Pinker and Jackendoff

[dmellow at sfu.ca]

Yes, the hypothesis that the FLN only includes recursion was what I was so
surprised by. Presumably, this means that parameter-setting is no longer
hypothesized as a form of learning -- because parameterized principles are
no longer mentioned as hypothetical components of Universal Grammar.

If one were to adopt this position on cognition, I think that HPSG would be
a much better theory than Minimalism. If linguistic properties are emergent,
arising largely from the interaction of non-language-specific components and
communicative needs, then it would seem that representations should avoid
'pernicious' metaphors (Green and Morgan, 1996) such as movement and
phonetically null elements.

Like Pinker and Jackendoff, I find this new position to constrast remarkably
from Chomsky's previous statements about the FLN/UG.  Here are a few more of
his previous strong claims (from Chomksy, N. 1988: Language and problems of
knowledge: The Managua lectures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, pp. 61, 62-3,
75, 191):


We may think of the language faculty as a complex and intricate network of
some sort associated with a switch box consisting of an array of switches
that can be in one of two positions […]


The fixed network is the system of principles of universal grammar; the
switches are the parameters to be fixed by experience […]


[U]niversal grammar is an account of the initial state of the language
faculty before any experience. It would include, for example, the principle
that rules are structure dependent, that a pronoun must be free in its
domain, that there is a subject-object asymmetry […]


Suppose, then, that universal grammar includes a principle stating that when
an element moves, it leaves behind a trace, a category with no phonetic
features that is bound by the moved element in something like the manner of
a bound pronoun.[…]


[T]he concept ‘climb’ is just part of the way in which we are able to
interpret experience available to us before we even have the experience.
That is probably true for most concepts that have words for them in
language. This is the way we learn language. We simply learn the label that
goes with the preexisting concept. So, in other words, it is as if the
child, prior to any experience, has a long list of concepts like ‘climb’ and
then the child is looking at the world to figure out which sound goes with
the concept.

Cheers,

Dean

On Tue, 17 Aug 2004 11:30:14 -0500 wechsler at mail.utexas.edu wrote:
> I see it as a big shift with respect to innateness.  The new categories
> (FLN/FLB) may be similar to the old ones (I-Lg/E-Lg), but the contents
> have changed.  From Hauser et al (p. 1574):
>
> "The FLN may approximate a kind of 'optimal solution'... Many of the
> details of language that are the traditional focus of linguistic study
> (e.g. subjacency, wh-movement, the existence of garden-path sentences)
> may represent by-products of this solution, generated automatically by
> the neural/computational constraints and the structure of FLB--
> components that lie outside of FLN."
>
> In other words, the old "Principles of UG" have vanished, leaving only
> recursion itself.  Chomsky seems to be a late convert to a view he
> rejected with heat for so many years-- that the 'details of language'
> result from interface conditions.
>
> For those syntacticians on the list who don't follow the evolution and
> innateness debates and have not read Hauser et al, I recommend it.
> Personally I never understood the MP until I read this article.  (I
> mean that I could not understand why Chomsky would entertain the
> hypotheses on which the MP is based.)  After reading Hauser et al,
> suddenly it all fit.
>
> Steve
>
>
> On Tuesday, August 17, 2004, at 01:16 AM, Shalom Lappin wrote:
>
> > It is not clear to me in what sense Chomsky has changed his view with
> > respect
> > to the relation between evolution and the design of universal grammar.
> > The Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch article postulates a distinction between
> > a broad and narrow language faculty, with the former corresponding to
> > core grammar (the "computational system") and the latter to interface
> > modules. Evolutionary selection is restricted to the latter, with the
> > former
> > effectively exempted from its influence. This seems to be a
> > restatement of
> > the I-Language/E-language distinction, with the narrow language faculty
> > still carefully protected from evolutionary explanation. Where is the
> > shift?
> > I must be missing something here. Regards.
> >			    Shalom
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 06:46:26PM -0700, dmellow at sfu.ca wrote:
> >> Thank you for pointing out these articles.
> >>
> >> I am rather astonished by Chomsky's apparent change of perspective on
> >> the
> >> nature of cognition -- moving substantially away from universal
> >> grammar and
> >> innatism.	Has this shift received much attention (in journals and
> >> hallways)
> >> among generative syntactians (broadly defined)? Or have we entered
> >> something
> >> of a post-Chomskyian era in which his shifting hypotheses no longer
> >> have as
> >> much influence?
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >>
> >> Dean Mellow
> >> Simon Fraser University
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 09:54:13 +0100 (BST) rborsley at essex.ac.uk wrote:
> >>> Anyone who is interested the current position of minimalism within
> >>> syntactic theory should take a look at Pinker and Jackendoff's 'The
> >>> faculty of language: What's special about it?', a reply to the
> >>> Hauser,
> >>> Chomsky and Fitch Cognition article, available from Jackendoff's web
> >>> page:
> >>
> >>>
> >>> http://people.brandeis.edu/~jackendo/
> >>>
> >>> It says all sorts of things that most of us would agree with. It
> >>> seems to
> >>> me that we sometimes exaggerate the strength of minimalism. It is
> >>> coming
> >>> under attack by various people who were once quite close to Chomskyan
> >>> syntax. (Newmeyer's recent review article in Language provides
> >>> another
> >>> example.) I think there are some grounds for optimism here.
> >>>
> >>> Bob Borsley
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Prof. Robert D. Borsley
> >>> Department of Language and Linguistics
> >>> University of Essex
> >>> Wivenhoe Park
> >>> COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ, UK
> >>>
> >>> rborsley at essex.ac.uk
> >>> tel: +44 1206 873762
> >>> fax: +44 1206 872198
> >>> http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~rborsley
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >