The relation between mind and language:
The Innateness Hypothesis and the
Poverty of the Stimulus
EDOARDO LOMBARDI VALLAURI
Abstract
This article tries to show some specifically linguistic weak points in the Povertyof-the-Stimulus Argument (PSA). Besides some quantitative considerations,
from a qualitative point of view it is shown that the innatist tradition underestimates analogy as a resource for children to build their own grammars from
the incomplete stimuli they receive from the environment; that knowledge and
consciousness of reality surrounding the speech acts are also underestimated,
and in fact play a major role in allowing children to build their internal grammars; that the role of “negative information”, conceived as the fact that some
structures simply (but systematically) do not occur in the stimulus, is also underestimated.
It is also suggested that the high degree of convergence of all known grammars does not need to be explained by means of one grammar in the brain,
but simply results from a series of constraints that are pragmatic in nature, or
directly derive from the definition of a system designed for communication.
1. Foreword
This contribution may be viewed as belonging to what has been called the
“biolinguistic approach”,1 in that it will consider language as a natural object,
more precisely, a component and a product of the human mind/brain. By adopting what may be termed a “functionalist” perspective, we will choose one of
the many possible levels at which the working of the brain may be analyzed,
namely the “language” level, remaining relatively autonomous from the study
of the physical mechanisms involved. In other words, we will concentrate on
a major output of the brain, i.e. the linguistic output. To use a metaphor, we
1. See Jenkins (2000).
The Linguistic Review 21 (2004), 345–387
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will deal mainly with the software, not with the computing machine. I believe
that, as linguists, this is a legitimate perspective which may also turn out to be
very useful because it is precisely on the strictly linguistic level that more or
less recent literature has established some “truths”, at times highly debatable,
at others needing further examination.
More specifically, I think it is still necessary to clarify the consistency of an
argument which, however, still represents one of the mainstays of the innatist
conception of language, namely the so-called Poverty-of-the-Stimulus Argument (PSA).
2. The logical problem of language acquisition
Cecchetto and Rizzi (2000: 119) summarize the problem of the poverty of the
stimulus as follows:
Humans acquire a natural language early in life, without specific instruction, apparently in a non-intentional manner, with limited individual variation in spite of
the fragmentary and individually variable courses of experience which ground
individual knowledge of language. More importantly, the precise understanding
of fragments of the adult knowledge of language reveals the massive presence
of “poverty of stimulus” situations: our adult knowledge of language is largely
underdetermined by the data available in childhood, which would be consistent
with innumerable generalizations over and above the ones that speakers seem
to unerringly converge to. This empirical observation is of great importance,
as it grounds the necessity of postulating a structured system of predetermined
linguistic principles which guide language acquisition; it also leads to the expectation of a fundamental cross-linguistic uniformity of human languages.
Literature on the matter is overwhelming, and clearly Noam Chomsky must
be credited with the merit of having raised a question of such importance. As
is well known, Chomsky’s hypothesis is that the brain somehow “contains”
an inborn Universal Grammar (UG), also working as a Language Acquisition
Device (LAD), which makes it possible for any child to acquire any language
within the first three/five years of life. Crucially, this UG is conceived of strictly
as a grammar, that is to say, a set of specifically linguistic rules or properties,
and not as an operating mental/cerebral module for more general activities of
problem solving, analogical extension, abstraction, recursive use of structures
and similar activities, which may be devoted, beside language, to many other
kinds of tasks related to life. According to Chomsky, and to generative linguistics, the biological bases of the language faculty are not limited to such features
of the brain and the mind that can serve language among other human faculties. They also include some features so specifically and uniquely linguistic in
nature, that they really do have the appearance of a grammar.
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As correctly stated by Putnam (1967: 14):
The Innateness Hypothesis is supposed [by Chomsky] to justify the claim that
what the linguist provides is “a hypothesis about the innate intellectual equipment that a child brings to bear in language learning” (Chomsky 1962: 530). Of
course, even if language is wholly learned, it is still true that linguistics “characterizes the linguistic abilities of the mature speaker” (Chomsky 1962: 530), and
that a grammar “could properly be called an explanatory model of the linguistic
intuition of the native speaker” (Chomsky 1962: 533). However, one could with
equal truth say that a driver’s manual “characterizes the car-driving abilities of
the mature driver” and that a calculus text provides “an explanatory model of
the calculus-intuitions of the mathematician”. Clearly, it is the idea that these
abilities and these intuitions are close to the human essence, so to speak, that
gives linguistics its ‘sex appeal’, for Chomsky at least.
In practice, the innateness hypothesis takes generative linguistics and, as far
as it proposes itself as a candidate for the “office” of UG, promotes it from a
simple description of language(s) to a theory of how an important part of the
brain is structured, or at least of how it works.
From now on, terms such as “innatism” or “innatist thesis” will be used here
to refer to the position which, beside the specific structure of speech organs
(larynx, pharynx, mouth etc.), beside the ability to deal with deduction, abstraction, recursive processes and similar, includes among the biological bases
of language a true grammar, considered to be resident in the brain prior to any
linguistic experience and to be perfectly identical in all individuals belonging
to the homo sapiens (sapiens) species.
This hypothesis is challenged, obviously and also authoritatively, from many
sides. As stated above, here we will stay on a linguistic-functional level, and
we will not dwell extensively on a variety of different critical approaches that
have been proposed in the last four decades. We will only recall some of them,
almost telegraphically.
3. A short overview of non-linguistic criticisms
It would be interesting, for instance, to consider in detail the neurological arguments developed by Philip Lieberman (1991: 130–133), regarding the complete
absence of cases where UG is disturbed as such: there seem to be no disturbed
subjects in the Structure Dependency Principle, or in the Head Parameter, as
a daltonian is disturbed in color recognition, or the like.2 This does not raise
2. Actually, theses such as this, held by Lieberman and others, are still under discussion, and attempts are under way to demonstrate the existence of so-called specific language impairment,
which we cannot dwell upon here.
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any problem if we imagine that grammar is run by some general multi-purpose
modules of the brain, so that if one of them breaks down, a similar one can
replace it; but it is suspect if we hypothesize that specific portions of the brain
are designed for specifically grammatical functions. When one of them (say
the one in charge of the Head Parameter) goes wrong, nothing should be able
to take its place.
Neither can we discuss here the fact that language acquisition passes through
successive stages of one-word, then two-word, then three-word utterances,
which hardly seems compatible with the idea of a ready made UG in the child’s
brain from the beginning. The innatist “defense” says that this is compatible
with the full pre-existence of grammar, because the acquisition of grammar
has already taken place, so to say, at birth, but its development is progressive,
having to wait for the maturation of non specifically linguistic faculties such as
short term memory and, more generally, the “channel capacity.”3 In any case,
these claims still lack full experimental support, so that at present they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable.
We do not consider here the more specific possibility, proposed by some
innatists, that UG as such may mature after a while (for instance, there may
first be a semantic stage, followed by a syntactic one).4 What motivates this
hypothesis (which is sometimes extended only to parts of UG; for instance by
supposing different development times for Principle A and Principle B of Binding Theory5 ) is the fact that the linguistic behaviour of children at early stages
does not follow the proposed UG, and systematically violates it. But of course
this is a very dangerous admission: if “internal” grammar grows over time, this
growth may still be entirely ruled by innate instructions like the growth of a
milk-tooth; but it becomes much easier to think that it happens only through
exposure to language, being the product of interaction between general problem solving abilities and the environment. In this case, grammar would not be
innate.
We must also leave out of the present work the consideration of the paleontological, genetic and evolutionary evidence on the origins of language. We can
only observe what follows, developing an idea of Putnam (1967): if linguistic
ability presupposes innate UG and LAD, within an evolutionary framework it
can only have imposed itself by way of selection in a human individual where a
happy mutation has taken place (or reached completeness); then it should have
3. See, for instance, Chomsky (1980: 53) and (1981b); Hyams (1986); Cook and Newson (1996:
120–121). And for critical discussion, Tomasello (2000b: 229–232).
4. See Cook and Newson (1996: 147 and 331–333); Gleitman (1982); Chomsky (1986: 54).
5. See Cook and Newson (1996: 337–338 and 340); Montalbetti and Wexler (1985); Wexler and
Chien (1985): Principle B would be already present in a very initial phase, while Principle A
would develop between 21/2 and 61/2 years of age.
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been handed down from that individual to his/her descendants, up to the complete colonization of the world. In particular, it cannot have been transmitted
by learning to any individual who is not a direct descendant of the first one
where the useful mutation appeared. Consequently, all speakers are descendants of a linguistic Adam or Eve, and all languages are necessarily offsprings
of the protolanguage he/she spoke. In other words, the whole of mankind must
descend from one single man or woman in whose brain UG developed by mutation. We are forced to believe that all those who, on the contrary, did not have
the mutation died without descendants, leaving no trace. Even the children of
the linguistic Adam/Eve who had not inherited UG (taking more from their
other parent) must have died without descendants. Otherwise, there would still
be some human beings around, absolutely normal but unable to acquire any
language.
In short, the monogenesis of languages hypothesis is a necessary consequence of the innatist idea, at least in a classic evolutionary framework. This
raises no great difficulty, because the hypothesis is increasingly confirmed by
genetic research à la Cavalli Sforza, and more generally by what is emerging about the precisely located and numerically restricted origins of the human
species. However, if we accept the monogenesis hypothesis, there is no further
need for an innate UG to explain the existence of linguistic universals. Those
which are not explained on pragmatic grounds6 can always be seen as remnants
of the protolanguage, in which case, nothing prevents it and its offspring from
being acquired and not innate. Besides, as observed by Putnam, the pragmatic
factor might have favored the preservation of certain original features as being particularly useful. This might be the case, for instance, for the existence
of nouns to designate classes of concrete and abstract entities, verbs to designate states and processes, proper nouns to designate single well-known entities
without having recourse to complex identifying descriptions, etc.
From an evolutionary point of view, one more objection should perhaps be
raised, briefly: if UG is an anatomic, physiological configuration of the human brain that arose by mutation, why shouldn’t it admit different “versions”?
Human beings are not all genetically identical in what is determined genetically: there are specimens with light- and dark-colored skin, with fair, black,
brown, red hair, with hook and pug noses, with blue, brown, hazel eyes, not to
mention the other innumerable differences between races and between individuals. Now, if UG is genetically determined, why do we not have individuals or
populations with obligatory subjects, or even, within the same linguistic community, groups of speakers with basic SVO order and groups with basic SOV
6. In fact, the explanations one can invoke for linguistic universals are so numerous that the
existence of a UG does not appear necessary in this respect. On the matter, see, for instance,
the articles in Hawkins (1992), and Lombardi Vallauri (1999).
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order? Why should all observable variation be external to what is genetically
determined? Why should UG, unique among the genetic features of man, be
exactly the same in all human specimens, without exception and without any
synchronic or diachronic variation?
In this sense I think it useful to read an important statement by Medawar
(1983: 109), also cited by Moro (2002):
One of the gravest and most widespread aberrations of geneticism is embodied in the belief that if any characteristic is enjoyed by all individuals of the
community, it must be genetically underwritten. Thus, if it should turn out that
a certain basic linguistic form such as the Aristotelian subject/predicate form
is an element of all languages of the world, then its usage must be genetically
programmed. [. . .] It may be well to repeat in this context the reason why this
supreme canon of geneticism is not satisfactory: if any trait is to be judged “inborn” or genetically programmed, then there must be some people who lack it.
The ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide, for instance, is known to be genetically programmed because there are those who lack it.
Moro (2002) correctly concludes that, in order to study language as a genetically programmed phenomenon, it is necessary that between the grammars of
the speakers of a language one can find differences that are dichotomic and
systematic in nature, and that show a statistical distribution on family basis
that is typical of bona fide genetically determined phenomena. I think that this
prerequisite is necessary to even hypothesize that grammar is a genetically programmed faculty.
Finally, does the generative idea that principles are innate and what we acquire is the setting of the parameters (see Section 4.1) have some analogy with
the ontogenesis of human or animal individuals? Is there, in the growth of arms
or hair, something that is left to the setting of a parameter? Does environmental
learning intervene to make a biological parameter prevail over another?7 And
even if this is the case, why does the setting of parameters, if it is present in any
aspect of individual growth, always happen on a genetic basis (so that an individual can, on genetic grounds, grow differently from another close by), while,
on the contrary, only in language acquisition the parameters should be set by
the environment, thus determining that perfect sameness between individuals
from the same environment, typical of what is acquired and not biologically
predetermined?
We will not develop here the extra-linguistic considerations mentioned
above, but even on a strictly linguistic level there might be some perplexity
over the facts commonly mentioned in support of the innateness of grammar,
7. In fact, this opinion is put forward by Boncinelli (1999: 221–224).
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and particularly those usually referred to under the label of the Poverty-of-theStimulus Argument. This is what we will deal with in the following sections.
4. Linguistic evidence against the poverty of the stimulus
My considerations here will not be based on new empirical data. I will rather
focus on previously published data and, indeed, especially on those (kinds of)
data most frequently mentioned by advocates of the PSA, from which I think
quite different conclusions may be reached.
Of course it will not be possible to discuss here the overwhelming quantity
of arguments proposed within the framework of the PSA, but it may be useful
to analyze some of them, since the same kind of confutation may possibly be
extended to further examples. Therefore, I will propose some “central” examples from the propaganda on the matter, such as those presented in the works
of Chomsky and in the periodical handbooks of the generative tradition.
Chomsky (1987), referring to language acquisition, and giving the question
the evocative name of “Plato’s Problem”, poses the problem in the same way
as Bertrand Russell: “How do we come to have such rich and specific knowledge, or such intricate systems of belief and understanding, when the evidence
available to us is so meagre?”. In other words, the time and linguistic material
available to children during language acquisition are regarded as insufficient to
explain their rapid mastering of such a complex instrument.
The argument can be divided into two parts, that we may call “quantitative”
and “qualitative”. There are, actually, two reasons why language should be “unlearnable”: (1) the amount of information that makes up language may be too
big, as compared to the time it needs to be acquired; (2) the kind of information
a language is made of is neither to be found in the stimulus (i.e. the linguistic
and metalinguistic material the child is exposed to), nor deducible from it. In
Cook’s (1991: 103) formulation: “if someone knows an aspect of language that
is unlearnable from the environment, then it must be built-in to the mind.” This
would hold even for a minimal amount of information: if children know something about language, even a very small thing, that they cannot have learned
from the environment, then that thing, at least, was already in their brain at
birth.
We will deal with the two perspectives separately.
4.1. The amount of information which makes up language
We cannot ascertain exhaustively whether the time available to the child for L1
acquisition is too little, but I agree with Putnam (1967) that it is not as little as
usually claimed.
