The appeal of P&P

Tue May 1 08:55:47 UTC 2001

Andreas Kathol:

"If we want to understand why it is that Chomskyan linguists have been
playing fast and loose with formal rigor and citation etiquette, I don't
think it's because P&P attracts
a greater proportion of jerks than other frameworks. Rather, I'd like to
submit that it has to do with the fact that Chomskyan linguistics is at
some level engaged in a different enterprise than many of its alternatives.
More than questions such as whether LF or traces exist, the Chomskyan
enterprise is characterized by the persistent belief in the innateness
hypothesis and its implementation in the form of the principles and
parameters model. Part of what has attracted so many people to the P&P
model (and keeps them loyal to it, even in times of great intellectual
uncertainty) is that as a practitioner of Chomskyan linguistics, one is
made to believe that one is part of a Grand Quest for the very essence of
what has been portrayed to be the Great Mystery, namely what makes language
learnable.

## By chance, I've just read the following quotation from Chomsky himself
cited on another list. Personally I find it astonishing, but it's highly
relevant to Andreas's interesting message.

  I might add that "autonomy of syntax" is a term I do not think I have
  ever used, except in reaction to references to some alleged "autonomy
  of syntax" thesis, sometimes attributed to me. There is a one-sided
  debate about "autonomy of syntax"; one-sided in that only critics
  of the alleged thesis take part. There are a number of such debates,
  including the debate over what critics call the "innateness
  hypothesis" (also often attributed to me, Fodor, and others). I
  have no idea what the phrase is supposed to mean and correspondingly
  have never advocated any such hypothesis--beyond the truism that there
  is some language-relevant distinction, to be discovered, between my
  granddaughter and her pet kitten (monkey, rock, etc.). (Chomsky,
  interviewed in Stemmer 1999: 400)

Andreas again:
"The upshot of this is that more than pointing out mispredictions or lack
of formal precision, the real challenge (and one that Chomskyans of
influence may be more likely to take seriously) will come from evidence
that the P&P model is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining
language acquisition. I'm aware of some work that takes on this task from
inside linguistics (for instance Culicover's recent work), but I suspect
that ultimately it'll have to come from outside of linguistics, i.e., such
fields as psychology and neuroscience. I for one would like to have a
better sense of the work in those areas that already poses a direct
challenge to the innateness hypothesis and P&P. Suggestions?"

## There's a great deal of work in psycholinguistics that challenges the
innateness hypothesis, though I'm afraid I'm not the person to guide you
through it - I just read it and  then forget it. (I'm copying below a few
bibliographical hints that I prepared for undergraduates.) My impression is
that most psychologists aren't impressed by the innateness hypothesis, and
that psycholinguists are deeply divided, just like syntacticians.
	One particularly interesting psychologist (in my opinion) is Michael
Tomasello (currently at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig), who has been
very influential in Cognitive Linguistics. His thesis (1992) showed that
children acquire syntactic patterns in relation to specific lexical items -
they learn that EAT takes an object, but don't generalise to DRINK (not his
examples, but you get the point). This strikes me as much closer in spirit
to HPSG than to MP, and makes at least some parts of syntax much easier to
explain without innateness. As I'm sure you all know, other people in
Cognitive Linguistics have argued that particular 'patterns' found in
language (e.g. Binding, Extraction islands) are applications of more
general areas of cognition.

===============================
Bibliography on alternatives to innateness:

Bates, Elizabeth. 1997. On the nature and nurture of language. To appear in
E. Bizzi, P. Catissano and V. Volterra (eds.) Frontiere della Biologia. The
Brain of Homo Sapiens, Roma: Giovanni Trecani. [prepublished version]
Downloadable as .pdf file at http://crl.ucsd.edu/~bates/.

	This dazzlingly clear and accessible article defends emergentism' as an
alternative to both innatism and empiricism: grammar emerges as the only
possible solution to the problem of mapping a rich set of meanings onto a
limited speech channel, heavily constrained by the limits of memory,
perception and motor planning. Grammar and lexicon are parts of a single
unified system. Considers phonetics/phonology, semantics, grammar and
pragmatics separately, showing for each how it is integrated within general
cognition, and lacks specific modules. Considers evidence from acquisition,
pathology, brain-imaging and priming experiments.

Bates, Elizabeth; Elman, Jeffrey; Johnson, Mark; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette;
Parisi, Domenico; Plunkett, Kim. 1998. Innateness and Emergentism. In
William Bechtel and George Graham (eds.) A Companion to Cognitive Science,
Oxford: Blackwell. 590-601.

	Clear, well argued and well documented. Language is emergent', not
specifically innate (as claimed in strong nativism). "... grammars
represent the class of possible solutions to the problem of mapping
hyperdimensional meanings onto a low-dimensional channel, heavily
constrained by he limits of human information processing."  Thanks to
recent progress in nonlinear dynamics, multilayer neural networks and
developmental neurobiology, a theory of language emergence may be round the
corner. Strong nativism must assume innate representational constraints',
but these are impossible genetically. More plausible are architectural
constraints and constraints on timing of developmental events (chronotypic
constraints'). "... brain development ... appears to involve massive
overproduction of elements in early life (neurons, axons and synapses),
followed by a competitive process through which successful elements are
kept and those that fail are eliminated." They consider and reject
arguments for strong nativism based on domain specificity (including SLI),
species specificity, localization and learnability.

Deacon, Terrence. 1997. The Symbolic Species. The Co-evolution of Language
and the Human Brain. Penguin, Chapters 1 to 4 (21-143).

	Clearly and entertainingly written, but intellectually demanding. His main
idea is that what is special about language is not its complexity but the
fact that it involves symbols. The reason why animals  don't even have
simple languages is that they can't learn symbols - all they can learn are
icons' and indices' (which he explains and contrasts with symbols). He
rejects both Chomskyan nativism (the Hopeful monster' theory) and simple
induction; instead he thinks we can learn symbols because our brains
evolved to do so (especially the prefrontal lobe), and that language has
evolved so that it only has features that are learnable - so there's no
mystery. But he also says much, much more .....

Ellis, Nick. 1998. Emergentism, connectionism and language learning.
Language Learning 48, 631-64.

	A very clearly written and accessible review of the many "-isms" that are
relevant to understanding how our first language develops: generative
linguistics, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics,
sociolinguistics, connectionism, neurobiology, emergentism and a few more!
He supports the view that language is emergent', i.e. its special
characteristics emerge as a result of our experience, rather than being
innate. He also explains and supports connectionism, which is one of the
most important theories in modern cognitive psychology because it allows
very powerful computer systems which come close to behaving' like human
learners.

Dick Hudson

Richard (= Dick) Hudson

Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London,
Gower Street, London WC1E  6BT.
+44(0)20 7679 3152; fax +44(0)20 7383 4108;
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm