[Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of language complexity/simplicity

[Paul Hopper]

The speakers clearly need to have their parameters re-set.

> I don’t know how they account for the kinds
> of exceptions to the general rule of directionality that most grammars of
> natural languages exhibit. Perhaps someone else can help.>

BTW, for en early statement (pre-P&P) of this idea, see Emmon Bach,  1965.
 On Some Recurrent Types of Transformations.  Georgetown University:
Monograph Series on Languages and
Linguistics 18, 3-18.

Paul Hopper


> Hi Alan,
>
> I don’t know how useful you will find an excursus into generative
> linguistics<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_linguistics> but
> generativists have something called the Principles and parameters
> framework which corresponds in most respects to the head-directionality
> principle described by Nichols and which (following generative logic) has
> profound implications for the simplicity aka learnability of a language.
>
> Within the PP framework, the syntax<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntax>
> of a language<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language> is described
> in terms of general principles (or abstract rules) and specific parameters
> (i.e. markers or switches) that for particular languages can be either
> turned on or turned off. The position of
> heads<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_(linguistics)> in phrases is
> determined by such a parameter. The notion of such a ‘switch’ makes sense
> to me as in learning Turkish or Japanese (or Mekeo), I found I only had to
> cope with the novelty of head-final word order once; after that the
> general ordering principle becomes quite natural and expected.
>
> The Principles and Parameters framework, qua research program, has set out
> to explain the gap between linguistic knowledge and linguistic competency.
> I.e., given the finite, corrupt or incomplete
> input<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_of_the_stimulus> children have
> access to, how do they so rapidly arrive at a (fairly) accurate and
> complete grammatical competence. Principles and parameters are here held
> to be part of universal
> grammar<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar> (UG) and are thus
> ‘innate’ – at least as potential. Hence they do not need to be learned by
> exposure to any given natural language. Exposure triggers the appropriate
> parameters, causing the brain to adopt certain ‘settings’, e.g., it might
> be set to expect and produce either head-final or dependent final
> structures across the board. I don’t know how they account for the kinds
> of exceptions to the general rule of directionality that most grammars of
> natural languages exhibit. Perhaps someone else can help.
>
> Alan
>
>
>
>
> Alan Jones, PhD,
>
> Adjunct Professor,
>
> Macquarie University,
>
> Sydney
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Alan Rumsey <Alan.Rumsey at anu.edu.au>
> Sent: Sunday, 17 January 2016 2:03 AM
> To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> Subject: [Lingtyp] Structural congruence as a dimension of language
> complexity/simplicity
>
>
> Dear All,
>
>
>
> Francesca Merlan and I are currently working on a paper on structural
> congruence as a dimension of language complexity/simplicity. It is based
> on results from our longitudinal study of children’s acquisition of two
> verb constructions in the Papuan language Ku Waru, namely, serial verb
> constructions (SVC) and adjunct+verb constructions (AVC). We show that
> children learn the AVC before the SVC, and argue that this is determined
> in part by the greater congruence between AVC and other basic aspects of
> Ku Waru syntax including its strictly verb-final word order. This has got
> us thinking about the general issue of structural congruence as a
> dimension of language complexity. For example, long ago Greenberg
> demonstrated that there is a very strong tendency in languages with VSO
> word order for the adjective in NPs to follow the noun. This is presumably
> because there is a kind of congruence between the noun as the head of the
> NP and the verb as the head of the clause – an insight which led to
> Nichols’ later very useful typological distinction between head-marking
> and dependent-marking grammar. Not all languages conform to Greenburg’s
> generalization in this regard. But we would argue that those that do are
> in that respect simpler than those that don’t, because both the VSO
> template and the noun-adjective one can be specified in terms of a more
> general relationship between heads and dependents. So far in our search
> through the recent literature on linguistic complexity we haven’t come
> across any discussion of this kind of congruence as a dimension of
> language complexity/simplicity. Can any of you point us to any? Or to
> other relevant data for a comparative consideration of this issue?
>
>
>
> Alan Rumsey,
>
> Australian National University
>
>
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-- 
Paul J. Hopper,
Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Humanities
Department of English,
Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA 15213,

Adjunct Professor of Linguistics,
University of Pittsburgh

Publications: <http://carnegie-mellon.academia.edu/PaulHopper>
              <http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=n2e7ANUAAAAJ>
              <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul_Hopper>