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A high school student who learns a language in, say, five years8 acquires
it less successfully than a three-year-old child as regards pronunciation, but
this can be explained by previously acquired “bad habits”. In fact, the pronunciation of L2-sounds that are the same as L1-sounds is usually perfect, and
imperfections essentially arise where different habits interfere. Then, one must
take into account the particular “plasticity” of the brain in children,9 and the
progressive reduction of its learning capacity, that are completely independent
from the innateness hypothesis on language, and that can be observed also in
other fields, such as piano playing or downhill skiing.
As for the lexicon, the L2-vocabulary of a graduating student is usually more
extensive than the L1-vocabulary of a three-year-old child (also because the
adult’s L2 lexicon “relies upon” that of the L1).
Finally, as for grammar (morphology and syntax), the frequency of errors is
not dramatically different.
Now, how many hours of exposure to L2 can a graduating student rely on?
With an average of two hours a week (taking into account flu, ski week and simple truancy) for 30 weeks, we have about 60 hours per year, that is to say 300
hours in five years. It must be pointed out that these hours are not consecutive,
are characterized by little or no contact with native speakers, and are disturbed
by an “existential climate” that makes emotional and intellectual engagement
much stronger in other directions. On the contrary, children who acquire L1, at
a rate of (about) 12 hours a day for 52 weeks per year, reach an equal number
of hours in 25 days – less than a month. Is it so incredible that in a period 40
times longer (about three years, comparable to 200 school years) they acquire
their language?10 I wouldn’t say so, especially if we consider that learning to
talk is probably, at the time, the main aim of the child’s life, in contrast with
the adult student, who has other preoccupations.
Facing more specifically the problem of the great amount of things to be
learned that language represents, the question arises: What is innate? Syntax?
Or, rather, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics? Chomsky (1988: 26
and 32) answers that beside syntax, UG includes “fixed principles governing
possible sound systems”, and “a rich and invariant conceptual system, which is
prior to any experience”. Now, one can wonder whether these language modules are all equally extensive and difficult to acquire, or whether some of them,
so to say, “take less space in memory”. From the viewpoint of the amount of
information to be acquired, phonology seems to be of small import, and there
8. This has been the time devoted to foreign languages in Italian schools, for many years.
9. A remarkable argument in this perspective comes from so-called “neural darwinism”, for
which see, for instance, Edelman (1992).
10. If we consider a period of five years, required by the average child to acquire the language
without errors, the corresponding school years would be more that 350.
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is definitely no need for it to be innate in order to be acquired. Morphology
is slightly more cumbersome. Even syntax, if conceived in the most restrictive
sense, i.e., completely excluding any contribution of semantics, as the bare inventory of possible (recursively combinable) constructions, is not too great a
load; but it certainly becomes much more bulky if we conceive it as the task
of learning which meanings can be expressed by each construction, and which
constructions can express each meaning. This is due to the virtually infinite
number of meanings, and to the very high number of lexical entries, each of
which is associated in quite idiosyncratic ways to certain syntactic patterns
and not others. One is tempted to say that UG, if it must settle the problem of
language acquisition, should be an Innate Universal Lexicon and Innate Universal Semantics, rather than an Innate Grammar stricto sensu. Only on these
conditions would it help to explain the very rapid development of the complex
human understanding of reality, much more complex than that of all other animals, even the most evolved. But it must be noted that we learn this complex
semantic organization of reality throughout life, or, at least, unlike syntax, its
acquistion is no way near complete after the famous first three (or five) years
of life that allow the maturation of phonology, almost all of morphology and
major parts of syntax in its restricted sense.
From its beginnings (when the idea of innate UG was first proposed) to the
present formulations, generative linguistics has undergone significant changes
that are absolutely far from irrelevant to the problem under discussion. In particular, there has been a shift of the “seat” of grammatical rules, which, from
an initial autonomous condition, are viewed increasingly as associated with
lexical entries. In some present formulations of the theory, the majority of syntactic rules “link up” with the lexicon. Chomsky (1982: 8) states that “a large
part of ‘language learning’ is a matter of determining from presented data the
elements of the lexicon and their properties.” Chomsky (1991: 419) confirms
that “language acquisition is in essence a matter of determining lexical idiosyncrasies”. Wexler and Manzini (1987) hypothesize that all parameters belong to
the lexicon, rather than to the principles. Chomsky (1986: 150) is even more
explicit:
What we “know innately” are the principles of the various subsystems of S0 11
and the manner of their interaction, and the parameters associated with these
principles. What we learn are the values of the parameters and the elements of
the periphery (along with the lexicon to which similar considerations apply).
The “elements of the periphery” also include things of a certain mnemonic and
acquisitional “weight”, such as verb conjugations, and similar properties. If
11. S0 is the “initial state”, when the mind already contains UG but no linguistic experience. See
Cook and Newson (1996: 78).
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one adds to this the specific values adopted by the parameters, and the whole
lexicon, the bulk of things to be learned is so great that UG seems of little
account in the comparison.
