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Alexander Clark & Shalom Lappin, "Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus"

Posted By: TimMa
Alexander Clark & Shalom Lappin, "Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus"

Alexander Clark & Shalom Lappin, "Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus"
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell | 2011 | ISBN: 1405187840 | English | PDF | 258 pages | 21.0 Mb

This unique contribution to the ongoing discussion of language acquisition considers the Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus in language learning in the context of the wider debate over cognitive, computational, and linguistic issues.
• Critically examines the Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus - the theory that the linguistic input which children receive is insufficient to explain the rich and rapid development of their knowledge of their first language(s) through general learning mechanisms
• Focuses on formal learnability properties of the class of natural languages, considered from the perspective of several learning theoretic models
• The only current book length study of arguments for the poverty of the stimulus which focuses on the computational learning theoretic aspects of the problem
Preface

1. Introduction: Nativism in Linguistic Theory

2. Clarifying the Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus

3. The Stimulus: Determining the Nature of Primary Linguistic Data

4. Learning in the Limit: The Gold Paradigm

5. Probabilistic Learning Theory for Language Acquisition

6. A Formal Model of Indirect Negative Evidence

7. Computational Complexity and Efficient Learning

8. Positive Results in Efficient Learning

9. Grammar Induction through Implemented Machine Learning

10. Parameters in Linguistic Theory and Probabilistic Language Models

11. A Brief Look at Some Biological and Psychological Evidence

12. Conclusion

References

Author Index

Subject Index


“This book is not only very pertinent, but also succeeds in eschewing most of the polemical excess that tends to engulf us all in this field It’s not an easy book.. but I think it gives some sense of what the enterprise is about. Alex Clark describes it, at one point, as an exercise in clearing the ground – and it succeeds in sweeping away certain comfortable assumptions that are often made in this area, concerning (for instance) the irrelevance of negative evidence, what languages are provably unlearnable, and the role of the Chomsky hierarchy.” (New Books in Language, 8 June 2012)

“Most of all, it challenges basic concepts in mainstream linguistics. It rejects key tenets of UG in the light of advances in machine learning theory, and research in the computational modelling of the language acquisition process. It exposes so-called proofs supporting the poverty of stimulus, and reveals alternatives that are formally more comprehensive than the explanations previously provided by UG theories, and empirically more likely to match natural language acquisition processes.” (Linguist List, 2011)

“This book is not only very pertinent, but also succeeds in eschewing most of the polemical excess that tends to engulf us all in this field. It’s not an easy book … but I think it gives some sense of what the enterprise is about. Alex Clark describes it, at one point, as an exercise in clearing the ground – and it succeeds in sweeping away certain comfortable assumptions that are often made in this area, concerning (for instance) the irrelevance of negative evidence, what languages are provably unlearnable, and the role of the Chomsky hierarchy.” (New Books in Language, 2012 – review and interview available at newbooksinlanguage.com)

This highly readable, but game-changing book shows to what extent the `poverty of the stimulus' argument stems from nothing more than poverty of the imagination. A must-read for generative linguists.
Ivan Sag, Stanford University

For fifty years, the "poverty of the stimulus" has driven "nativist" linguistics. Clark and Lappin challenge the PoS and develop a formal foundation for language learning. This brilliant book should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the most fundamental question in linguistics.
Richard Sproat, Oregon Health and Science University

Clark and Lappin provide a brilliant and wide-ranging re-examination of one of the most important questions in cognitive science: how much innate structure is required to support language acquisition. A remarkable achievement.
Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science, University of Warwick

This comprehensive cutting-edge treatise on linguistic nativism skillfully untangles the human capacity to effortlessly learn languages, from claims that this capacity is specific to language.
Juliette Blevins, CUNY Graduate Center


Alexander Clark & Shalom Lappin, "Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus"