Douglas_Knight comments on Open Thread, Sept 5. - Sept 11. 2016 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Elo 05 September 2016 12:59AM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 09 September 2016 06:43:29AM 0 points [-]

The passage seems silly. It is easy to make statistical models that contradict Chomsky's claim. But I think he means something else, that whether a sentence is grammatical, while not a binary, admits sharply discrete levels. The concept of grammar cuts human understanding of language at its joint and statistical understanding is largely on the other side. At least, that is the claim; I think introspection is difficult and usually turns statistical understanding into an illusion of discreteness.