From owner-cse575-fa08-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU  Thu Oct 16 15:07:16 2008
Date:         Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:07:08 -0400
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@cse.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: 575: Grammaticality and Evolution
To: CSE575-FA08-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU

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Subject: Grammaticality and Evolution
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I was reading an article on the relative linguistic abilities of humans
and other primates:

	Hochmann, Jean-Remy; Azadpour, Mahan; & Mehler, Jacques (2008),
	"Do Humans Really Learn A^nB^n Artifical Grammars from Exemplars?",
	Cognitive Science 32(6) (September): 1021-1036
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a901618994~db=all~order=page

and a few things came to mind that I wanted to share with you:


1.  As I recall, when we were discussing Chomsky, we briefly discussed
the evolution of language.  Here are two articles on that topic that you
might find relevant:

	Pinker, Steven, & Bloom, Paul (1990),
	"Natural Language and Natural Selection",
	Behavioral & Brain Sciences 13(4): 707-784.
	http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.pinker.html

	Hauser, Marc D.; Chomsky, Noam; & Fitch, W. Tecumsah (2002),
	"The Faculty of Language:
	What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve?",
	Science 298(5598): 1569-1579
	http://www.jstor.org/stable/3832837


2.  In class, we discussed sentences that were:

	ungrammatical:	
		Dog the petted John.
	grammatical, but semantically anomalous:
		Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
	grammatical and semantically acceptable:
		John petted the dog.

But there are also cases of sentences that are grammatically and
semantically "correct", but not "acceptable" in a more pragmatic sense,
often due to performance limitations:

	The cat the dog the mouse loved chased hides.

And here's another:

	Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

For more information on that one, see:

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/BuffaloBuffalo/buffalobuffalo.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

From owner-cse575-fa08-list@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU  Fri Oct 17 09:06:19 2008
Date:         Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:06:11 -0400
From: "William J. Rapaport" <rapaport@cse.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: Re: 575: Grammaticality and Evolution
To: CSE575-FA08-LIST@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU

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Subject: Re: Grammaticality and Evolution
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As a follow-up to my previous post on the evolution of language, here's
a very recent article on the topic:

Christiansen, Morten H.; & Chater, Nick (2008),
"Language as Shaped by the Brain",
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
31(5) (October): 489-558.
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?jid=BBS&volumeId=31&issueId=05&iid=2335032