ŞOIMAN LIVIA NICOLETAMaster Engleză, Anul I
The Biology of Language
Growth of Language in the Individual
“Human language is an embarrassment for evolutionary theory” (D.Premack)
Biolinguistics
studies the relations between physiology and speech. Theoriesof the evolution of human language express by their very nature claims of ahistorical sort: claims about why, when, where or how language emerged and/or developed in some distant past. An essential feature of these claims is that theyare made in the absence of sufficient historical evidence about the evolutionaryevents, biological processes, physical forces, environmental pressures, kinds of (pre)linguistic entities and so on involved in the evolution of language. The paucity of this historical evidence – i.e., evidence derived from data contained innatural or man-made records of these evolutionary events etc. – is generally seenas one of the most formidable obstacles to serious work on language evolution.One of the major contributions which Chomsky made to the field of theoreticallinguistics was the establishment of a methodological framework for the studyof language. There were several tenets to this approach, either explicitly or implicitly:The aim is to define symbolic rules and structures which characterize whatconstitutes a sentence of a language and what does not.These descriptions should be sufficiently precise and detailed that there is nodoubt about what they predict, to the extent that it would
in principle
be possibleto check the predictions mechanically (e.g. using a computer).These symbolic accounts can be empirical without large scale collection of dataor statistical studies. The linguist compares what sentences are known to exist inthe language with those predicted by the rules. Often, falsification of a proposedset of rules can be achieved from a relatively small set of examples.The rules should capture regularities in the data. That is, sentences which havesome inherent similarity (syntactically, semantically, etc.) should be described ina similar way by the rules, and systematic alterations to the symbolicdescriptions should correspond to systematic changes in the language phenomena being described.We have to a large extent adopted these attitudes in our study of riddles, as havevarious other humour researchers (some tacitly). We have attempted to devise
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abstract symbolic accounts of the detailed mechanisms underlying our chosenset of phenomena (certain types of punning riddle), we have defined these rules precisely (as shown by the computer implementation), and we believe that theyshow regularities in exactly the way that linguists expect grammars to displaygeneralizations about sentences.In his research-book
Biolinguistics and the Human Capacity
Noam Chomsky presented many biolinguistic perspectives to a perspective views a person’slanguage in all of its aspects – sound, meaning, structure – as a state of somecomponent of the mind, understanding “mind” in the sense based on theintuitive concept of a material world, no coherent mind-body problem remains,and we can only regard aspects of the world “termed mental,” as the result of “such an organical structure as that of the brain,” as chemist-philosopher JosephPriestley observed. The linguistic theory of Chomsky has changed the long,traditional way of studying language. The nature of knowledge, which is closelytied to human knowledge in general, makes it a logical step for Chomsky togeneralize his theory to the study of the relation between language and theworld-in particular, the study of truth and reference. But his theory has beencontroversial and his proposal of „innate ideas” has been resisted by someempiricists who characterize him as rationalist. In our view, these empiricistsmake a mistake. In the present paper we attend to his position regardinglinguistics as a science of mind/brain, which we believe is an important aspect of his theory that has not been paid enough attention or understood by hisopponents. In turn, this will help to clarify some of the confusions around histheory. Finally we will discuss some of the debatable issues based on theoutlines we draw.Chomsky’s outstanding collection of essays on language and mind made agroundbreaking contribution to linguistic theoryChomsky’s early work on the nature and acquisition of language as a geneticallyendowed, biological system (Universal Grammar), through the rules and principles of which we acquire an internalized knowledge (I-language).Critical observations about the elementary semantics of natural languagesuggested that its most primitive elements are related to the mind-independentworld much as the internal elements of phonology are, not by a reference-likerelation, but as part of a considerably more intricate species of conception andaction.If we assume that the faculty of language has the general properties of other biological systems, we should, therefore, be seeking three factors that enter intothe growth of language in the individual:(1) Genetic factors, apparently near uniform for the species, the topic of UG.The genetic endowment interprets part of the environment as linguisticexperience, a non-trivial task that the infant carries out reflexively, anddetermines the general course of the development of the language faculty to thelanguages attained.
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(2) Experience, which leads to variation, within a fairly narrow range, as in thecase of other subsystems of the human capacity and the organism generally.(3) Principles not specific to the faculty of language.The third factor includes principles of structural architecture that restrictoutcomes, including principles of efficient computation, which would beexpected to be of particular significance for computational systems such aslanguage, determining the general character of attainable languages.The book of Lyle Jenkins
Exploring the Biology of Language
investigates thenature of human language and its importance for the study of the mind. In particular, it examines current work on the biology of language. Lyle Jenkinsreviews the evidence that language is best characterized by a generativegrammar of the kind introduced by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s and developedin various directions since that time. He then discusses research into thedevelopment of language which tries to capture both the underlying universalityof human language, as well as the diversity found in individual languages(Universal Grammar). He also discusses a variety of approaches to languagedesign and the evolution of language. An important theme is the integration of biolinguistics into the natural sciences – the “unification problem”. Jenkins alsoanswers criticisms of the biolinguistic approach from a number of other perspectives, including evolutionary psychology, cognitive science,connectionism and ape language research, among others.
is an artificial or natural languageused as an intermediarylanguage for translation. Using a pivot language avoids thecombinatorialexplosionof having translators across every combination of the supportedlanguages. The disadvantage of a pivot language is that each step of retranslation introduces possible mistakes and ambiguities. For example, whenHernán Cortéscommunicated with Mesoamerican Indians, he would talk Spanish to Jerónimo de Aguilar who would talk Mayan to Malintzin who wouldtalk Nahuatlto the locals.
Language change and evolution
Languages change, usually very slowly, sometimes very rapidly. There aremany reasons a language might change. One obvious reason is interaction withother languages. For example, if one tribe of people trades with another, theywill pick up specific words and phrases for trade objects, for example. If a small but powerful tribe subdues a larger one, we find that the language of the eliteoften shows the influence of constant interaction with the majority, while themajority language imports vocabulary and speaking styles from the elitelanguage.T
he Pro-drop parameter
In the book
Sec
ond Language Learning and Language Teaching
VivianCOOK explains
the Role of Grammar in Language Teaching. “
Grammar hashad a bad press for many years. To many people, it is the boring subject done at
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