Principle & Parameter

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Principle, parameter and language acquisition

• Hadi salehi Negar Safi

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(No Transcript)
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movement

• Displacement property the movement of a phrase
  from its original position to a different
  position.
• Movement the relationship between the displaced
  elements and the original position. (It doesn't
  mean actual movement, it is a relationship in
  competence not a process of performance.)
• Transformation the kind of rule that deals with
  displacement phenomena.

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A brief word on the meaning of generative

• Generative means that the description of a
  language given by a linguists grammar is
  rigorous and explicit to determine how sentences
  of the language are in fact characterized by the
  grammar.
• One of the famous traps people fall into, called
  the Generative Gaffe by Botha, is to use the term
  generative as a synonym for productive rather
  than for explicit and formal.
• When we say that a grammar generates a language
  we mean that it describes the language in an
  explicit way.
• Generative grammar Traditional grammar

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An example of a principle locality

• Locality principle movement must be within a
  local part of the sentence from which the moved
  element originates.
• Subject auxiliary inversion
• Subject raising
• Wh_movement
• Reference

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The difference between rule and principle

• Rule is construction specific.
• Principle applies to constructions across the
  board.
• Chomsky says that human grammars are constructed
  of principles and the result of complex
  interaction of a number of general principles are
  specific constructions and the rules for them.

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An example of a parameter head parameter

• Head-first / head-left / head-initial
• In Japan
• Head-last / head-right / head-final
• Nihon ni (Japan in)

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Language Faculty

• is where the knowledge of language is stored in
  the individual mind
• Is common to all human beings
• Is independent of other faculties such as
  mathematics
• has unique properties of its own like locality
  not shared with other faculties
• Is unique to the human species, at least in the
  narrow sense

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States of the language faculty
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behaviorism

• Behavioral psychology was introduced by Skinner
• Skinner rejected explanations for language that
  were inside the organism in favor of explanation
  in terms of outside conditions
• Language is determined by stimuli, responses the
  stimuli and reinforcing stimuli
• Chomsky said that human language is unpredictable
  from the stimulus. The important thing about
  language is that it is stimulus free, not
  stimulus bound.

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Language acquisition device
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Levels of adequacy

• Observational adequacy a grammar which predicts
  all and only the grammatical sentences of a
  language (e.g. all of the grammars we
  previewed). 
• Descriptive adequacy Native speakers have
  intuitions about how sentences are structured.
• Explanatory adequacy explain how such knowledge
  is acquired.
• Learnability adequacy The ability of children to
  learn language in short period of time.

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The poverty of the stimulus argument

• Step A A native speaker of a particular language
  knows a particular aspect of syntax.
• Step B this aspect of syntax could not have been
  acquired from the language input typically
  available to children.
• Step C We conclude that this aspect of syntax
  isnt learnt from outside .
• Step D We deduce that this aspect of syntax is
  built in to the mind .