7 Universal Grammar

7/30/2019 7 Universal Grammar

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Universal Grammar


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Slides on the net at:

http://http-server.carleton.ca/~ecorazza/

http://http-server.carleton.ca/~ecorazza/online_courses/Mind_World_and

_knowledge/
http://http-server.carleton.ca/~ecorazza/http://http-server.carleton.ca/~ecorazza/http://http-server.carleton.ca/~ecorazza/http://http-server.carleton.ca/~ecorazza/


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Chomskys Epiphenomenalism

about Language

Language vs. Grammar

Grammar is a precise definite term while languageis a vague and derivative term which we could welldispense of, without much loss.

The grammar in someone mind/brain is real whilelanguage is not.


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The aim of linguistics can be summarized by fourquestions.

1. What constitutes knowledge of language?

2. How is such knowledge acquired?

3. How is such knowledge put to use?

4. What are the physical mechanisms that serve as thematerial basis?


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Deep vs. Surface Structure

Port Royal Grammar (1660)

It is heavily influenced by Descartes.

It aims to propose the general form of any possiblegrammar.

In so doing it elaborates the universal structureunderlying the natural manner in which we expressour thoughts.


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The inner/outer aspect of language

According to Port Royal grammarians we mustdistinguish between language having an inner and anouter aspect.

Hence we distinguish between a sentence quaexpression of a thought and the physical shape of asentence (i.e. an utterance).

To show the structure of the mind the grammar shouldreflectproperties of all minds, it should be universal.


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Mental Grammar

The deep structure is often only implicit and does notget expressed. It is only represented in the mind.

The same deep structure can be realized differently indifferent languages (e.g.: Video canem currentum andJe vois un chien qui court).

The rules of this grammar are not represented in thelanguage user: they are simply there. Yet they must belearned. But see poverty of the stimulus argument.


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Transformation Rules

There are transformation rules operating from deep tosurface structure. It is the linguists job to figure outthese rules.

The grammarians of Port Royal are the first torecognize the two systems of rules:

1. A base system generatingdeep structure.

2. A transformational system mapping these deepstructures into surface structure.


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UG

UG corresponds to the deep structure. Since it is theexpression of though, it is common to all languages.

It is thus universal. Hence Universal Grammar, UG.

The transformation rules converting the deep structureinto surface structure may differ from language tolanguage.

Different outputs can correspond to the same innerstructure.


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Port Royal

Within the Cartesian tradition exemplified by thegrammarians of Port Royal, the deep structure is whatconstitutes the meaning (sense) in the mind.

It can be transmitted in different way (e.g.:active/passive).

E.g.: different languages or different surface structurestransmit the same meaning/sense which is a mentalentity.


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Nowadays UG means the initial stateof a languagelearner.

It is the innate (genetically transmitted) aspect ofgrammatical rules; the language instinct(Pinker).

It is that aspect of the human mind that causes one tolearn the language.

UG quainitial state is biologically determined.

As such, it does not belong to a specific language.


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UG need not be supposed to be what is universal

among languages (see Jackendoff 2002: 72ff.).

It is merely the human capacity, i.e., the initial state,allowing one to learn alanguage.

The aspects of the initial sate one ends up using inones learning periods depends on the stimuli/input.

Languages (inputs) affect the development of the initialstate and thus the outputs one ends up producing (cf.switches metaphor explaining the learning ofphonetics).


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Innate

We do not necessarily mean that it is present at birth orin an embryo.

It rather means that it automatically appears duringthe development, regardless on whether it is present atbirth or not.

It does not mean that it is free from the input of theenvironment. E.g. vision capacity.


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Deep vs. Surface Structure, and Creativity

The deep/surface structure distinction is what helpsexplaining linguistic creativity.

The Port Royals distinction between deep and surfacestructure implicitly contains recursive devices allowingfor infinite uses of the finite means that it disposes.

The deep structure is what gets represented in the mindwhen a sentence is produced/heard (see LF).


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Linguistic creativity and the argument for mentalgrammar

The expressive variety of language use implies that thebrain of a linguistically competent user contains a set ofunconscious grammatical principles.

(cf. Jackendoff R. 1994. Patterns in the Mind. Basic Books

Harper Collins, New York: 6).


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LOT

In adopting the language of thought hypothesis, LOT(or Mentalese) the argument for mental grammar can bestated along the compositional principle for thoughts, or

what Fodor characterizes as the productivity of thought.

The classical argument that mental states are complex adverts tothe productivity of the attitudes The LOT story is, of course, a

paradigm of this sort of explanation, since it takes believing toinvolve a relation to a syntactically structured object for which acompositional semantics is assumed. (Fodor J. 1987.Psychosemantics. MIT: 147-8)


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Logical vs. Grammatical Form

Arnauld & Nicole (in PortRoyal Logic1662: 160)highlight the difference between deep (logical) structureand surface (grammatical) structure.

