This lecture discusses the unconscious and innate nature of mental grammar. It argues that children acquire language in ways that cannot be explained by parental instruction alone, as mental grammar operates below the level of consciousness. Examples are provided showing that children resist conscious correction of their speech and come to understand complex rules of their language that are never directly taught. The lecture concludes that humans must possess an innate, genetically determined capacity for language acquisition.
This lecture discusses the unconscious and innate nature of mental grammar. It argues that children acquire language in ways that cannot be explained by parental instruction alone, as mental grammar operates below the level of consciousness. Examples are provided showing that children resist conscious correction of their speech and come to understand complex rules of their language that are never directly taught. The lecture concludes that humans must possess an innate, genetically determined capacity for language acquisition.
This lecture discusses the unconscious and innate nature of mental grammar. It argues that children acquire language in ways that cannot be explained by parental instruction alone, as mental grammar operates below the level of consciousness. Examples are provided showing that children resist conscious correction of their speech and come to understand complex rules of their language that are never directly taught. The lecture concludes that humans must possess an innate, genetically determined capacity for language acquisition.
This lecture discusses the unconscious and innate nature of mental grammar. It argues that children acquire language in ways that cannot be explained by parental instruction alone, as mental grammar operates below the level of consciousness. Examples are provided showing that children resist conscious correction of their speech and come to understand complex rules of their language that are never directly taught. The lecture concludes that humans must possess an innate, genetically determined capacity for language acquisition.
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Introduction to Cognitive
Linguistics
LECTURE 4 Last time…
The fundamental arguments
The argument for mental grammar Patterns + elements of the lexicon Expressive variety (finite means – infinite combinations) Prescriptive grammar vs. mental grammar Unconscious principles Mental grammar
This capacity to combine words
into acceptable patterns and create a limitless number of novel sentences is usually called mental grammar. Watch it: it is not the ‘socially prescribed’ grammar that distinguishes one dialect from another. Watch it 2: it is largely governed by unconscious processes. The tip of the iceberg metaphor Accessability of Mental Grammar and the Unconscious Mind
Freud compared our mind to an iceberg, he claimed
that parts of the mind are not accessible and that the mind could be visualized as an iceberg. The unconsciousness of Mental Grammar is even more radical than Freud’s notion: mental grammar is not available to consciousness under any conditions. The difference between Freud and Mental Grammar
Freud believes that unconscious beliefs can
be made conscious by way of psychoanalysis. However, this is NOT possible with the rules of language as they are simply not available for introspection. If you don’t believe this, try to devise a technique through which a native speaker would eventually become ‘aware’ of what’s going on in his or her mind while producing a short sentence… The Argument for Innate Knowledge
The way children learn to talk implies
that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language How do children do it? Many people simply assume that the parents teach them. Obviously, parents often teach their kids words… and not much more than that. … Not even all words… “This is ANY, Amy! Say, HOWEVER, little girl!” Even for those words that they do learn…
How are they able to do it?
Is it really easy to understand
that each chair of this world belongs to the category/concept of “CHAIR”?
I don’t think so. It is a
tremendously complex task! And one in which there are many errors, initially. How about these..? Or these..? The Argument for Innate Knowledge
The idea that parents teach their children language
is so omnipresent, that the language is called native or mother tongue. But does it actually come from mothers? No.
It comes from the environment.
