Showing papers on "Universal grammar published in 2016"

A Null Theory of Creole Formation Based on Universal Grammar

Abstract: Creole languages are typically the linguistic side effects of the creation of global economies based on the forced migration and labor of enslaved Africans toiling in European colonies in the Americas. Section 1 addresses terminological and methodological preliminaries in Creole studies, including definitions of ‘Creole’ languages that contradict some of the fundamental assumptions in studies of Universal Grammar (UG). Section 2 evaluates Creole-formation hypotheses, including claims about the lesser grammatical complexity of Creoles and about an exceptional ‘Creole typology’ outside the scope of the Comparative Method in historical linguistics. Section 3 offers the sketch of a framework for a Null Theory of Creole Formation (NTC) that excludes sui generis stipulations about Creole formation and Creole languages and that is rooted in UG, as it applies to all languages. Section 4 concludes the paper with open-ended questions on the place of Creole formation within larger patterns of contact-induced language change.

Growing syntax: The development of a DP in North Germanic

Abstract: Grammaticalization as standardly conceived is a change whereby an item develops from a lexical to a grammatical or functional meaning, or from being less to more grammatical. In this article we show that this can only be part of the story; for a full account we need to understand the syntactic structures into which grammaticalizing elements fit and how they too develop. To achieve this end we consider in detail the history of definiteness marking within the noun phrase in North Germanic, and in particular in Faroese. We show how this change requires us to distinguish between projecting and nonprojecting categories, and how a category can emerge over time and only subsequently develop into a head with its own associated functional projection. The necessary structure, rather than being intrinsic to an aprioristic universal grammar, grows over time as part of the grammaticalization process. We suggest that this in turn argues for a parallel correspondence theory of grammar such as the one adopted here, lexical-functional grammar, in which different dimensions of linguistic structure can change at different rates.

An Evaluation of Universal Grammar and the Phonological Mind.

Abstract: This paper argues against the hypothesis of a "phonological mind" advanced by Berent. It establishes that there is no evidence that phonology is innate and that, in fact, the simplest hypothesis seems to be that phonology is learned like other human abilities. Moreover, the paper fleshes out the original claim of Philip Lieberman that Universal Grammar predicts that not everyone should be able to learn every language, i.e., the opposite of what UG is normally thought to predict. The paper also underscores the problem that the absence of recursion in Piraha represents for Universal Grammar proposals.

Language in a New Key

Abstract: The article reports that 21st century cognitive scientists and linguists are presenting evidence that counters the mid-20th century universal grammar theory of Noam Chomsky, which states that people's brains are hardwired to learn grammar. Topics discussed include the flaws in Chomsky's linguistic theories when applied to language learning and the emergence of the alternative to Chomsky's theory called usage-based linguistics which debunks the claim that grammatical structure is innate.

Subtle Implicit Language Facts Emerge from the Functions of Constructions.

Abstract: Much has been written about the unlikelihood of innate, syntax-specific, universal knowledge of language (Universal Grammar) on the grounds that it is biologically implausible, unresponsive to cross-linguistic facts, theoretically inelegant, and implausible and unnecessary from the perspective of language acquisition. While relevant, much of this discussion fails to address the sorts of facts that generative linguists often take as evidence in favor of the Universal Grammar Hypothesis: subtle, intricate, knowledge about language that speakers implicitly know without being taught. This paper revisits a few often-cited such cases and argues that, although the facts are sometimes even more complex and subtle than is generally appreciated, appeals to Universal Grammar fail to explain the phenomena. Instead, such facts are strongly motivated by the functions of the constructions involved. The following specific cases are discussed: a) the distribution and interpretation of anaphoric one, b) constraints on long-distance dependencies, c) subject-auxiliary inversion, and d) cross-linguistic linking generalizations between semantics and syntax.

