Transcript Advanced Syntax - School of English and American Studies

Lecture 12: Universal Grammar
ADVANCED SYNTAX
OVERVIEW OF THE GRAMMAR
In looking at English data, we have been
building a picture of the grammar that
underlies this
 This grammar is made up of the following
components:

THE LEXICON

The store house of all the idiosyncratic aspects
of the language
 How
words are pronounced
 What words mean
 What category words belong to
 What their subcategory is
 What
arguments are associated with predicates
 What categorial restrictions they place on their
arguments
X-BAR THEORY

The rules which tell us about the basic
syntactic arrangements of words into phrases:
 X’
 X YP
 XP  YP X’
 Xn  Xn, Ym – where m = 1 if n = 1, 2 otherwise
THETA THEORY

The theta criterion


There is a one to one relationship between theta roles
assigned by a predicate and arguments that bare them
The Universal Theta Assignment Hypothesis

Theta roles are assigned to a uniform position in all
constructions
 Theme
= specifier of thematic VP
 Oblique (PP arguments such as locative, instrument, etc.) =
complement of thematic verb
 Agent = specifier of agentive verb
MOVEMENT

There is a very general movement rule which
simply allows movement without further
specification
 Move

 Move

anything anywhere
What actually moves and to where in any
particular construction is determined by the
interaction of all other grammatical principles
BOUNDING THEORY

One principle that directly limits movement
concerns bounding
 Movements

have to be as short as possible
There have been several ideas of how to
achieve this
 Subjacency
 Movement
 Relativised
 The
allowed over only one bounding node
Minimality
movement of an element of type X must be to the
nearest possible position relevant for X
CASE THEORY

The Case filter


Case is assigned by certain heads





All overt DPs must sit in Case positions
Finite I  nominative
Agentive V  accusative
P  accusative
‘for’ complementiser  accusative
Case is assigned locally



To complement position
To specifier position
To specifier of complement
BINDING/REFLEXIVITY THEORY

Controls the use of different types of pronoun
 Principle
A
 Controls
the use of reflexive pronouns (anaphors)
They must be bound in their smallest binding domain
 They only appear with reflexive verbs

 Principle
B
 Controls
the use of personal pronouns (pronominals)
They must be free in their smallest binding domain
 They cannot mark a reflexive verb

THE ORGANISATION OF THE GRAMMAR
These various grammatical components,
although they deal with specific phenomena,
interact with each other to produce a complex
analysis of all of the structures of a language
 They fit together as follows:

THE ORGANISATION OF THE GRAMMAR
THE CONCEPT OF UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
So far we have looked at these grammatical
principles as though they describe English
 But they are meant to be able to describe all
languages
 Therefore this is a theory not just of English
grammar, but of Universal Grammar

WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Human languages differ from each other, but
not indefinitely
 There
are universal truths about human language
which would be unexpected if there were no limits
WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Human languages are translatable into other
human languages
 If
there were no limits to human language we would
expect there should be things can could be
expressed in one language but not another
WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Human children learn human languages, no other
species does

If language acquisition were just a matter of learning
complicated rules, we would expect other species to be able
to do it




Rats can learn complicated rules about travelling a maze
It seems that human languages are hard wired into human
brains
But it is clear that it is not the case the only English is hard
wired into English children and Chinese into Chinese
children, etc.
So what is hard wired must be universal to all languages
WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Speakers of a language know things that they
could not have possibly learned
 This
knowledge must come from somewhere
 If it isn’t learned, it must be innate
 Again, innate linguistic knowledge cannot be
language specific
 Innate linguistic knowledge must be of a universal
nature
WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

Human children learn human languages easily
 Far
more easily and thoroughly than adults can a
foreign language
 Far more easily and thoroughly than linguists can
describe any human language
 An innate knowledge of Universal Grammar would
explain this
PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS
Clearly, languages (such as English) are not innate
 There is no one human language
 Children are not born speaking a language



There is some process of acquisition
We suppose therefore that Universal Grammar is
made up from two parts
Principles: general and universal rules common to all
languages and so don’t have to be learned
 Parameters: varying aspects of language which allow
individual language to differ and which must be learned

E.G. X-BAR THEORY

It has been claimed that the rules of X-bar
theory restrict all languages
 In
all languages
 Phrases
have heads
 Heads take complements
 Phrases have specifiers

But languages differ in where these elements
are placed
HEAD INITIAL / HEAD FINAL

The simplest way languages differ is in terms of
whether the head precedes its complement or
follows it:
Head initial
Head final
ENGLISH: HEAD INITIAL

All heads precede their complements in English
 Inflections
 may [VP
precede VP
go]
 Complementisers
 if [IP
precede IP
he may go]
 Determiners
 the [NP
precede NP
man]
 Prepositions
 through [DP
precede DP
the tunnel]
JAPANESE: HEAD FINAL

