Joe:
#And Rosta wrote:
#>
#[snip!]
#> > Nonetheless, my main point is that chess makes use of absolutely tons
#> > of prefabricated schemas (= constructions!), and this is something
#> > that chess programmers are well aware of. It seems to me that the
#> > "grammar" of chess would have to take this seriously, just as a
#> > linguistic grammar must.
#>
#> But Joe, this is PERFECT! It perfectly illustrates my views about
#> language. You surely can't deny that in some real sense the rules
#> of chess consist simply of the possible moves.
#
#I disagree. The rules of chess don't consist of the possible moves;
#rather, the possible moves FALL OUT from the rules of chess.

And the same for never-played chess variants? What are "the" rules
of chess, then, for you?

#> (Well, maybe you
#> (insanely!) do deny it, but if so, tell me what is the object of
#> study when, say, the mathematics of chess is studied.)
#
#I assume that they are studying the possible moves. However, these
#possible moves have no independent existence outside of the humans
#that entertain such thoughts. Otherwise, we're getting into essences
#and dualism. (In this case, at least, I think that my position is
#pretty sane!)

Obviously I disagree with you about criteria for "independent existence".

Anyway, I'll go along with you for argument's sake. It remains a fact
that a system of possible moves does "fall out" from mental chess. That's
not true of all games. So the fact that this system falls out of it is
a significant property and needs to be explained. Of course, in this
instance the explanation is easy: those 'pseudorules' that fall out
from mental chess are transmitted explicitly in our culture; they're
codified, we get taught them, and most events of chess playing conform
to them; we also know enough about the history of chess to know roughly 
how the pseudorules got invented. The conundrum of language is that the 
system of 'pseudorules' that falls out from mental language is not 
transmitted explicitly and is not invented, so is much harder to explain.

#> They define
#> what is a possible chessgame, and it is they that would be codified
#> and taught. But chess-in-the-mind is very different, mixed up
#> with strategies and routines and experiences and so on.
#>
#> Hence my position on language & mind: if the set of well-formed
#> sentences can be shown to be defined by a coherent system of rules,
#> just as the set of well-formed chessgames can be,
#
#How do you account for the existence of graded grammaticality
#judgments? The rules of chess are discrete; so, for example, you
#can castle or do "en passant" only under certain specific conditions
#but not others. There are no "kind of legal 'en passants'" but there
#are many sentences that are only "kind of well-formed."

Gradient acceptability judgements are due to:

1. pragmatic anomaly.

2. (un)familiarity

3. the salience of alternative ways of communicating the same 
information (-- the lack of alternative ways improves the
acceptability)

4. genuinely gradient grammaticality due to (a) gradience of 
certain linguistic categories such as 'heaviness', or (b) linguistic
categories that seem to work on a prototype basis, such as comparative
-er suffixation (and probably quite a bit more of morphology).

I am aware of virtually no judgement gradients that aren't covered
by the above. The odd conundrum remains, such as the intermediate
acceptability of passivized direct objects, but the odd conundrum
doesn't disprove the overwhelming pattern.

#> then, just as
#> chess-in-the-mind may be nothing like the rules of chess, so
#> language-in-the-mind may be nothing like the rules of grammar,
#> and hence, like chess, grammar is ontologically abstract.
#
#What do you mean by "abstract"?

It can't be reduced to generalizations over behaviour or to 
states of matter within the brain. The canonical examplar of
ontological abstractness is mathematics.

#> This said, I actually raised the chess analogy to try to
#> illustrate my distinction between grammatical pattern and
#> textual pattern, the former being like an abstract chessgame
#> defined solely as a sequence of moves, and the latter being like
#> (a category of) actual situated chessgames.
#
#I understand this, but I don't agree with it, because even chess
#programmers know that you have to dip into schematic patterns of
#chess moves (as opposed to merely coding the rules that define legal
#chess moves). 

This is plainly false. A chess program has to dip into schematic
patterns only if it is programmed to stand a chance of WINNING.
For it to simply be able to make legal moves and hence play a
legal game of chess, it needs to know only the possible moves.

#This said, I of course respect a person's right to say:
#"Hey, I don't want to mess around with mentalist grammars, because X."
#This is independent of the abstractionist argument you're trying to
#make, though.

I am indeed trying to say more than "Hey, I don't want to mess 
around with mentalist grammars, because X." I summed up what I'm
trying to say in earlier messages today, so I won't repeat it
here.

--And.