From: "Noam Chomsky"

From: "Noam Chomsky" To: "jeffrey E." <[email protected]> CC: ' Subject: RE: language of the blind Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2015 04:33:45 +0000 Attachments: Modularity_Fodor 6-15.docx This is the best work I know. It's been carried forward. I'd really urge that you contact Lila, a fine person and an outstanding scientist (and an old friend). There's a fundamental difference between input systems like the mapping from stimuli (sound, light,...) to some internal representation, on the one hand, and language, though they are often confounded. I'll attach an almost complete draft of an article on the topic, part of a symposium on Jerry Fodor's influential work Modularity. The basic difference is that language is not an input system at all. Rather, it is a central system, accessed both for input and output — and for the most part (by a huge margin) used without either input or output. Noam From: jeffrey E. [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, June 05, 2015 7:40 AM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: language of the blind Im only a few hours into her work, and strangely enough . much of her evidence ( cognizant of my bias ) oddly enough , seems to be in support of my naive conjecture that the mapping from external light ( an ordered set ) to coherent mental image is homologous to the mapping from mechanical wave ( an ordered set ) to coherent sound image. ( I thought you to suggest that neither are necessarily required for thought functions ie language does not need sound nor light It is possilble that .thought units and their relationships can be represented by a space of the homologus maps .this is what i believe you have called language. she has great examples of blind persons representations of verticals , horizontals stronger than she understands. many many useful but clearly not diapositive examples. Also unclear whether some of her " blind" shared a deficient map from light to image or deficient from image to represenation ( sight blind ). I "smell" elegant theories ahead ):: On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 12:33 AM, Noam Chomsky l> wrote: Quite a few. Will have to give it some thought, to winnow it down. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2015 10:48 PM To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: language of the blind who else do you respect. ( not limited to field ). . that we might find each other amusing On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Noam Chomsky > wrote: Very good to have a chance to talk today, as always. And enjoyed the follow-up conversation too. Interesting people. Especially Martin. EFTA00855152 The study on acquisition of language by the blind that I mentioned is: Barbara Landau and Lila Gleitman, Language and Experience: Evidence from the Blind Child. From about 25 years ago. A real breakthrough at the time. There's been work since, much of it by Lila Gleitman and her students. Lila, incidentally, is someone you might want to get to know. An old friend, and a really outstanding psycholinguist-cognitive scientist, one of the best. Noam please note The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to [email protected], and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved please note The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to [email protected], and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved EFTA00855153