All heads in Japanese follow their complement:
 Complementisers
 [IP
follow IP
nihongo-ga
muzukasii] to
Japanese-nom difficult
that
‘that Japanese is difficult’
 Postpositions
 [DP
densha] de
train
by
‘by train’
GERMAN: MIXED

In German, some heads precede and some heads follow
their complements

Complementisers precede IP


Determiners precede NP


die [NP Brücke]
the
bridge
Prepositions


dass [IP Hans oft Kürbissuppe isst]
that
Hans often pumpkin soup eats
durch [DP die Stadt]
through the city
Postpositions
 [DP
meiner Meinung] nach
my
opinion according to
‘in my opinion’
FREE(R) WORD ORDER

Some languages allow more word order variation than
others








János Marit szereti
János szereti Marit
Marit János szereti
Marit szereti János
Szereti János Marit
Szereti Marit János
This might be a problem for the claim that X-bar theory
is universal
But such languages might allow more movement than
those with stricter word order
PRE-VERBAL POSITIONS IN HUNGARIAN

The position immediately before the verb in
Hungarian is the focus position
 János
elment
 János ment el

Anything that moves to this position is
interpreted as focus
 János
leszállt a villamosról
 János szállt le a villamosról
 János a villamosról szállt le
PRE-VERBAL POSITIONS IN HUNGARIAN

The position in front of the focus is the topic
 Anything
which moves to this position is interpreted
as topic
a
villamosról szállt le János
 János a villamosról szállt le
 János szállt le a villamosról
 a villamosról János szállt le
PRE-VERBAL POSITIONS IN HUNGARIAN

We therefore
might assume
 Hungarian
is
basically verb
initial
 Things move in
front of the verb
for specific
reasons
X-BAR PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS

Principles
XP  X’, YP
 X’  X, YP


Parameters

Head parameter
 a)
head is first
 b) head is last

Specifier parameter
 a)
specifier is first
 b) specifier is last
(comma indicates that no
order is specified)
TRANSLATABILITY

Some have argued that the differences in
languages mean that there are some things
which can be expressed in one language that
cannot be in another
ESKIMO SNOW

Claim


Eskimo has over 100 words for snow, so the English
sentence ‘snow is falling’ does not translate the
differences that Eskimo can make
This is nonsense
Eskimo actually has only a few words for snow (so does
English: snow, sleet, hail, drift)
 Eskimo is a highly agglutinative language, which means
that sentences can often consist of one word
 But because a one word Eskimo sentence cannot be
translated into a one word English sentence does not
mean that Eskimo can express things English cannot

COLOUR TERMS


Languages have different numbers of basic terms for colour
Basic term =




English


Not compound (light blue)
Frequent (ultramarine)
Not seen as ‘a kind of’ (scarlet is ‘a kind of red)
black, white, grey, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple =
11
Hungarian

Similar number to English, but



Not orange (narancs is a kind of sárga)
Piros vs. Vörös
Dani

Mili vs. mola
COLOUR TERMS
Again, though, just because a language has
more or less basic colour terms does not mean
to say that the same distinctions cannot be
made in one language as opposed to another
 Hungarian can distinguish between orange and
yellow and English can distinguish between
piros and vörös

COLOUR TERMS
The most we can say is that some languages
express certain things more
economically/elegantly than others
 Words in one language may have to be translated
into more than one word, or even whole sentences
 Perhaps certain concepts are more evident or
prominent in one community than another


So a single word can trigger a whole cultural experience
which would need to be explained to another
community
E.G. BREAKERS
SPECIES SPECIFICITY

Other species do not have the vocal equipment to
produce speech


But no one ever thought that parrots, which can imitate
human speech, can speak
Experiments have been carried out to teach
Chimpanzees and Gorillas sign language



They have been spectacularly unsuccessful, despite popular
myths about them
The best thing we can conclude from these experiments is
that they demonstrate that human language is a uniquely
human ability
Only the possession of a human mind provides the ability to
learn and use human language
KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT LEARNING

Consider:
 Who
did you think that he saw
 Who did you think he saw
 Who did you think saw him
 * who did you think that saw him
All English speakers agree that the last
sentence is ungrammatical
 How do they know this?

KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT LEARNING

Perhaps someone told them


Perhaps they were corrected as children


This is not the kind of error children make, so it is unlikely anyone
ever corrected them on this
Perhaps they worked it out on the basis of similar
phenomena


Given that most English speakers find it hard to even describe the
generalisation these data demonstrate, let alone explain it, it is
highly unlikely that anyone ever told them about it
It is hard to think of anything similar to these observations, so it is
unlikely that they worked it out by analogy
It must be something that follows from our linguistic
knowledge – which was not learned
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Children learn the majority of their language by
about the age of 5
 They
spend the first year not leaning much
language, so it takes about 4 years
 This is not a lot of time, considering what else they
are doing
CONDITIONS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Children learn language despite what their parents
do rather than because of it
Parents vary radically in what they do to ‘teach’
language
 Parents are unaware of their own grammar and so
don’t make ideal teachers

 They
are apt to tell children rather inaccurate prescriptive
things (“there ain’t no such word as ‘ain’t!”)
 They tend to correct factual errors rather than grammatical
ones


Child: “daddy gone”
Mother: “no he hasn’t, he’s in the kitchen”
CONDITIONS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Children tend to disregard corrections parents
provide
 Child:
“nobody don’t like me”
 Father: no, it’s “nobody likes me”
 Child: “nobody don’t like me”
 ... Several repetitions
 Father: “no, listen! – nobody LIKES me”
 Child: “oh! Nobody don’t LIKES me”
CONDITIONS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

This indicates that children learn from positive
data only
 They
work out the grammar of their language from
hearing grammatical sentences and not from being
told what is ungrammatical

Moreover, parents don’t always speak
grammatically
 We
all make mistakes
 How do children know which sentences to attend to
and which to ignore?
CONDITIONS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

From this, it seems obvious that children
should not be able to learn language from
scratch
 The

data they have access to is too problematic
Yet they do learn language
THE UNIFORMITY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Not every child learns language in the same
order
 But
not every child grows teeth in the same order,
and no one thinks that that is not an innate process

However there is a good deal of regularity
 Children
go through distinct phases which happen
at certain ages (±2 months)
1ST STAGE (FROM 6 TO 12 MONTHS)

Babbling


Production of random sounds, usually CV
Reduplicative (6 to 9 months)

Repetitive CV sequences with monotonous intonation


Non-reduplicative ( jargon 9 to 12 months)




Bababababa, dadadadad, etc.
Varied sequences with varied intonation
Even deaf babies babble
Babies with tracheotomies (so they can’t babble) still
develop normal language after the tracheotomy is
reversed
So it isn’t clear what the function of babbling is
FIRST WORDS (12 – 18 MONTHS)
First words start at about 1 year and the list
grows slowly at first (until about 50 words)
 Mostly nouns, some verbs
 Child uses ‘one word sentences’
 Suddenly (about 18 months) the child goes
through a ‘vocabulary spurt’ and the next stage
begins

TWO WORD SENTENCES (18 – 24 MONTHS)



Children’s first combinations of words start at about the
same time as the vocabulary spurt
Number of verbs and adjectives increase
Two word utterances can look like subject-predicate
structures


But can also be other relations




Daddy gone
Mummy sock
Big ball
Give ball
Towards the end of this stage three and four word
sentences may be produced
THE SYNTAX SPURT (24 MONTHS)

The syntax spurt happens when different kinds
of sentences suddenly appear
 Passives,
interrogatives, subordinate clauses, etc.
At the same time functional categories start to
appear (determiners, auxiliaries,
complementisers)
 After this, the system is refined for the next 3
years and is virtually in place by 5 years of age

PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS AS A THEORY
OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
If Universal Grammar is an innate human
capacity, it allows us to explain how children
appear to do the impossible
 Moreover, if Universal Grammar is made up of
principles and parameters, it also provides us
with a detailed theory of how language
acquisition should take place

 Only
parameter settings need to be learned
 E.g.
Is the language head initial or head final?
ACCOUNTING FOR THE SYNTAX SPURT
Principles and Parameters theory does not tell us
why children seem to suddenly undergo rapid
development at the age of 2
 This development links two things

Diverse syntactic structures
 The use of functional categories


Some have suggested that this link is not random

Functional categories are the main syntactic words
without which many syntactic processes cannot take
place
MATURATION

One theory of language acquisition which can
account for the syntax spurt is that certain
linguistic concepts mature in the brain, similar to
how physical things mature in the body


E.g teeth, puberty
One idea is that the notion of a functional category
undergoes maturation
It is not available before 2 years
 When it becomes available, the child undergoes the
syntax spurt

CONCLUSION
The notion of Universal Grammar helps us to
explain a number of mysterious facts about
language
 It assumes that the general structure of the
linguistic system is innate and basic to all
languages

 UG
+ parameter settings = specific languages
CONCLUSION

Therefore:
 Language
is specific to humans
 All languages share a common basis and
demonstrate universal phenomena
 Language acquisition is a matter of setting
parameters
 There
may be certain parts of the innate system which
mature and therefore set the time for certain aspects of
language acquisition