Week 8 Universal Grammar

Question 1

Chomsky’s Epiphenomenalism about

Language

Answer 1

Language vs. Grammar
“Grammar” is a precise definite term while “language” is a vague and derivative term which we could well dispense of, without much loss.
The grammar in someone’s mind/brain is real while language is not real
i-language vs. E-language

Question 2

The aim of linguistics can be summarized by four questions.

Answer 2

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 the material basis?

Question 3

Port Royal Grammar (1660)

Answer 3

It is heavily influenced by Descartes.
It aims to propose the general form of any possible grammar.
In so doing it elaborates the universal structure underlying the “natural manner in which we express our thoughts”.

Question 4

The inner/outer aspect of language

Answer 4

According to Port Royal grammarians we must distinguish between language having an inner and an outer aspect.
Hence we distinguish between a sentence qua expression of a thought and the physical shape of a sentence (i.e. an utterance).
To show the structure of the mind the grammar should reflect properties of all minds, it should be universal.

Question 5

Mental Grammar

Answer 5

The deep structure is often only implicit and does not get expressed. It is only in the mind.

The same deep structure can be realized differently in different languages (e.g.: “Video canem currentum” and “Je vois un chien qui court”).

The rules of this grammar are not “represented” explicitly in the language user: they are simply there. They are part of the cognitive structure. Yet they must be “learned” (i.e., it must be triggered by experience), Cf poverty of the stimulus argument

Question 6

Transformation Rules

Answer 6

There are transformation rules operating from deep to surface structure. It is the linguist’s job to figure out these rules.

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

1. A base system generating deep structure.
2. A transformational system mapping these deep structures onto a surface structure.

Question 7

Universal Grammar

Answer 7

UG corresponds to the deep structure. Since it is the expression of thought, it is common to all languages.

It is thus universal. Hence, Universal Grammar, UG.

The transformation rules converting the deep structure into surface structure may differ from language to language. (reason there are dialects in languages)

Different outputs (i.e., the manifestations of different languages) can correspond to the same inner structure.

Question 8

Port Royal

Answer 8

Within the Cartesian tradition exemplified by the grammarians of Port Royal, the deep structure is what constitutes the meaning in the mind.

It can be transmitted in different ways (e.g.: active/passive sentences in the same language, different languages expressing the same meaning/semantic content).

E.g.: different languages or different surface structures transmit the same meaning which is a mental entity.

Question 9

UG in modern times

Answer 9

means the initial state of a language learner.
It is the “innate” (genetically transmitted) aspect of grammatical rules; the language instinct (Pinker).

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

UG qua initial state is biologically determined.
As such, it does not belong to a specific language.

Question 10

Innate

Answer 10

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

It rather means that it automatically appears during the development, regardless on whether it is present at birth or not. It ‘develops’ in the same way as humans develop other biological features. Expressions from our genotype

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

Question 11

Deep vs. Surface Structure, and Creativity

Answer 11

The deep/surface structure distinction is what helps explaining linguistic creativity.

The Port Royal’s distinction between deep and surface structure implicitly contains recursive devices allowing for infinite uses of the finite means that it disposes.

The deep structure is what gets represented in the mind when a sentence is produced/heard.

Question 12

Linguistic creativity and the argument for mental grammar

Answer 12

The expressive variety of language use implies that the brain of a linguistically competent user contains a set of unconscious grammatical principles.

(cf. Jackendoff R. 1994. Patterns in the Mind. Basic Books Harper Collins, New York: 6).

Question 13

LOT

Answer 13

In adopting the language of thought hypothesis, LOT (or Mentalese) the argument for mental grammar can be stated along the compositional principle for thoughts, or what Fodor characterizes as the productivity of thought

Question 14

Logical vs. Grammatical Form

Answer 14

Arnauld & Nicole (in Port Royal Logic 1662: 160) highlight the difference between deep (logical) structure and surface (grammatical) structure.
In:

(1) Now few pastors at the present time are  ready to give their life for their flocks
the grammatical (surface) structure is affirmative, while its underlying structure (LF) is negative.