In:

(1) Now few pastors at the present time areready to give their life for their flocks

the grammatical (surface) structure is affirmative, whileits underlying structure (LF) is negative.


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(1) contains the implicit negative sentence (it containsthis negation in its meaning):

(1a) Several pastors at the present time are not ready togive their lives for their flocks

The same with:

(2) Come see me

whose deep structure is:

(2a) I order/beg you to come see me


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According to the Port Royal grammarians there is atransformation enabling to go from (1a/2a) (deepstructure) to (1/2) (surface structure).

We have hidden underlying structure and a grammaticaltransformations operating between the deep structure(LF) and the surface (or grammatical) structure.

E.g.: the surface structure Only the friends of God arehappy is a transformation of the deep structure Thefriends of God are happy andall other who are notfriend of God are not happy.


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Understanding

To understand a sentence one must grasp the sense, i.e.the meaning (natural order) the speaker has in mind.

One grasps it in reconstructing its meaning, i.e. incoming to entertain its underlying structure (LF) andthe meanings of the single words.

The fundamental principles at work are reorderingandellipsiswhich enable the hearer to recover in her mindthe meaning the speaker has in her.


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Linguistic explanation and

description

Grammaire Gnrale(Port Royal)

Cartesian linguistics did not confine to a meredescription of a language and its grammar.

It aimed to capture the universal (mental) structureunderlying languages.


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Port Royal grammar, like modern (Chomskys inspired)linguistics can be viewed as a branch of psychology orcognitive sciences.

The general grammar is a kind of universal grammar.

As such, it differs from the special grammar which islanguage specific. It differs from the grammar of

English, Chinese, etc.


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Linguistics/General Grammar as a Science

General Grammar is the rational science of the immutableand general principle of spoken and written language, whatever

language this may be General Grammar is a science, becauseits object is rational speculation on the immutable and generalprinciple of language The science of grammar is anterior to alllanguages in so far as its objects presuppose only the possibilityof languages and are the same as those which guide human

reason in its intellectual operations because they are eternallytrue (Bauz 1767).


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Shortcomings of Cartesian

Linguistics (1600-1700)

The underlying assumption

UG (the abstract structure underlying a naturallanguage sentence) is a kind of sentence itself.

It is generally assumed that deep structure consists of

actual sentences in a simpler or more naturalorganization.


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The underlying assumption is gratuitous and can bedismissed.

It rests on the Cartesian idea that the general principles

underlying and determining our thoughts andperceptions must be accessibletointrospectionandcan be brought to consciousness with care andattention.

If we assume that UG is unconsciouswe dont have toassume that the general principle are sentence-likeentities.


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Language acquisition

Universal Conditions

They are not learned and must exist for languageknowledge to be explained.

They are the pre-requisite leading to knowledge:

principles or notions implanted in the mind a direct gift ofNature, a percept of natural instinct [they] remain latent whentheir corresponding objects are not present, and even disappearand give no sign of their existence (Herder 1624).


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This contrasts with the empiricist view that

our mind is a clean sheet, as though we obtained our capacity for

dealing with objects from objects themselves (Herder 1624).

The mind is not a tabularasa.


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Nativism/Innatism

The universal principles are innate and implicit.

Yet, we may require external stimulus to activate themand make them available to introspection.

This is one of the main principles underlying thepsychology of Cartesian linguistics and rationalism ingeneral (see e.g. Leibniz).

[I]t is true that it is purely arbitrary to connect a certain idea toone particular sound rather than another. But ideasat leastthose that are clear and distinctare not at all arbitrary thingsdepending on our fancy. (Arnauld & Nicole 1662: 28)


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Platos Problem

Nativism provides a solution to Platos problem (cf.PlatosMeno and Theaetetus).

For it provides a science of language that shows how aninternal biological mechanism can, with little input fromthe external environment (poverty of the stimuli

argument) develop (almost automatically) in eachindividual the rich competence known as knowing alanguage.


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Solving Platos problem for language acquisition

It involves saying both whatis known when one knows

a language and howone comes to know it.

We should do this with a science of the mind, not

philosophical speculations.


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Chomsky vs. Plato

Plato appeals to myth, invoking the pre-existence of the

boys soul with other souls in the world of Forms(ideas) and in going trough a process of reminiscence.

Chomsky solves it in proposing a naturalistic theory of

a biological system that makes language acquisitionvirtually automatic.


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General Presuppositions of Cartesian

Linguistics

The principle of language and natural logic are knownunconsciously and they are in large part a preconditionfor language acquisition rather than a matter of

institution or training.

Linguistics as a science trying to bring to light theseunderlying principles becomes a branch of psychology.

Thus this art [logic or art of thinking] does not consist in findingthe mean to perform these operations, since nature alonefurnished them in giving us reason, but in reflecting on whatnature makes us do. (Arnauld & Nicole 1662: 23)


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The Poverty of the Stimulus

Argument

General language-acquisition schema

Input LAD Output(primary (Grammar consisting of

linguistic data) principles, parameters

and lexicon)


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Language acquisition is a matter of growth andmaturation of relatively fixed principles underappropriate external conditions and training.