This corresponds to the intuitive notion we all have of different languages,
whereby what they all have in common is “much less” than what differentiates
them. And obviously, UG cannot extend itself beyond what languages have in
common.
In short, by recognizing that there are few principles, that the parametric
values they can assume are more numerous, and that in any case (whether
we call them principles and parameters or not) the majority of the rules are
incorporated in the lexicon, generative linguistics in its recent versions risks
undermining the idea of an innate UG. What is innate would represent such a
small amount of information that its influence in facilitating language acquisition would be little more than nil: The PSA would become irrelevant, or even
totally obsolete.
Independently from the problem of where grammatical rules reside (i.e., of
their possibly being associated to parts of the language that are acquired “in the
long run” like the lexicon) the last great turn of generative linguistics, minimalism, also moves towards a drastic simplification of the grammatical rules. This
is obviously bound to produce a more elegant theory of UG, characterized by
lesser complexity and encumbrance, and certainly welcome after the “orgy” of
proliferating explanations and theories that has characterized the recent past.
However, one side-effect of this reduction is the parallel scaling down of the
role UG will play as a LAD and as an answer to the problem of the poverty
of the stimulus. If UG comprises very few essential rules that are declined in
very different ways across the different languages, there is no need to postulate
its innate preexistence because acquisition will present more or less the same
difficulties with or without an innate UG.
Even without going as far as minimalism, it may be useful to examine an
example put forward in an important generative grammar handbook based on
the “Principles and Parameters” stage of the theory.12 The authors try to make
explicit what, in a linguistic utterance, is interpreted by the child as a result of
innate knowledge, and what is understood owing to acquired knowledge:
Native speakers of English know that
(7)
His father plays tennis with him in the summer.
12. Cook and Newson (1996: 88). By the way, the Principles and Parameters stage of the theory
is, by far, the most suitable to present generative grammar as an innate UG.
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is a possible sentence. What have they acquired? First they have set the head
parameter to head-first, so that play appears to the left of tennis, in to the left of
summer. This setting was presumably acquired by noticing that English phrases
have a head-first tendency. They also know that the Verb play can be followed
by an object NP. This comes from the built-in Projection Principle and from the
lexical entry for play, which is derived from observation of sentences. They also
know that an actual lexical subject – his father – must be included; they have
set the value of the pro-drop parameter to non-pro-drop. The fact that him must
refer to someone other than his father derives from their built-in knowledge of
Binding Principles, together with the specific lexical knowledge that him is a
pronominal.
Considering that the specific setting of the parameters is still something that
must be learned, if one examines the knowledge necessary to process a single
utterance from this perspective, the impression is that about half may be innate, and half acquired. It is not important to be much more precise; even if it
were two thirds against one third, things would not change significantly from
our point of view because what is lacking here is the extension to the whole
language activity of the individual. In fact, if we added another thousand examples to (7), we would see that the innate things remain almost identical; there
is some principle whose parameter must be set. On the contrary, we would be
forced to add thousands of acquired notions, related mainly to the syntactic behavior of the single lexical entries, their autonomous (paradigmatic) semantic
values and the (syntagmatic) meanings they assume when they establish relations with other elements of the lexicon. (Imagine adding sentences like his
father reads the newspaper with him on the sofa, or my girl-friend played the
devil with me in the past, and so on.) In other words, according to the criteria
proposed in the quotation above, the innate knowledge required to process a
thousand sentences from the language may be very small, while the language
specific knowledge (different from language to language), to be acquired may
be very large. The more we increase the number of utterances under consideration, the more we may expect the disproportion to grow. This can be regarded
as an effect of that highly praised feature of human language(s) which is recursivity and is often cited as the very feature that differenciates us from other
animals. Through it, we can produce an infinite number of utterances, and even
an infinite number of slightly different syntactic constructions, continuously
re-using a much smaller number of basic universal structures. Thus, we do not
need to know all universal syntactic constructions (if there are any) innately,
but just the basic ones that are combined to obtain the others. Then, of course,
thousands of idiosyncratic rules associated to the single lexical entries and to
the different languages must be added, and these we must obviously learn.
Here I do not try to answer the question whether an innate UG actually exists
or not; this would be beyond anyone. Still, it is worth underlining that among
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the arguments in favor of its existence, its absolute necessity in order to explain
language acquisition in children is still open to debate. An innate UG may exist
after all, but if it is the one outlined, it would be of very little help in language
acquisition. Its existence is by no means proved by the PSA and must be proved
in some other way, which will probably be more difficult.