(1) contains the implicit negative sentence (“it contains this negation in its meaning”):

(1a) Several pastors at the present time are not ready to give 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 (i.e., an imperative)

E.g.: the surface structure “Only the friends of God are happy” is a transformation of the deep structure “The friends of God are happy” and “all others who are not friends of God are not happy”.

Question 15

Understanding

Answer 15

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

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

The fundamental principles at work are reordering and ellipsis which enable the hearer to recover in her mind the meaning the speaker has in her.

Question 16

Grammaire Générale (Port Royal)

Answer 16

Cartesian linguistics did not confine to a mere description of a language and its grammar.
It aimed to capture the universal (mental) structure underlying languages.

Port Royal grammar, like modern (Chomsky is an inspired) linguistics can be viewed as a branch of psychology or cognitive sciences.

The general grammar is a kind of universal grammar.

As such, it differs from the special grammar which is language specific. It differs from the grammar of English, Chinese, etc. (E-Language)

Question 17

Linguistics/General Grammar as a Science

Answer 17

General Grammar is … the rational science of the immutable and general principle of spoken and written language, whatever language this may be … General Grammar is a science, because its object is rational speculation on the immutable and general principle of language … The science of grammar is anterior to all languages in so far as its objects presuppose only the possibility of languages and are the same as those which guide human reason in its intellectual operations … because they are eternally true (Bauzé 1767).

Question 18

Shortcomings of Cartesian
Linguistics (1600-1700)
The underlying assumption

Answer 18

UG (the abstract structure underlying a natural language sentence) is a kind of sentence itself.
It is generally assumed that deep structure consists of actual sentences in a simpler or more natural organization.

The underlying assumption is gratuitous and can be dismissed.

It rests on the Cartesian idea that the general principles underlying and determining our thoughts and perceptions must be accessible to introspection and can be brought to consciousness with care and attention.

If we assume that UG is unconscious we don’t have to assume that the general principle are sentence-like entities.

Question 19

Nativism/Innatism

Answer 19

The universal principles are innate and implicit.
Yet, we may require external stimulus to activate them and make them available to introspection.

This is one of the main principles underlying the psychology of Cartesian linguistics and rationalism in general (see e.g. Leibniz’s Hercules’s statue example).

It is true that it is purely arbitrary to connect a certain idea to one particular sound rather than another. But ideas—at least those that are clear and distinct—are not at all arbitrary things depending on our fancy. (Arnauld & Nicole 1662: 28)

Question 20

Plato’s Problem

Answer 20

Nativism provides a solution to Plato’s problem (cf. Plato’s Meno and Theaetetus).

For it provides a science of language that shows how an internal biological mechanism can, with little input from the external environment (poverty of the stimuli argument) develop (almost automatically) in each individual the rich competence known as “knowing a language”.

Chomsky employs a naturalistic approach to biologicals mechanisms we have genetic disposition

Question 21

Solving Plato’s problem for language

acquisition.

Answer 21

It involves saying both what is known
when one knows a language and how one
comes to know it.

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

Question 22

Chomsky vs. Plato

Answer 22

Plato appeals to myth, invoking the pre-
existence of the boy’s soul with other
souls in the world of Forms (ideas) and in
going through a process of reminiscence.

Chomsky solves it in proposing a
naturalistic theory of a biological system
that makes language acquisition virtually
automatic.

Question 23

General Presuppositions of

Cartesian Linguistics

Answer 23

The principle of language and natural logic are known unconsciously and they are in large part a precondition for language acquisition rather than a matter of instruction or training.

Linguistics as a science tries to bring to light these underlying principles and so becomes a branch of psychology.

Question 24

The Poverty of the Stimulus

Argument

Answer 24

General language-acquisition schema

Input LAD Output
(primary (Grammar consisting of
linguistic data) principles, parameters and lexicon)

Question 25

Creolization

Answer 25

One learns a language because one is programmed to learn a language, i.e. because of one’s initial state, UG.

