1. SEL1007: The Nature of Language
Thinking about language - Chomsky: the history of 20th Century linguistics 2

2. Last time on The Nature of Language!
Descartes and the mind/body problem
One response: the mind is ‘just like’ a computer
Today
Another response: it’s all just hopeless. All we can study is behavior
Chomsky: au contraire

3. Behaviorism – Another response to the mind/body problem
Roots in early 20th c. psychology
We can’t study the mind ‘cause we can’t see it, so we’ll study behavior only
Ivan Pavlov ( )
J B Watson (1878 – 1958)

4. The behaviorist paradigm for learning
Stimulus -> Response -> Reinforcement
(from

5. Behaviorist Linguistics
Stimulus
(wanting a book, seeing a person)
Verbal behavior
(“Hand me that book please.”)
B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990)
Key book: Verbal Behavior (1957)
Reinforcement

6. Chomsky’s response (1959 review)
The key terms (stimulus, response, reinforcement) need to be so twisted out of shape to apply to language that they don’t mean anything anymore

7. An example -- reinforcement
In a rat-box: food pellet – satisfies basic need/drive
To reinforce verbal behavior in real life you can:
Produce verbal behavior (say “thank you”)
NOT produce verbal behavior (sit quietly and pay attention)
Perform some action in the future
Automatic self-reinforcement (e.g. child babbling)
“Any idea that [the use of the word ‘reinforcement’] introduces any new clarity or objectivity…is a serious delusion....A mere terminological revision, in which a term borrowed from the laboratory is used with the full vagueness of the ordinary vocabulary, is of no conceivable interest….[It] is just a kind of play-acting at science.”
- Chomsky (1959)

8. So what’s Chomsky’s alternative?
Underlying people’s behavior is a mental system (a grammar)
[Flying planes] is dangerous.
[Flying planes] are dangerous.
Bill asked [how old] Sam was
Bill asked how [old Sam] was

9. Syntactic ‘rules’ of English that you ‘know’ make reference to constituent structure
Yes-no questions
The boy will arrive soon
Will the boy arrive soon?
A perfectly reasonable first guess: move
the first/leftmost auxiliary to the front
of the sentence.

10. However, that perfectly reasonable guess is wrong:
The person that you have seen will arrive soon.
*Have the person that you ___ seen will arrive soon?
Will the person that you have seen ___ arrive soon?
The rule for forming yes-no questions is structure dependent,
not structure independent.
[Interestingly, no language has a structure independent rule for
anything, and children never ‘make the mistake’ of assuming
a structure independent rule during language acquisition]

11. vs. A reason to look at the mental facts/ underlying system first
The competence/performance distinction
they say this cat
Shaft is a bad
mutha-
SHUT YOUR
MOUTH!
vs.
Competence
Performance

12. Performance doesn’t always reflect competence
False starts, memory limitations, distractions, hesitations, getting smacked by Batman, etc.
In fact, Chomsky says we should study
an ‘ideal’ speaker-hearer
in a completely homogeneous speech community
So, focusing on competence makes the task easier instead of harder

13. This claim has caused a lot of needless controversy
You can’t separate out language from language use
Of course you can. We just did it.
It’s too artificial
Real sciences do stuff like this ALL THE FRICKIN’ TIME

14. Idealization in Science
Chemistry =

15. Idealization in Science

16. Idealization in Science
Chemistry =
Chemistry =

17. So what about ‘English’ or ‘Swahili’?
These are like ‘the human heart’ in a class on human anatomy
Taking them as ‘real’ raises all kinds of (probably unsolvable) problems
When did ‘English’ start?
Where’s ‘Chinese’?
How come the ‘Dutch’ spoken near the border with Germany is more like ‘German’ than ‘Dutch’?

18. Chomsky on language acquisition
Raises “Plato’s Problem”
How do we know so much about our language, given how little we’re exposed to
The men expected to see them

19. Chomsky on language acquisition
Raises “Plato’s Problem”
How do we know so much about our language, given how little we’re exposed to
I wonder who the men expected to see them
It is likely that John is here.
It is probable that John is here.
John is likely to be here.
*John is probable to be here.

20. Principles Parameters
Plato’s solution: anamnesis (recollection from a previous life) Chomsky’s solution: a Language Acquisition Device (aka Universal Grammar)
Principles
Parameters
(rules must be structure-dependent)
(heads can precede or follow
their complements)

21. This explains, among other things
Species-specificity
Speed and ease of first language acquisition
Uniformity of rate and stages of first language acquisition
The critical period
Patterns of mistakes and non-mistakes

22. Joel on Acquisition and Evidence
Next week:
Joel on Acquisition and Evidence