The way to prove it, of course, would be to demonstrate that it is truly impossible to learn the principles of UG through social interaction, i.e., by direct
exposure to samples of utterances (no matter how numerous), so that, if these
principles really do exist in the mind(s) of the speaker(s), they must necessarily be innate. But this is also difficult because it must first be demonstrated that
the principles of UG really exist and are the same in all speakers of all languages. That is to say that all languages really work like generative grammar
or, in other words, that there exist some (and even many) universals of language
that are grammatical and ultimately not pragmatic in nature. To take one of the
most favorable examples, this would mean demonstrating that the consistency
observable in the head-complement order in all languages is not only preferred
on general grounds of processing economy, but is rigidly determined by the
structure of some module of the brain or, at least, of the mind. This demonstration is rendered extremely difficult (if not impossible) by the fact that many
languages actually violate this consistency in many respects.13
It remains absolutely true that the amount of things children learn about
their language is large, and language acquisition exceeds, in involvement and
volume, the acquisition of any other thing in the first years of life, being, probably, the most inexplicable performance of the human mind. Still, that part of
it which is language specific, and therefore acquired, is probably superior (and
perhaps hugely so) in quantity to what is universal and therefore potentially innate. In this case the UG hypothesis does not explain very much, and the great
merit of Chomsky remains that of having pointed out a problem, not that of
having supplied its solution.
It must also be considered that, when dealing with mind and brain, the simple fact that something appears extremely difficult or even inexplicable neither
requires nor justifies a description that reduces it to something interpretable in
terms of a modest computing machine. For instance, the way in which human
consciousness can arise from the brain is absolutely mysterious and probably
13. In the light of these facts, what Cook and Newson (1996: 101) say lends itself to conclusions
opposed to those intended: “Principles of UG are incapable of being learnt by social interaction. Whatever degree of importance one assigns to principles such as structure-dependency
or Binding, it is clear they are not learnable through routines, however elaborate.” So, if they
do not even serve to explain acquisition, these principles risk having no justification at all and
not existing in the mind of every speaker, but only in the mind of some linguists.
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does not admit a simple explanation (such as an Innate Universal Consciousness made up of a set of rules); rather, in the end it may well reveal itself as the
result of an unimaginable complexity. We are presently aware of the existence
of this complexity, but we ignore the way it works, and when it is known, it will
probably not present itself in a simple form. A similar situation may hold for
language (which is inseparably bound to consciousness14 ), and there is no reason for thinking that we must expect a simple solution, or that a simple solution
will be more true than a complex one.
In particular, it must be observed that what we are able to do unconsciously
and automatically usually exceeds by far in complexity and difficulty what
we can do consciously. For example, walking on an uneven ground is much
more difficult than doing three-digit divisions, in that it requires control of a
frighteningly greater number of subjective and objective elements in the time
unit. Confirmation of this is available if one tries to build a robot that does
three-digit divisions, and a robot that walks on uneven ground. The fact that
we learn to walk long before learning to do divisions (and before learning to
talk!) is no authorization for believing that the mechanisms involved in foot
movement on irregular ground must be described in a simple way, elevating
a reassuringly small set of rules to the standing of a theory of how the brain
manages deambulation.
Similar considerations may be made for the capacity to recognize the meaning of facial expressions in other humans, which allows us to say whether
someone (even someone whose face we have never seen) is happy, angry,
scared and so on, with thousands of nuances, starting from proxemic features
that are quite complex and difficult to translate into precise rules.
In other words, if there is something we do customarily and somewhat unconsciously, having learned it from childhood, if this something is extremely
complex and does not appear to be immediately describable in terms of “simple
rules or principles” understandable by our capacity for conscious elaboration,
this does not mean that such simple principles actually exist somewhere and
are simply waiting to be discovered (for instance, an innate UG of foot movements). On the contrary, it may mean that no shortcuts will be found, because
behind such performances there are unconscious mechanisms whose complexity is immense or, at least, great enough to exceed the elaboration capacities of
our consciousness. In many respects, language activity may belong to this kind
of automatism. Why then, in principle, should it be an exception? We can admit
that there is an innate predisposition to language as there is a predisposition to
walking, although they are different in that walking develops itself, even without environmental stimulus. For this reason, language seems more comparable
14. See Carruthers (2002) for an overview of opinions on the matter.
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
to those activities one acquires when surrounded by people who carry them out
(like football in Italy or skiing in Switzerland). In any case, it does not appear
necessary to see it as a simple set of rules and a set of specifically linguistic
rules.15
As we have seen, since UG must be suitable for all languages, in all its formulations it necessarily tends to specify very few essential things, leaving the
bulk of the matter to interlinguistic variation (i.e., to the acquired, non-innate
“portion” of the language faculty). Still, sometimes the opposite effect arises:
In order to have a UG rule describe the behavior of any language, theorists are
obliged to imagine that each child’s head contains (innate) formalisms that are
much more complex than those required to learn each single language. This is
the case, for example, of the rule elaborated by Wexler and Manzini (1987)16
to describe the reference of reflexive elements:
The Governing Category Parameter
β is the governing category of α iff β is the minimal category which contains α
and a governor for α and:
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
a subject; or
an inflection; or
a tense; or
an indicative tense; or
a root tense.
