Lecture 12: Universal 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 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

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

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

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

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 allowed over only one bounding node Relativised Minimality

The movement of an element of type X must be to the nearest possible position relevant for X

The Case filter All overt DPs must sit in Case positions

Case is assigned by certain heads 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

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The simplest way languages differ is in terms of whether the head precedes its complement or follows it:

Head initial Head final

All heads precede their complements in English Inflections precede VP

may [VP go]

Complementisers precede IP if [IP he may go]

Determiners precede NP the [NP man]

Prepositions precede DP through [DP the tunnel]

All heads in Japanese follow their complement: Complementisers follow IP

[IP nihongo-ga muzukasii] to Japanese-nom difficult that‘that Japanese is difficult’

Postpositions [DP densha] de

train by‘by train’

In German, some heads precede and some heads follow their complements Complementisers precede IP

dass [IP Hans oft Kürbissuppe isst]that Hans often pumpkin soup eats

Determiners precede NP die [NP Brücke]

the bridge Prepositions

durch [DP die Stadt]through the city

Postpositions [DP meiner Meinung] nach

my opinion according to‘in my opinion’

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

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

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

We therefore might assume Hungarian is

basically verb initial

Things move in front of the verb for specific reasons

Principles XP X’, YP (comma indicates that

no X’ X, YP order is specified)

Parameters Head parameter

a) head is first b) head is last

Specifier parameter a) specifier is first b) specifier is last

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

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

Languages have different numbers of basic terms for colour

Basic term = Not compound (light blue) Frequent (ultramarine) Not seen as ‘a kind of’ (scarlet is ‘a kind of red)

English 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

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

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

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

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?

Perhaps someone told them 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

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 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

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

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”

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”

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?

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

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)

Babbling Production of random sounds, usually CV

Reduplicative (6 to 9 months) Repetitive CV sequences with monotonous

intonation Bababababa, dadadadad, etc.

Non-reduplicative ( jargon 9 to 12 months) 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 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

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 Daddy gone

But can also be other relations Mummy sock Big ball Give ball

Towards the end of this stage three and four word sentences may be produced

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

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?

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

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

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

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