A conversation with Noam Chomsky: Linguistics, SETI, Cognitive Science, & Artificial Intelligence (#059)
Into the Impossible With Brian Keating
00:00
Is There a Connection Between Language and Vocabulary?
There's a sense that linguistics, if it is to be a hard discipline, a regularized discipline with rules, t cetera. How is that consistent with the fact that language, at least in the realm of vocabulary, changes regularly? I was dismayed a few weeks ago to learn that miriam webster's dictionary no longer marks as incorrect spelling the word irregardless. They now accept it. The point is, to understand the word regardless requires enormous internal knowledge. You don't have anywhere near enough evidence in your entire life to begin induction anything like the meaning of any word you look at. In all languages there are principles that are apparently uniform acrsscoss ol
Play episode from 37:43
Transcript
