User talk:Dynwrighter/sandbox/Poverty of the Poverty of the Stimulus

For the structure, the introduction (before TOC) is going to include premises (which are under Summary section right now), I assume? Will everything placed in the Summary section right now later be reorganized to match the outline at the bottom: Intro w/ premises, History, Evidence, etc.?

Examples
I have written these with terminology that we probably shouldn't use later. It needs to be understandable to the average reader, with a bit a of leeway where we can place links to other articles and such. These will probably need a rewrite, but for now they can serve as a way to know what needs to be expressed by the examples. Gty97 (talk) 18:36, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

arranging the logic/premises
There are three structures that I have encountered for the poverty of stimulus argument.

1. already on Wikipedia: Premises: There are patterns in all natural languages that cannot be learned by children using positive evidence alone. Positive evidence is the set of grammatical sentences that the language learner has access to, as a result of observing the speech of others. Negative evidence, on the other hand, is the evidence available to the language learner about what is not grammatical. For instance, when a parent corrects a child's speech, the child acquires negative evidence. Children are presented only with positive evidence for these particular patterns. For example, they hear others speaking using only sentences that are "right", not those that are "wrong". Negative evidence is not available to children in a way that they could use to learn language. Children do learn the correct grammars for their native languages. Conclusion: Therefore, human beings must have some form of innate linguistic capacity that provides additional knowledge to language learners. Essentially, stimulus is not an entirely adequate way to explain the process of learning. The poverty of stimulus argument attempts to explain how native speakers form a capacity to identify possible and impossible interpretations through ordinary experience. Thus, "language acquisition is not merely a matter of acquiring a capacity to associate word strings with interpretations. Much less is it a mere process of acquiring a (weak generative) capacity to produce just the valid word strings of the language."

2. from Pullum & Scholz (2002) The Argument from Poverty of the Stimulus (APS) a. Human infants learn their first languages either by data-driven learning or by innately-primed learning. [Disjunctive premise; by assumption.] b. If human infants acquire their first languages via data-driven learning, then they can never learn anything for which they lack crucial evidence. [By definition of data-driven learning.] c. But infants do in fact learn things for which they lack crucial evidence. [Empirical premise.] d. Thus human infants do not learn their first languages by means of data-driven learning. [From (b) and (c), modus tollens.] e. Conclusion: human infants learn their first languages by means of innately-primed learning. [From (a) and (d), disjunctive syllogism.]

3. from class a. There is a piece of grammatical knowledge "A" that native speakers (children) acquire (adult-state). b. Speech to children is equally compatible with numerous hypothesis, "A," "B," "C," etc. (the experience is ambiguous). c. There is data in the input that serves as evidence for distinguishing the right adult-state hypothesis from all the other alternatives. d. Such evidence in step c does not occur in the input. e. The right hypothesis of the adult-state is determined by something other than just experience of input - maybe intrinsic properties.

The structure from Pullum & Scholz and the structure given in class seem quite similar, but I am not sure if they are identical arguments (especially the way they talk about "crucial evidence" and the weight that each gives to contribution of experience - I am not sure if Pollum & Scholz's "crucial evidence" is equivalent to evidence mentioned in the class layout of the argument). PullScholz's structure seems to suggest that POS argument abandons contribution of experience and heavily depend only on innate mechanisms, while the class structure does not necessarily seem so. The premises on the Wikipedia page right now do not read like the other two, either. How are you guys understanding the premises for the POS argument?Jchung10 (talk) 18:53, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

One of my favorite papers in support of POS is Gleitman and Newport, especially the deaf children who learn ASL natively even though their parent's grammars are far from native/perfect. There are a lot of similar examples with children who learn English natively, for example from parents who speak only broken English - I don't know of any paper that studies that exactly, because it is a situation that is likely much harder to control for given outside influence, but I definitely think G&N could be referenced in the logic section! BTW, that is not one of my papers, it is just stuck in my memory forever! Prosetta (talk) 17:12, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The textbook chapter assigned to me talks about similar examples. I shall place it in the logic section referencing the textbook, but maybe we can later add the G&N citation as well before the final draft.Jchung10 (talk) 03:07, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

It should be noted that in the current Wikipedia article on POS, there exists a criticism against creole and pidgin as valid examples for POS.Jchung10 (talk) 03:32, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Criticisms
In Piaget's article, he mentions two reasons he disagrees with Chomsky's "innate fixed nucleus" (which I believe is their fancy way of saying POS hypothesis). 1) The mutations that would cause humans to have innateness to learn language and grammar the way it is hypothesized that we do would be "biologically inexplicable" and 2) what we can explain assuming innateness can just as well be explained as a "'necessary' result of constructions of sensorimotor intelligence." We can talk about these as arguments against innateness, but in my other reading, Chomsky quickly refutes these possibilities, so I will write up a blurb on that in a bit. Prosetta (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2017 (UTC) One thing Chomsky says in response to 1) is that while it is currently "biologically unexplained," it is not inexplicable. Prosetta (talk) 16:43, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Introduction
The introduction I added will be the top part of the Wikipedia page, but for the purposes of this draft, I gave it its own heading. Prosetta (talk) 21:01, 20 October 2017 (UTC) From the original Intro: "In linguistics, the poverty of the stimulus (POS) is the argument that natural language grammar is unlearnable given the relatively limited data available to children learning a language, and therefore that this knowledge is supplemented with some sort of innate linguistic capacity. " Prosetta (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Innateness
Add innateness section Prosetta (talk) 15:14, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Feedback/Suggestions
You might want to think about rewording the way you define POS in the (New) Introduction (first sentence)--I might be wrong, but I think in class we talked about how it wasn't so much about the quantity of data as it was about the quality of the data (they don't have the type of evidence they need to come to a correct grammar/distinguish between hypotheses because they don't hear ungrammatical sentences). Again, the way you worded it might be fine, but it could potentially be a distinction worth making.