She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks

Abstract: M. Nourbese Philip, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. foreword by Evie Shockley. Middletown, Ct: Wesleyan University press, 2015. 102pp. $15.95Thanks in no small part to the critical acclaim garnered by Zong! (2008), M. NourbeSe Philip's first US book of poetry, some of the author's early writing has now appeared in this new volume from Wesleyan. Originally published in Cuba in 1988 and in the UK in 1993, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks is finally available in the US. For those of us with access to NourbeSe Philip's sound recordings on PennSound, and to her individual works published in various journals, this collection represents an important addition to our reading and understanding of one of the most innovative poets writing today from global perspectives. (The Caribbean, the UK, and Canada are just three of her vantage points.)Like NourbeSe Philip's overlapping global perspectives, her book as a whole has the structure of a Venn diagram. Insofar as the title is an eponym of the last poem in the book, both title and poem frame the collection, giving it a circular shape from beginning to end. The title itself can be read as two titles, simultaneously detached and linked by a comma, a caesura that encapsulates the silent break between the two predicates. Moreover, as in Zong!, NourbeSe Philip back-ends this book with an autobiographical essay that explains its social, cultural, and linguistic contexts. Not a strategy that I generally like (it was the one thing I thought detracted from the power of Zong!), here it seems appropriate. Since the book is also frontloaded by Evie Shockley's introduction, NourbeSe Philip's afterword amplifies Shockley's efforts to familiarize American audiences with the aesthetics, formal strategies, and cultural modalities informing the author's work. Shockley's introduction partially overlaps NourbeSe Philip's afterword, thanks to the eponymous book title and concluding poem, which suture this entire structure.This Venn diagram structure also describes the relationship between one's "mother" and one's "acquired" languages. These terms, as NourbeSe Philip shows us, must be qualified: the poems in this collection argue that all language is acquired and that all languages, therefore, may be regarded as either one's actual or potential mother tongues. But it's precisely the differences between the actual and the potential that constitute history-here, the history of colonialism. NourbeSe Philip's poems move from excoriating enslavement and theft to valorizing language acquisition. She acknowledges what has been lost (daughters, mothers, and their languages) but also reminds us that what is lost is not destroyed. Most important, these poems insist that what has been imposed (another mother tongue) had already belonged to those on whom it was forced.This past perfect of prior ownership is best expressed and justified in a section of the book entitled "Universal Grammar," but it gets established in the formal and thematic structures of the book overall. Unlike the collective, almost epic, sweep of Zong!, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks focuses on the rippling effects of colonialism and slavery on the African mother-daughter relationship. The sequence of poems can be read as loosely corresponding to a bildungslied, a kind of formation poem. We begin with theft, a daughter snatched from her mother-"Where she, where she, where she / be, where she gone?" This daughter winds up in an "Adoption Bureau," attends a Catholic school ("The Catechist" and "Eucharistic Contradictions") and eventually, while learning her "new" language, not only "recalls" the language she has lost but also learns the "Declensions of Beauty" associated with the new language in a mouth not made (she has "Flying Cheek-Bones") to form these strange sounds: "English / is my mother tongue. / A mother tongue is not / not a foreign lan lan lang / language / l /anguish" ("Discourse on the Logic of Language"). …

Subjects And Universal Grammar An Explanatory Theory

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The Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus

Abstract: This article explores what Noam Chomsky called ‘the argument from poverty of the stimulus’: the argument that our experience far underdetermines our knowledge and hence that our biological endowment is responsible for much of the derived state. It first frames the poverty of the stimulus argument either in terms of the set of sentences allowed by the grammar (its weak generative capacity) or the set of structures generated by the grammar (its strong generative capacity). It then considers the five steps to a poverty argument and goes on to discuss the possibility that children can learn via indirect negative evidence on the basis of Bayesian learning algorithms. It also examines structure dependence, polar interrogatives, and artificial phrase structure and concludes by explaining how Universal Grammar shapes the representation of all languages and enables learners to acquire the complex system of knowledge that undergirds the ability to produce and understand novel sentences.

Point Counterpoint Universal Grammar In The Second Language

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Designing a Competence-Based Syllabus for Turkish Speaking Learners of English in terms of Accessibility to Universal Grammar

Abstract: This study focuses on designing an English grammar syllabus for Turkish speaking English learners, which is based on the assumption that learning English grammar will be simpler and easier for Turkish speaking learners if it is introduced in a way by which they can achieve accessibility to UG. In this study, I analyze almost all traditional grammar modules presented in a reliable ELT reference course book referring to parameters set between Turkish and English languages, try to determine how much of these modules are accessible through first language competence and finally transfer the results into developing a foreign language learning syllabus, accordingly suggesting a hierarchy of learning for Turkish speaking English learners. The traditional grammar modules are initially categorized as to their phrasal structures and then corresponding sample Turkish and English structures are analyzed in terms of parametric variations. Finally, a competence based English grammar syllabus designed as to parametric variations and language particular grammatical properties is suggested. In this study, I aim to provide Turkish speaking learners of English with an easy access to learning English grammar through their Turkish grammatical competence, getting rid of superfluous explanations and following a natural order of derivations in foreign language grammar presentation practices and syllabus design.

