall being a fully statistical process. Therefore, the fact that children learn more quickly isn't really hard evidence one way or another.