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Related: About this forumChomsky was right, researchers find: We do have a 'grammar' in our head
From phys.org:
[center][/center]
A team of neuroscientists has found new support for MIT linguist Noam Chomsky's decades-old theory that we possess an "internal grammar" that allows us to comprehend even nonsensical phrases.
"One of the foundational elements of Chomsky's work is that we have a grammar in our head, which underlies our processing of language," explains David Poeppel, the study's senior researcher and a professor in New York University's Department of Psychology. "Our neurophysiological findings support this theory: we make sense of strings of words because our brains combine words into constituents in a hierarchical mannera process that reflects an 'internal grammar' mechanism."
The research, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, builds on Chomsky's 1957 work, Syntactic Structures (1957). It posited that we can recognize a phrase such as "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" as both nonsensical and grammatically correct because we have an abstract knowledge base that allows us to make such distinctions even though the statistical relations between words are non-existent.
Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. That is, we know from experience how sentences should be properly constructeda reservoir of information we employ upon hearing words and phrases. Many linguists, in contrast, argue that hierarchical structure building is a central feature of language processing.
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A team of neuroscientists has found new support for MIT linguist Noam Chomsky's decades-old theory that we possess an "internal grammar" that allows us to comprehend even nonsensical phrases.
"One of the foundational elements of Chomsky's work is that we have a grammar in our head, which underlies our processing of language," explains David Poeppel, the study's senior researcher and a professor in New York University's Department of Psychology. "Our neurophysiological findings support this theory: we make sense of strings of words because our brains combine words into constituents in a hierarchical mannera process that reflects an 'internal grammar' mechanism."
The research, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, builds on Chomsky's 1957 work, Syntactic Structures (1957). It posited that we can recognize a phrase such as "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" as both nonsensical and grammatically correct because we have an abstract knowledge base that allows us to make such distinctions even though the statistical relations between words are non-existent.
Neuroscientists and psychologists predominantly reject this viewpoint, contending that our comprehension does not result from an internal grammar; rather, it is based on both statistical calculations between words and sound cues to structure. That is, we know from experience how sentences should be properly constructeda reservoir of information we employ upon hearing words and phrases. Many linguists, in contrast, argue that hierarchical structure building is a central feature of language processing.
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Chomsky was right, researchers find: We do have a 'grammar' in our head (Original Post)
Jim__
Dec 2015
OP
CurtEastPoint
(18,664 posts)1. "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe..."
or something close to that.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)2. You could talk to me all day....
bananas
(27,509 posts)3. A couple of related Chomsky videos
Chomsky: The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding: Newton and the study of mind
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017219934
Noam Chomsky: The Singularity is Science Fiction!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=150117