The Place of Universal Grammar in the Study of Language and Mind: A Response to Dabrowska (2015)

Abstract: Abstract Generative Linguistics proposes that the human ability to produce and comprehend language is fundamentally underwritten by a uniquely linguistic innate system called Universal Grammar (UG). In her recent paper What is Universal Grammar, and has anyone seen it? Ewa Dabrowska reviews a range of evidence and argues against the idea of UG from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. In the current paper, I take each of Dabrowska’s arguments in turn and attempt to show why they are not well founded, either because of flaws in her argumentation or because of a careful consideration of the available empirical evidence. I also attempt to demonstrate how evidence from the fields Dabrowska reviews actually supports the notion of UG. However, arguments are additionally presented in favor of integrating an understanding of domain-specific UG with an understanding of domain-general cognitive capacities in order to understand the language faculty completely.

L2 Spanish preverbal ‘se’ in analysis and production data

Abstract: This study looks at both the knowledge and use of the Spanish pronoun se mainly with unaccusative predicates in the interlanguage of an adult English speaker learning Spanish as a Second Language (L2) in a native, non-institutional setting. Data recorded from the learner’s production along with other similar data were presented to him as a written acceptability judgment task. A comparison was made with the outcome of the task in order to have a more comprehensive view of his linguistic competence. The results seem to confirm those of previous studies in that the learner overgeneralizes the use of the clitic se. They also suggest that the development of L2 knowledge may involve a process of construction resulting in structures not present either in the native language (L1) or the L2, which show in certain fossilized errors. It is argued that these structures originate in the interaction of Universal Grammar principles and both L1 and L2 influence.

Commentary: "An Evaluation of Universal Grammar and the Phonological Mind"-UG Is Still a Viable Hypothesis.

Abstract: Everett (2016b) criticizes The Phonological Mind thesis (Berent, 2013a, 2013b) on logical, methodological and empirical grounds. Most of Everett’s concerns are directed towards the hypothesis that the phonological grammar is constrained by universal grammatical (UG) principles. Contrary to Everett’s logical challenges, here I show that the UG hypothesis is readily falsifiable, that universality is not inconsistent with innateness (Everett’s arguments to the contrary are rooted in a basic confusion of the UG phenotype and the genotype), and that its empirical evaluation does not require a full evolutionary account of language. A detailed analysis of one case study, the syllable hierarchy, presents a specific demonstration that people have knowledge of putatively universal principles that are unattested in their language and these principles are most likely linguistic in nature. Whether Universal Grammar exists remains unknown, but Everett’s arguments hardly undermine the viability of this hypothesis.

Born in the USA: a comparison of modals and nominal quantifiers in child language

Abstract: One of the challenges confronted by language learners is to master the interpretation of sentences with multiple logical operators (e.g., nominal quantifiers, modals, negation), where different interpretations depend on different scope assignments. Five-year-old children have been found to access some readings of potentially ambiguous sentences much less than adults do (Lidz and Musolino, Lang Acquis 13(2):73–102, 2006; Musolino, Universal Grammar and the acquisition of semantic knowledge, 1998; Musolino and Lidz, Lang Acquis 11(4):277–291, 2003, among many others). Recently, Gualmini et al. (Nat Lang Semant 16:205–237, 2008) have shown that, by careful contextual manipulation, it is possible to evoke some of the putatively unavailable interpretations from young children. Their proposal is quite general, but the focus of their work was on sentences involving nominal quantifiers and negation. The present paper extends this investigation to sentences with modal expressions. The results of our two experimental studies reveal that, in potentially ambiguous sentences with modal expressions, the kinds of contextual manipulations introduced by Gualmini and colleagues do not suffice to explain children’s initial scope interpretations. In response to the recalcitrant data, we propose a new three-stage model of the acquisition of scope relations. Most importantly, at the initial stage, child grammars make available only one interpretation of negative sentences with modal expressions. We call this the Unique Scope Assignment (USA) stage.

An Experimental Study on Island Effects in Korean Relativization

Abstract: One of the most important issues in syntax is whether so-called “islands” are universal or not. This issue is important because the nature of Universal Grammar (UG), including the issue of whether it exists or not, partly depends on the (non-)existence of islands in every language. The goal of this paper is to shed light on this issue by using a quantitative method. Particularly, the paper focuses on the effect of Complex NP Constraint (CNPC) on the acceptability of Korean relative clause constructions (RCCs). The quantitative method used for this purpose is experimentation based on questionnaires. The results of the experiment strongly support the view that sees islands as non-universal constraints and classifies Korean as a pragmatic (or discourse-oriented) language.