The process of creolization underlies what happens when a child learns her mother tongue in normal situations.

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

Question 26

The argument of innate knowledge

Answer 26

It rests on the actual way children acquire their mother tongue.

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

Question 27

Chomsky

quote for language

Answer 27

Large-scale sensory deficit seems to have limited
effect on language acquisition. Blind children
acquire language as the sighted do, even color
terms and words for visual experience like “see”
and “look.” There are people who have
achieved close to normal linguistic
competence with no sensory input beyond
that which can be gained by placing one’s
hand on another person’s face and throat.
The analytic mechanism of the language
faculty seems to be triggered in much the
same way whether the input is auditory,
visual, even tacticle, and seems to be
localized in the same brain areas, somewhat
surprisingly.

These examples of impoverished input indicate the richness of innate endowment — though normal language acquisition is remarkable enough, as even lexical access shows, not only because of its rapidity and the intricacy of result. Thus very young children can determine the meaning of a nonsense word from syntactic information in a sentence far more complex that they can produce.
A plausible assumption today is that the principles of language are fixed and innate, and that variations are restricted in the manner indicated. Each language, then, is (virtually) determined by a choice of values for lexical parameters: with the array of choices, we should be able to deduce Hungarian; with another, 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 all languages must be close to identical, largely fixed by initial state. (Chomsky 2000. New Horizons … : 121-2)

Question 28

The paradox of language acquisition

Answer 28

[A]n entire community of highly trained
professionals, bringing to bear years of conscious attention and sharing of information, has been unable to duplicate the feat that every normal child accomplishes by the age of ten or so, unconsciously and unaided. (Jackendoff 1994: 26)

Question 29

Reasons vs. causes

Answer 29

Wittgenstein (Blue Book) says that in explaining action in terms of their coherence and appropriateness with respect to human aims etc. we “give reasons”, not “give causes”.

When talking about creative linguistic actions Chomsky and Descartes seem to accept Wittgenstein’s view in assuming that we are giving reasons, not causes.

Compares animal conditioning to a child learning language, children are not rewarded in the same way when they successfully learn.

Question 30

Descartes’ dualism

Answer 30

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

Descartes did not have at his disposal the biological science of our time, he did not know of genetic transmission and could not possibly imagine how human cognition can rest to such an extent on a biological basis of concept and structure acquisition.

Descartes could not imagine that these biological mechanisms need only a little input to produce rich conceptual material

Question 31

Evidence

Answer 31

People can “lose their intelligence” and yet they do not loose their language: substantial impaired children (e.g. Williams syndrome) manifest a good grammatical and linguistic competence.
On the other hand, highly intelligent people may lack linguistic capacity (e.g. aphasia).

Question 32

Universal Grammar

Answer 32

Chomsky claims that children have a
more extensive innate language
faculty than assumed previously, a
Universal Grammar.

Universal Grammar can be thought 
of as the initial state of knowledge of 
grammar, which can be built on 
through exposure to linguistic data 
to yield any possible human 
language (and only possible human 
languages)

Chomsky (1986):
‘UG is a characterization of these innate,
biologically determined principles, which
constitute one component of the human mind
— the language faculty.’

UG is made up of a number of modules, each
of which is responsible for some aspect of
linguistic competence, where each module is
characterized by a number of principles and
parameters.

Question 33

Principles and parameters

Answer 33

Principles are invariant aspects of language—universal to all

Whereas parameters are aspects that display a finite
range of variation.

For example, it is a principle of the phrase structure
component of grammar that phrases have heads: a verb phrase has a V head, a noun phrase has an N head, etc.

This was subsequently generalized in X-bar Theory such that a phrase XP has a head X.

A phrase can occur with complements, which either
appear before or after the head, depending on the
language.

Question 34

The Pro-drop parameter

Answer 34

A finite set of parameters determine syntactic
variability amongst languages
Binaries/switches of either/or, on/off

Pro-drop

I am going to the store

[Io] Vado al negozio

[I am] going to the store