Einstein in his favorite hat. Einstein disagreed with Chomsky over how symbols work.
Sixty minutes into his Cologne lecture, Chomsky discusses the elementary unit of meaningful language. What is it? He says the standard answer is "comes from the referentialist doctrine." Tiger refers to a tiger. Chomsky surprised me by saying that this idea seems to be true for animals. A vervet monkey, for example, makes different calls in response to specific stimuli. Chomsky doesn't specify, but vervets are famous for making different calls in response to snakes, leopards, and eagles. (I don't know if referentialist doctrine really works when it comes to lion roars, wolf howls, zebra barks, etc.) But, says Chomsky, the referential doctrine does not "seem to be remotely true for the simplest elements of human language."
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