The thematic verb movement in initial l3 french acquisition

Abstract: This study examines the acquisition of thematic verbs in relation to adverbs and negation by adult third language French beginners who were advanced L2 English learners of L1 Chinese. Results from a grammaticality judgment test indicate that the L2 Status Factor Hypothesis of Bardel and Falk (2007), which views acquired L2 morphosyntax as the primary factor affecting syntactic development in initial L3 acquisition, provides a partial explanation of the observed behavior in which traces of L1 influence are apparent. We propose that, following Schwartz and Sprouse (1994), previously acquired linguistic knowledge constitutes transfer in early L3 development and that early L3 interlanguage grammars involve the use of alternative resources made available by Universal Grammar (UG) instead.

The Uniqueness of English Noun Phrase In Relation to Word Order Universals

Abstract: The languages used all over the world have their own grammars consisting of certain components, like items, word order, and prosodic patterns. Based on the findings of the typological research conducted by some linguists, like Chomsky (1965), Greenberg (1966), and Hawkins (1983), it is known that the human languages have certain tendencies. After comparing a number of 30languages, Greenberg made three classifications of language in terms of universal word order, they are; (1) the languages of VSO type, (2) languages of SVO type, and (3) languages of SOV type. He found that the three types of classification correlate with the languages in other places in the grammar consistently. In addition, he also made 15 formulations of universal word orders in which three of the mare; (1) Languages with dominant SVO order always have prepositions; (2) on the contrary, the ones with SOY type usually have postpositions; and (3) in the languages with dominant SVO order, the genitive and adjectives follow the noun. This formulation is supported by Hawkins after comparing 336 languages from different families. Based on the above formulation; it is found that English has uniqueness in terms of the phrase order. In this language, the order of NP is AN and GN despite having a relatively fixed order, SVO. This study aims to discuss the forms of English NP and to find out the reason why English has uniqueness in its phrase order based on the formulation made by Greenberg and Hawkins.

Multiple language learning

Abstract: English is no longer seen as an extra qualification and it has become a sine qua non basic skill rather than a foreign language, resulting in the slogan English is not enough not only for second language speakers of English but also for the L1 speakers. Accordingly, in this paper, we review studies on multilingualism and simultaneous or successive learning of multiple languages and describe the languages involved in terms of their qualitative or quantitative properties by referring to accessibility, universal grammar and initial state theories, finally aiming to dissipate the terminological ambiguity in the field. In this context, based on the current theories of Universal Grammar on lexical and grammatical learning and theoretical and applied studies on multilingualism and multilingual individuals, we put forth approaches and strategies suggested for simultaneous or successive learning of multiple languages. The results obtained from the study not only contribute to the terminology but also understanding of the simultaneous and successive learning of multiple languages. Keywords: languages, learning, strategies, multilingualism.