Also, the third step in your summary section also seems a little off in the way you worded it--it sounds as though the input contains the evidence kids would need to distinguish hypotheses which I don't think is consistent with what we talked about in class really.

In the syntax section, it also could potentially be helpful to provide a little background on the syntactic theories you discuss (or at least link to pages that would be of benefit to a reader. For example, explain or link to a page on binding theory so people can learn what the binding theory is).

In both the logic and syntax sections, I think the content of what you are trying to communicate is great--I don't know that it would make a lot of sense to a layperson, so you might need to explain the concepts more clearly, but the ideas are really good (though I think the Gleitman and Newport paper's arguments could be good to include somewhere in this article, too!). Rcsender (talk) 20:19, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out in the summary section. It may still sound a little off as it does to me, but we will be working on it more. Jchung10 (talk) 15:12, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

I think the sentences could be a bit clearer, I got a bit confused on the second bullet point under logic. Gsoyoye (talk) 03:09, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

1) I think you want to be more precise in the first paragraph. The argument from the poverty of the stimulus isn't really about "language" in general; instead, it's about particular generlizations. The main idea is that children generalize beyond their experience (ie., they know things about linguistic structure that go beyond what they've heard) and that they do so in consistent ways despite the wide variety of generalizations that would be consistent with what they have heard. JeffLidz (talk) 20:19, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

2) The conclusion of a poverty of stimulus argument is not that "language is innate" but that the knowledge the child comes to have is richer than could be reasonably inferred from the data alone. Therefore, some property internal to the child/learner must be responsible for that knowledge. This looks like an innateness claim, but by itself, it really isn't. It's just a claim that the answer isn't in the experience. The innateness claim is an additional step, i.e., a proposed solution to the puzzle of how our knowledge comes to generalize beyond our input. JeffLidz (talk) 20:19, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

3) The idea that speakers can generalize beyond their experience is present in Chomsky 1955 and Chomsky 1959. JeffLidz (talk) 20:34, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Chomsky, Noam (1959) A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior. [Journal (Paginated)]

Chomsky, N. (1955). The logical structure of linguistic theory. Cambridge, MA: Mimeo MIT. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jchung10 (talk • contribs) 14:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

4) As someone else said, the point is not about the quantity of input - it's about the opacity of the input relative to the knowledge acquired. JeffLidz (talk) 20:34, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

5) Try to be more specific about the Principle C case. What information specifically is lacking from their experience? JeffLidz (talk) 20:34, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

6) Try to also be specific about the other cases you discuss (e.g., passives, anaphoric one, and structure dependence). JeffLidz (talk) 20:34, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

7) Please be more specific in identifying the objections to the argument. JeffLidz (talk) 20:34, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

Would we possibly want to include the linguistics portal on our page as it is found on ones such as on Language acquisition? Maybe also consider adding the poverty of the stimulus page to that portal under the category theoretical or something similar if we think that it is relevant. Gty97 (talk) 19:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi! In the first paragraph under intro, the third sentence is redundant. Its already been stated in the first, I would find a way to combine the two sentences. I like how the UG page is tied in. The whole section under Intro is a bit lacking and the sentences don't flow together. If you guys are still working on it, flesh it out a bit more. The Syntax example have been done really well. However, I would suggest giving a segue into the data, instead of jumping right into it. Keep up the good work! Maggicurrier (talk) 04:22, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Hey guys! The introduction does a very good job of establishing the idea that the input experienced by the infant is too 'transparent'/'opaque', but I think you need to do more to address the innateness point. It is briefly mentioned when addressing the Universal Grammar, but after that it is not really addressed. Maybe emphasize it more and say a sentence or two about it. The syntax pare has very good examples! The explanations are also very good, but could use just a little more bulk. Maybe just explain the logic behind the phenomenon a little bit more to emphasize why the fact that they know it is nuts. The logic section has some very good starting points! The criticisms has very good explanations, but could use a few examples. Overall, it looks like you have good ideas, but you need to just elaborate a little more and get it more polished. Good job guys! KevinHipsman (talk) 21:28, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Take the points of the argument in the summary and spell it out for each of the examples Move the logic arguments to the summary, it is the logic of the argument Gty97 (talk) 16:01, 30 November 2017 (UTC)