Of this macro-rule, English speakers use (a), Italians (a) and (b), Norwegians
up to (c), Icelanders up to (d) and Japanese up to (e). In other words, a Japanese
15. As pointed out to me by Daniele Portolan, the analogy between linguistic activity and other
automatisms would need more space. I will just point out here that throughout life we learn
with difficulty many tasks that we can repeat later without reanalyzing them every time. Once
a series of correlated tasks has become automatic, we reproduce them by simply “setting off”
a routine now perceived as a blurred whole, and which always “produces itself” (with no
need of consciousness) in the same coherent way, though admitting concomitant and, so to
say, “suprasegmental” variations. For example, the same series of notes on a piano admits
variations of length, intensity, pressure, etc. A backhand stroke in tennis can be varied each
time in intensity, rotation, angle, although always involving the same synchronization of legs,
shoulder, waist, wrist, head etc. Much the same holds for tactical movements made by players
in team sports, operations carried out by assembly-line workers, etc. I cannot play piano, and
I typewrite very badly. Now, there are some very frequent sequences of letters in Italian (such
as z-i-o-n-e) that I have learned to type in a conscious way but now execute automatically,
having no idea of how I move my fingers. When, for example, I write the word situazione, I
“think” through the first part of the word letter by letter, but, as soon as I have typed the a, I
“set off” an automatic and unanalyzable routine, exclusively motory in nature, by which my
fingers, completely unaware of letters and alphabet, quickly type the rest. Crucially, unlike
my typewriting, such automatisms can be extremely complex in amount of information one
has to process in order to control them.
16. See Cook and Newson (1996: 304).
The relation between mind and language
359
child uses it all, but if it is innate, this rule ends up being more or less useless in
the heads of children who acquire different languages. In their case, acquisition
without UG appears to be simpler than with it. If the rule is built-in and works,
non Japanese, say English, children must not only induce, from the language
they hear, that the minimal category containing α must be a subject; but they
must also go against the rule and exclude that any of the other restrictions from
(b) to (e) is valid. For this reason, it is necessary to imagine another mechanism,
called the Subset Principle,17 through which children can set the parameter to
the most restrictive value allowed by the language samples they experience.
We will return to this question when dealing with the qualitative approach
to the problem of the poverty of the stimulus, but here it is necessary to make
an important remark. The example above is particularly manifest; but, at least
in the Principles and Parameters Theory, UG always poses itself as an uneconomical explanation for language acquisition, in that it implies that every mind
contains a lot of information that must be discarded. To be able to learn any language, the brain would need to contain the values for the parameters required
by all languages, although in the end it only selects one for each principle.
This situation can be considered as facilitating rather than hindering acquisition, only if one starts from a hypothesis which is not to be dismissed, but
must be made explicit. The hypothesis is that the brain has unlimited capacity
if conceived as a hard disk where the data are stored, while being quite weak if
conceived as a processor that has to manage, and particularly learn them. If this
were true, there would be no problem with the fact that all the parameters are
stored in the brain, despite the majority being useless, and their preexistence
on the “hard disk” as preset variables could actually facilitate a weak processor
that would hardly be able to retrieve them from experience alone.
The fact that the innate UG hypothesis is based on this idea of the mind
as a machine with an unlimited hard disk (storage capacity) and a weak CPU
(processing efficiency) is important because it renders the theory vulnerable
through possible alternative hypotheses, as we will see later on.
In this section we have dealt with the quantitative aspect of the povertyof-the-stimulus problem, and we finally suggested that, for many reasons, the
amount of information in UG may be quite reduced when compared to the
overall amount of what a child learns. It should be emphasized that if one
adopts this perspective, we have an interesting inversion of a very important (at
least in linguistics) onus probandi. On the basis of the PSA, supporters of UG,
17. The so-called Subset Principle, initially proposed by Dell (1981) and then formalized by
Berwick and Weinberg (1984) and Berwick (1985), is supposed to oblige children to always
generate the most restrictive grammar (the one which generates the lowest number of structures) compatible with the data they are exposed to, and extend it only if compelled by new
data. For a short but effective criticism of such assumptions, see Bowerman (1988: 77–78).
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
and more particularly of generative grammar as a hypothesis for UG, can say,
“Language acquisition poses a problem. Innate UG is a solution. Generative
grammar proposes itself as a model of UG, therefore it is up to those who
don’t agree with that model to find a better one in order to explain language
acquisition.”
But if we do not admit that UG is a good explanation for the problem of the
poverty of the stimulus, or even, more radically, if we think that such a problem
does not pose the necessity (in a philosophical sense) of an explanation in simple and formal terms, then the burden of proof is inverted and those who want
to maintain that an innate UG exists must prove it by means of independent
evidence. In other words, it must be proved (a) that the proposed grammar is
actually universal and common to all languages (a very difficult task, not significantly addressed up to now, in spite of the many decades of effort within
a great part of formal linguistics); (b) that Principles and Parameters (or, in
any case, the rules of language) that the speaker is viewed as being endowed
with cannot be learned by induction. More precisely, therefore, the arguments
for non-inducibility of the rules from the real utterances which the child is exposed to must be reviewed with renewed severity. In the next section, we will
move in this direction, in order to show how examples of linguistic stimuli usually cited to illustrate that the child could never induce the rules from them are
in fact open to a different interpretation.