Poverty of stimulus arguments and behaviourism

Abstract: CHOMSKY AND QUINE ON LANGUAGE LEARNINGWhen it comes to the details of how children learn their first language there is a substantive difference between Chomsky and Quine. The primary difference between them centers on the role that they think reinforcement and punishment plays in a child learning his first language. The Quinean picture of a child learning his first language involves the child using his innate babbling instinct as he mouths various different words. Parents and others reinforce and punish these emittings until they shape the child's pattern of verbal behavior into the external shape of that child's social environment. As Quine put it in Word and Object (1960):People growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike (1960, p. 8)Linguistic nativist Chomsky disagrees with this Quinean picture. He thinks that the outward shape of language results not from the child's faltering attempts at speech being corrected by his peers, but from the child using his innate universal grammar to structure the data of experience, which the child contingently encounters.The issue between Chomsky and Quine on this point is a purely empirical one. In the last twenty years much detailed evidence has emerged which can be used to decide between the two theorists. The central idea around which nativism was built has been poverty of stimulus arguments (PSA; Chomsky 1975, Pinker 1994, Boeckx 2006). Chomsky (1975) has argued that children display knowledge of language, and that this knowledge is not provided by the environment, and therefore it must be innate. Typically Chomsky uses the subject-auxiliary inversion rule to illustrate how PSA work (Chomsky, 1971; 1972; 1975; 1986; 1988). In their paper "Empirical Assessment of Stimulus Poverty Arguments", Geoffrey Pullum and Barbara Scholz (2002a) call the subject-auxiliary inversion rule the paradigm case, which nativists use to illustrate poverty of stimulus arguments. They cite eight different occasions that Chomsky uses the example (1965, p. 55-56; 1968, pp. 51-52; 1971, pp. 2933; 1972, pp. 30-33; 1975, pp. 153-154; 1986, pp. 7-8; 1988, pp. 41-47). They also cite other Chomskian thinkers, including linguists such as Lightfoot, (1991, pp. 2-4); Uriagereka, (1998, pp. 9-10); Carstairs-McCarthy, (1999, pp. 4-5); Smith, (1999, pp. 53-54); Lasnik, (2000, pp. 6-9) as well as psychologists such as Crain, (1991, p. 602); Marcus, (1993, p. 80); Pinker, (1994, pp. 40-42; 233-234) who here endorsed the claim. They argue that this supposed instance of a PSA is being passed around and repeated over and over again. In this paper, I examine whether the PSA argument (as applied to syntactic knowledge) actually works. I will discuss how, if sound, the PSA affects Quine's view of language learning. It will be shown how Quine's theories on language acquisition will be affected if the PSA turns out to be false.Pullum and Scholz (2002a) show that poverty of stimulus arguments are used in a variety of not always consistent ways in the literature. Having surveyed some of the literature on the PSA, they isolate what they believe to be the strongest version of the argument. The argument they construct is as follows:(A) Human infants learn their first languages either by data-driven learning or by innately-primed learning.(B) If human infants acquire their first languages via data-driven learning, then they can never learn anything for which they lack crucial evidence.(C) But infants do in fact learn things for which they lack crucial evidence(D) Thus human infants do not learn their first languages by means of datadriven learning.(E) Conclusion: Humans learn their first languages by means of innately primed learning.This gloss on the PSA is one that Chomsky would accept as an appropriate schematization of the PSA, though Chomsky believes that there is more evidence to support a belief in innate domain-specific knowledge than the PSA. …

Comparison of the RC Model and the WR Model Based on CHILDES

Abstract: The acquisition of the verb past tense has often been used to help to figure out children’s real process of language acquisition. This paper aims to make a comparison between Charles Yang’s Rules and Competition Model (the RC model) and Steven Pinker’s Words and Rules Model (the WR model) based on real language acquisition data selected from CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System). Chomsky’s Universal grammar is the foundation of both models. The comparison has been done from three aspects: the role of input frequency, overregularization errors, and the origin of irregular past tense. The finding of the study indicates that the RC model can well explain the role of input frequency in verb classes and the similarity between verb and the past tense while the WR model’s explanation is vague in this point. Overregularization errors are more like an inevitable learning phenomenon that sheds light on phonological rules in the RC model instead of simple memory failures in the WR model. The WR model well explains the origin of irregular past tense while the RC model does not mention this point.

The Syntax and Semantics of Yoruba Nominal Expressions

Abstract: The Landmarks Series is a research and publications outfit funded by the Landmarks Research Foundation to publish recent outstanding doctoral dissertations on any aspect of Nigerian linguistics, languages, literatures and cultures. This study is a departer from most previous work on Yor?b? Grammar in the sense that rather than being purely a descriptive grammar; it attempts to provide a theoretical analysis of the internal and external syntax of Yor?b? nominal expressions using the Chomskyan Principles and Parameters approach to syntax. This Generative theory attempts to characterize the grammar of all natural languages in terms of a set of universal principles that all languages share, and a set of parameters along which languages may vary. The book emphasizes the empirical motivation behind major theoretical proposals in that framework, and shows how views on the nature of universal grammar and cross-linguistic variation have developed over the years as a consequence of a massive increase in cross-linguistic syntactic research.

Linguistics—The Great Absentee

Abstract: Throughout the history of emotion research psychologists have been deeply uncomfortable with the idea that language may have a significant influence on emotion processing. The discomfort came largely from the long antagonism toward the anthropological principle of linguistic relativity. However, the conspicuous lack of competent and meaningful linguistic expertise in psycholinguistic research on emotions was also partially the result of the Chomskyan Revolution in mainstream linguistics, which turned it away from applied approaches. Thus psychologists felt no need to delve into language of emotions because for them emotions were primarily nonverbal phenomena and linguists were largely focused on arguments over finer points of Universal Grammar. Still, a few fields in applied linguistics continued to grow, develop new theories and tools which have a wide application in all subjects pertaining especially to word meanings, their use and functional distributions. These fields are semiotics, semantics, lexicography, corpus linguistics, and pragmatics. Although none of these disciplines are dedicated to investigating the language of emotions, they can be applied to such enterprise. This chapter focuses on the way these disciplines of applied linguistics can complement emotion research and allow for a rigorous and systematic research of the language of emotions.