7 Universal Grammar

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7Universal Grammar
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• Slides on the net at
• http//http-server.carleton.ca/ecorazza/
• http//http-server.carleton.ca/ecorazza/online_co
  urses/Mind_World_and_knowledge/

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Chomskys Epiphenomenalism about Language

• 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 mind/brain is real while
  language is not.

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• The aim of linguistics can be summarized by four
  questions.
• 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?

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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
  possible grammar.
• In so doing it elaborates the universal
  structure underlying the natural manner in which
  we express our thoughts.

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• The inner/outer aspect of language
• 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.

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• Mental Grammar
• The deep structure is often only implicit and
  does not get expressed. It is only represented 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 in
  the language user they are simply there. Yet
  they must be learned. But see poverty of the
  stimulus argument.

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• Transformation Rules
• There are transformation rules operating from
  deep to surface structure. It is the linguists
  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 into surface structure.

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UG

• UG corresponds to the deep structure. Since it is
  the expression of though, 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.
• Different outputs can correspond to the same
  inner structure.

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• Port Royal
• Within the Cartesian tradition exemplified by
  the grammarians of Port Royal, the deep structure
  is what constitutes the meaning (sense) in the
  mind.
• It can be transmitted in different way (e.g.
  active/passive).
• E.g. different languages or different surface
  structures transmit the same meaning/sense which
  is a mental entity.

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• Nowadays UG 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.

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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 a language.
• The aspects of the initial sate one ends up
  using in ones learning periods depends on the
  stimuli/input.
• Languages (inputs) affect the development of the
  initial state and thus the outputs one ends up
  producing (cf. switches metaphor explaining the
  learning of phonetics).

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

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• Deep vs. Surface Structure, and Creativity
• The deep/surface structure distinction is what
  helps explaining linguistic creativity.
• The Port Royals 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 (see
  LF).

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• Linguistic creativity and the argument for mental
  grammar
• 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).

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• LOT
• 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.
• The classical argument that mental states are
  complex adverts to the productivity of the
  attitudes The LOT story is, of course, a
  paradigm of this sort of explanation, since it
  takes believing to involve a relation to a
  syntactically structured object for which a
  compositional semantics is assumed. (Fodor J.
  1987. Psychosemantics. MIT 147-8)

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• Logical vs. Grammatical Form
• 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.

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• (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

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• According to the Port Royal grammarians there is
  a transformation enabling to go from (1a/2a)
  (deep structure) to (1/2) (surface structure).
• We have hidden underlying structure and a
  grammatical transformations operating between the
  deep structure (LF) and the surface (or
  grammatical) structure.
• 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
  other who are not friend 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. 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.

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Linguistic explanation and description

• Grammaire Générale (Port Royal)
• 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.

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• Port Royal grammar, like modern (Chomskys
  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.

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• Linguistics/General Grammar as a Science
• 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).

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Shortcomings of Cartesian Linguistics (1600-1700)

• The underlying assumption
• 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.

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• 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 dont
  have to assume that the general principle are
  sentence-like entities.

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Language acquisition

• Universal Conditions
• They are not learned and must exist for language
  knowledge to be explained.
• They are the pre-requisite leading to knowledge
• principles or notions implanted in the mind a
  direct gift of Nature, a percept of natural
  instinct they remain latent when their
  corresponding objects are not present, and even
  disappear and 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 tabula rasa.

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Nativism/Innatism

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

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• Platos Problem
• Nativism provides a solution to Platos problem
  (cf. Platos 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.

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• Solving Platos problem for language acquisition
• 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.

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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
  acquisition virtually automatic.

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General Presuppositions of Cartesian Linguistics

• 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 institution or training.
• Linguistics as a science trying to bring to
  light these underlying principles becomes a
  branch of psychology.
• Thus this art logic or art of thinking does
  not consist in finding the mean to perform these
  operations, since nature alone furnished them in
  giving us reason, but in reflecting on what
  nature 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 and
  maturation of relatively fixed principles under
  appropriate external conditions and training.
• Cf. growth and maturation of bones the
  structure of the bones is genetically programmed,
  yet it needs exercise to develop.

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• Creolization
• One learns a language because one is programmed
  to learn a language, i.e. because of ones
  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)

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• The crux of the argument is that complex
  language is universal because children actually
  reinvent it, generation after generation not
  because they are taught, not because they are
  generally smart, not because it is useful to
  them, but because they just cant help it.
  (Pinker 1994 32)
• The argument of innate knowledge
• 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.

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• Chomsky
• 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 can be gained
  by placing ones hand on another persons face
  and throat. The analytic mechanism of the
  language faculty seem to be triggered in much the
  same 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 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 is 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)

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• The paradox of language acquisition
• An 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)

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• Language Perception and Understanding
• Perception of speech rests on innate
  discriminatory capacities.
• There is a fundamental difference between the
  perception of speech and the perception of
  unarticulated sounds.
• Speech perception, unlike visual perception for
  instance, requires the activation of the
  generative rules playing the role in the
  production of speech.

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• Both the perceptual mechanism and the mechanism
  of speech production make use of the same
  underlying system of generative rules.
• It is because these underlying systems are the
  same among 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 each others (cf. Humboldt 1836).

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• Every young child (raised in an English speaking
  community) would know that in English blug is
  phonetically possible while bkr is not. And
  they know it without being told.
• Science of Intelligent Behaviour
• It may be within the boundary of some other
  cognitive beings (Martians, God) but it
  transcends human capacities.

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• Reasons vs. causes
• 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
  Wittgensteins view in assuming that we are
  giving reasons, not causes.

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• Descartes dualism
• 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 base of concept and
  structure acquisition.
• Descartes could not imagine that these
  biological mechanisms need only a little input to
  produce rich conceptual material.

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• At present little is known on how UG is embodied
  in the brain.
• UG is considered as a computational system in
  the head, but we do not know about the specific
  operations of the brain itself and what leads to
  the development of these 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
  manifestation of a more general capacity or
  ability (of general intelligence).
• 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 not loose their language substantial
  retarded 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).
• The fact that two kinds of abilities can
  dissociate quantitatively and along multiple
  dimensions shows that they are not manifestations
  of a single underlying ability. (Pinker 2003 23)