Regardless of the child’s nationality, race, color, or creed, the language it is immersed into in its early life will become its native language. This raises a serious question: if this is so, then there must be something common to all of us, a human nature which allows us to master just about any language we are exposed to early on, regardless of our origin. A linguistic democracy? Perhaps. The truth is: there are no good or bad languages, and every one of us could have acquired any of them as our mother tongue. Only if we’d been given a chance… Problems with the ‘parental guidance’ idea:
If parents teach children their
language, 1. We learn the rule of language: e.g. cat -> cats,
wug -> wugs
break -> breaked
(overregularisation)
2. ‘Poverty of the Stimulus’ (Chomsky)
What a child is exposed to is usually less than perfect language. To say the least. Three Main Approaches to Language Acquisition
Empiricism: behaviorism (Watson, Skinner)
neobehaviorism, ‘connectionism’: (Rumelhart et al. 1986) Nativism: ”Language Acquisition Device” (LAD), ”Universal Grammar” (UG) (Chomsky), Pinker (1994) The Language Instinct Constructivism: Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner Tomasello (2003) Constructing a Language, moving by analogy from item-based phrases and word islands to richer constructions Empiricism:
Language is learned entirely from experience. The
mind of the child is a ‘tabula rasa’ (Locke). Learning through general-purpose mechanisms:
Language (and other characteristics of the human
mind) is innate (Descartes)
LAD, UG (Chomsky) ”Language of Thought” (Fodor) Constructivism:
language is acquired through a developmental
process that leads to higher complexity, emerging through interaction with the (social) environment, influenced by but not determined by the genes (Kant)
actually seem to learn. It’s not clear what sorts of stimuli could lead us to our adult language knowledge. “A striking property of language acquisition is that children attain knowledge which, quite literally, infinitely surpasses their actual experience.” The Language Organ, Anderson and Lightfoot 2002:18 Children Do Learn Words, but…
As a result of parental instruction children do learn words,
but not relevant grammatical patterns as well. David McNeill:
Child: Nobody don’t like me.
Mother: No, say ‘nobody likes me’ Child: Nobody don’t like me. (Eight repetitions of this dialogue follow…) Mother: No, listen carefully! Say “nobody likes me” Oh! Nobody don’t likes me. Kids Resist Instruction
Braime (1971) Want other one spoon, daddy. You mean, you want the other spoon. Yes, I want other one spoon, please Daddy. Can you say ‘the other spoon’? Other…one…spoon Say ‘other’ Other ‘Spoon’ Spoon ‘Other spoon’ Other…spoon. Now give me other one spoon?
In other words, children are impervious to correction and
conscious instruction. Some Prescriptive Rules are Taught…
… and they hardly work.
Such as the rule that a preposition must never end a sentence (or something you must never end a sentence with!) This rule has been mocked by no less a persona than Winston Churchill: “This is a rule up with which we should not put.”
(Winston Churchill) (In Serbian: would you ever say “Da ju je on bio video na vreme, on nikada ne bi bio zakasnio.”) Some Simple Facts about Language
Only humans have a form of communication which
we call Language There are approximately 6,000 languages in the world. Any normal child growing up (say, from prenatal to infancy to 5 y.o.) in any language environment will master the local language. More Simple Facts
Many exceptional children, i.e. blind, deaf,
cognitively deficient, neurologically impaired, etc. may exhibit essentially normal language development (The opposite is also possible: perfectly intelligent children and adults may suffer from such conditions that they end up with insurmountable language problems) Mastery of Language is achieved without explicit instruction Ever tried to teach an adult beginner some English?
“Normal” adults have great
difficulty achieving competence, let alone fluency, in a second Language, despite:
Greater cognitive sophistication than
children Explicit instruction in classrooms
This means that children have
something that adults lack! And we will discuss this later on in our course! The “authorities” teach unnecessary things such as the use of prepositions
However, there are some very complex rules which
are never taught:
A. Joan appeared to Moira to like herself.
B. Joan appeared to Moira to like her. C. Joan appealed to Moira to like herself. D. Joan appealed to Moira to like her. You “Know” Unconsciously that
Each of these sentences has a different combination of
who is to like whom. How do we get to know which interpretation is correct, without any prior thinking? It appears that we possess some special, unconscious, knowledge about ordinary and reflexive pronouns, and about the two verbs such as ‘appear’ and ‘appeal’. Yet, no one would ever bother to teach native speakers something like this in an English language course. So, this particular piece of their knowledge of language does not come from conscious instruction. Jackendoff emphasizes that
No one is ever taught about contrasts between these
issues (pronouns and verbs such as ordinary vs. reflexive, or ‘appear’ and ‘appeal’). Regardless, this aspect of English grammar appears to be deeply ingrained, much more so than the already played out proscription about not placing prepositions at the end of a sentence. Some other examples may include what you might have seen in a generative syntax course: John is eager to please. vs John is easy to please. Another Striking Example of Deeply Ingrained Knowledge
How many times do I have to tell you that the book
is not by Thomson, but by Martin-bloody-net! The guy who screwed us was not the retailer but the manu-fuckin-facturer, remember! What is interesting in such examples is that we have very clear intuitions how to use the infixes, without ever being taught on the topic. This phenomenon in English is known as expletive infixation and is very interesting from a purely linguistic perspective. More Infixes
Native speakers know (“feel”) that the first two are
acceptable, but the second two are not. Why? What might be the underlying rule?