Cf. growth and maturation of bones: the structure ofthe bones is genetically programmed, yet it needsexercise to develop.


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Creolization

One learns a language because one is programmed tolearn a language, i.e. because of ones initial state, UG.

The process of creolization underlies what happenswhen a child learns her mother tongue in normalsituations.

The same kind of linguistic genius is involved every time a childlearns his or her mother tongue. ... let us do away with thefolklore that parents teach their children language. (S. Pinker.1994. The Language Instinct: 39)


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The crux of the argument is that complex language is universal

because children actually reinvent it, generation aftergenerationnot because they are taught, not because they aregenerally smart, not because it is useful to them, but because theyjust cant help it. (Pinker 1994: 32)

The argument of innate knowledge

It rests on the actualway children acquire their mothertongue.

It is an empirical hypothesis which posits that our brainis genetically programmed to invent a language.


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Chomsky

Large-scale sensory deficit seems to have limited effect onlanguage acquisition. Blind children acquire language as thesighted do, even color terms and words for visual experience likesee and look.There are people who have achieved close

to normal linguistic competence with no sensory inputbeyond that can be gained by placing ones hand onanother persons face and throat.The analytic mechanismof the language faculty seem to be triggered in much thesame way whether the input is auditory, visual, even

tactual, and seem to be localized in the same brain areas,somewhat surprisingly.


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These examples ofimpoverished input indicate the richnessof innate endowmentthough normal language acquisition is

remarkable enough, as even lexical access shows, not onlybecause of its rapidity and the intricacy of result. Thus veryyoung children can determine the meaning of a nonsense wordfrom syntactic information in a sentence far more complex thatthey can produce.

A plausible assumption today is that theprinciples oflanguage are fixed and innate, and that variations is restrictedin the manner indicated. Each language, then, is (virtually)determined by a choice of values for lexical parameters: with thearray of choices, we should be able to deduce Hungarian; withanother, Yoruba. The conditions of language acquisition

make it plain that the process must be largely inner-directed,as in other aspects of growth, which means that alllanguages must be close to identical, largely fixed by initialstate. (Chomsky 2000.New Horizons : 121-2)


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The paradox of language acquisition

[A]n entire community of highly trained professionals, bringingto bear years of conscious attention and sharing of information,

has been unable to duplicate the feat that every normal childaccomplishes by the age of ten or so, unconsciously andunaided. (Jackendoff 1994: 26)


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Language Perception and Understanding

Perception of speech rests on innate discriminatorycapacities.

There is a fundamental difference between theperception of speech and the perception ofunarticulated sounds.

Speech perception, unlike visual perception forinstance, requires the activation of the generative rulesplaying the role in the production of speech.


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Both the perceptual mechanism and the mechanism ofspeech production make use of the same underlyingsystem of generative rules.

It is because these underlying systems are the sameamong us that communication can occur.

It is because of this uniformity of human nature that we

talk the way we do and succeed in understanding eachothers (cf. Humboldt 1836).


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Every young child (raised in an English speakingcommunity) would know that in English blug isphonetically possible while bkr is not. And they knowit without being told.

Science ofIntelligent Behaviour

It may be within the boundary of some other cognitive

beings (Martians, God) but it transcends humancapacities.


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Reasons vs. causes

Wittgenstein (Blue Book) says that in explaining action interms of their coherence and appropriateness with

respect to human aims etc. we give reasons, not givecauses.

When talking about creative linguistic actions Chomsky

and Descartes seem to accept Wittgensteins view inassuming that we are giving reasons, not causes.


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Descartes dualism

It was a scientific hypothesis dictated by the science ofhis time (mechanism).

Descartes did not have at his disposal the biologicalscience of our time, he did not know of genetictransmission and could not possibly imagine howhuman cognition can rest to such an extent on abiological base of concept and structure acquisition.

Descartes could not imagine that these biologicalmechanisms need only a little input to produce richconceptual material.


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At present little is known on how UG is embodied inthe brain.

UG is considered as a computational system in the

head, but we do not know about the specific operationsof the brain itself and what leads to the development ofthese computational systems.


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A plausible view is that language is a distinct and

specific part of the human mind and not a manifestationof a more general capacity or ability (of generalintelligence).

Linguistic capacity rests on a specific module.

It is not the sub-product of a general cognitive capacity.


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Evidence

People can lose their intelligence and yet they do notloose their language: substantial retarded children (e.g.

Williams syndrome) manifest a good grammatical andlinguistic competence.

On the other hand, highly intelligent people may lacklinguistic capacity (e.g. aphasia).

The fact that two kinds of abilities can dissociate quantitativelyand along multiple dimensions shows that they are notmanifestations of a single underlying ability. (Pinker 2003: 23)

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7 Universal Grammar