From: "Noam Chomsky" To: "jeffrey E." <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Re: Date: Sat, 01 Aug 2015 12:54:05 +0000 Attachments: Modularity_Fodor 6-15(2).docx There is a view that language is essentially a processing system. The arguments against it seem to me very power. I'll attach a recent paper about it, a contribution to a volume of essays dedicated to Jerry Fodor and focusing on his conception of language as processing (input modules). His version is far more sophisticated than the signal processing approaches that were all the rage in the 1950s, drawing from the successes of wartime technology in signal analysis and Shannon's information theory. Noam From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2015 7:34 AM To: Noam Chomsky < > Subject: Re: Re: can it be thought of as no more than signal processing. why not use the same technology that attempts to intercept communications and decode the signals and apply it to language. normally one tries to process the signals. i wonder if they put it in reverse. and processed the language in an attempt to find coherence.??? On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Noam Chomsky < > wrote: There is a notion of coherence in both cases, but how to unify them, or whether it's possible, I don't really see. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, July 31, 2015 1:33 PM To: Noam Chomsky < > Subject: Re: what i have been calling my sense making module.. visual sense, is the image coherent. /? why dont you ask your young friends what they think the chomsky questions should be. I will provide the reward On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Noam Chomsky < wrote: Marr's group, as you know, studied edges, rigidity, etc. Those particular phenomena don't seem relevant to language, except indirectly (as Marr and I in fact discussed often): there must be built-in systems that enter into language processing (including determining grammatical status -- "legitimacy" — one pr