It is ABSOLUTELY clear that none of us was ever taught
the pattern where it is possible to insert an expletive infix into English words.
… and yet, we know it…
The Principle is
That the infix sounds right only when it immediately
precedes the syllable of the word with the main stress. Thus we can conclude that much that we know about the grammatical patterns of English has not been taught. Children simply have to figure out the patterns of language. In other words they have to construct their own mental grammar out of any input they get (and this input is usually very impoverished, remember. So their task is twice that astonishing). The Argument for Innate Knowledge
The way children learn to talk implies that the
human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language What we’ve seen so far suggests that a child is able to figure out something that thousands of linguists throughout the world have been trying for decades to figure out… This may well be called the Paradox of Language Acquisition. The Paradox of Language Acquisition
First: what the child ends up with is a mental
grammar that is inaccessible to consciousness. Second: a substantial part of the language-learning process is also unconscious, so linguists can neither directly observe it nor ask children about it. All children hear are sentences, they must unconsciously discover for themselves the patterns. Children Have a Head Start
Yes, they have a head start on linguists and
that’s why they can construct their mental grammars. They appear to have some sort of ‘hint’ about how to go about constructing the grammar. That’s why it takes only about 5-8 years of work for an average kid, while linguists haven’t been able to come up with anything so far. Head Start can be UG?
Children are equipped with a body of innate
knowledge pertaining to language. Using that knowledge they can find patterns in the stream of language they are exposed to, and they can use these patterns as mental grammar. Because this innate knowledge must be enough to construct a mental grammar for any language of the world, it is called UG (universal grammar). So many grammars!
Prescriptive vs descriptive
Universal grammar: our biological, genetically-
transmitted capacity to pick up just any language. Mental grammar: our perfect knowledge of the language that has become our mother tongue (when we are five years old or above). Transformational-generative grammar: the currently dominant linguistic theory trying to formally describe the two human capacities above. What Exactly is Universal Grammar?
What do children know (unconsciously) about
language in advance of language learning? (What is UG?) How do they use UG to construct a mental grammar? How do they acquire Universal Grammar in the first place? How do they acquire Universal Grammar?
How can there be innate knowledge (knowledge that
is not learned)? Like the teeth, or body hair, or walking, Universal Grammar could just as well develop at some time after birth (conditioned by a biological timetable; grammatical patterns start getting acquired about the age of 2). So, it seems to be a part of our biological heritage. In other words, it is genetic. Innate Knowledge: the Mechanism
Determination of brain structure by genetic information Determination of mental functioning by brain structure The brain is determined by the DNA (its anatomical structure and organization) Chomsky: … we don’t learn to have arms rather than wings… The same goes for language… Innate Knowledge: The Structure
The ability to learn language is rooted in our biology,
a genetic characteristic of the human species. Just like an opposable thumb and a pelvis adapted for upright stance. This means drawing on biological precedents in explaining language. The Genetic Hypothesis
The mechanism for acquiring innate knowledge is
genetic transmission, through the medium of brain structure. Knowledge of language is determined by brain structure, so it is present only when the supporting brain structures are present (ca. the age of two). Gene for Language: single gene on chromosome 7 region q31 structure named FOXP2?
Vargha-Khadem et al, 'Praxic and nonverbal cognitive
deficits in a large family with a genetically transmitted speech and language disorder', Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 92, 930 – 933 (1995) Vargha-Khadem et al,'Neural basis of an inherited speech and language disorder', Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 95, 12695 – 12700 (1998) Enard et al, 'Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language', Nature 418, 869 - 872, (2002)
Abstracts Source: College Literature, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 2005), Pp. V-Vii Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press Accessed: 04-07-2017 18:40 UTC
Abstracts Source: College Literature, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Summer, 2005), Pp. V-Vii Published By: The Johns Hopkins University Press Accessed: 04-07-2017 18:40 UTC