4.2. The kind of information which makes up language
4.2.1. Analogy and knowledge of reality. Bloomfield (1933) maintained that
a regular analogy permits the speaker to utter speech-forms which he has not
heard; we say that he utters them on the analogy of similar forms which he has
heard.
Analogy allows speakers not only to create new forms by adopting the rules
that hold for those already heard, but also to correctly understand new forms
that have not yet been heard. In the Chomskyan tradition, confidence in the faculty of analogical extension has been dramatically reduced, and many linguistic utterances are reported in order to state that, since they are new and never
heard, children would neither understand nor produce them if they had no innate linguistic knowledge of the matter. However, analogy (or, more generally,
the various kinds of conceptual extensions we can gather under this label) is
actually at work in all mental processes. If one only tries to suppose that it applies to the examples adduced by the supporters of the LAD, it is often possible
to see that analogy may play a major role in their production and interpretation.
The relation between mind and language
361
Chomsky (1988: 17–22)18 examines some sentences of a certain complexity,
whose treatment by children and speakers in general he regards as inexplicable
in terms of analogical extension from less complex sentences. For example, in
(1) and (2) one would expect speakers to interpret the referent and the syntactic
function of the clitic reflexive pronoun si by analogy from the simple utterance
(3) (i.e., interpret the clitic as a direct object coreferent with the subject Gianni):
(1)
Gianni si
fece radere i
ragazzi.
Gianni REFL made shave the boys
‘Gianni had the boys shave *themselves/*him(Gianni) /(themselves or
by someone else) for him(Gianni) .’
(2)
Chi si
fece radere Gianni?
Who REFL made shave Gianni
‘Whoi made Gianni shave *him(Gianni) /himselfi ?’
‘Who made Gianni shave (himself or by someone else) for him(Gianni) ?’
(3)
Giannii sii
fece radere.
Giannii REFLi made shave
‘Gianni had someone shave him(Gianni) .’
Indeed, (3) is the reflexive version of (4), that is to say, the one adopted when
Gianni himself takes Pietro’s place, i.e. when the referent of the direct object
coincides with that of the subject (Gianni fece radere Gianni, ‘Gianni had Gianni shaved’).
(4)
Gianni fece radere Pietro.
Gianni made shave Pietro
‘Gianni had Pietro shaved.’
Chomsky himself agrees that this happens by analogy with the simpler, noncausative series (5a–c). The language acquirer can observe that when Gianni
replaces Pietro in (5a) the result (5b) is systematically converted into (5c),
where the reflexive pronoun is coreferent with the subject:
(5)
a.
Gianni rade
Pietro.
Gianni shaves Pietro
‘Gianni shaves Pietro.’
18. I refer to the examples given in the Italian edition cited in the References, as I will derive some
further examples from these later, which will be more reliable if I use my mother tongue.
Chomsky himself (p. 19 and 20) suggests that Italian and Spanish have similar behavior in
this field, and (since UG is supposed to be valid for both languages) considerations similar to
those we will make for Italian should be possible for the Spanish examples given by Chomsky
in the original version.
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
b.
c.
Gianni rade
Gianni.
Gianni shaves Gianni
↓
Giannii sii
rade.
Giannii REFLi shaves
‘Gianni shaves himself.’
Consequently, he can operate analogically on (4) as soon as its subject also
takes on the function of direct object, as in (6):
(6)
Gianni fece radere Gianni.
Gianni made shave Gianni
‘Gianni had Gianni shaved.’
↓
(3)
Giannii sii
fece radere.
Giannii REFLi made shave
‘Gianni had himself shaved.’
But Chomsky crucially claims that analogy is not extended further, being impossible to interpret the reflexive pronoun in (1) and (2) as a direct object
coreferent with the subject Gianni. In fact, if the pronoun si in (1) has to be
coreferent with Gianni, as in (3), then it will be a dative and not a direct object. As for (2), if ever the sentence were acceptable with si as a direct object,
the referent of the reflexive object would not be Gianni, but the boys (Chii sii
fece radere Giannij ?). Speakers know this and discard (1) and (2), at least in
the interpretation where si is a direct object coreferent with Gianni. Thus, the
usual question arises: “How does the child learning Spanish or Italian know
such facts as these?” (1988: 20). Chomsky claims that “the examples reveal
once again the hopelessness of an attempt to account for [. . .] the use of language in terms of analogy” (1988: 20), so that “analogy seems to be a useless
concept, invoked simply as an expression of ignorance as to what the operative
principles and processes really are” (1988: 24). Since the acquirer receives no
direct information on the matter, such as, “You should not (analogically) extend the interpretation of (1) and (2) from that of (3),” then, Chomsky argues,
we are obliged to hypothesize that the mechanisms that rule the reference of
the reflexive pronoun pre-exist in the brain.
However, it is possible to reason differently. First, it must be considered that
the material available to children acquiring Italian is richer. Beside those cited
by Chomsky, they also hear many utterances like the following:19
19. Utterance (11) is reported by Chomsky, but its potential usefulness for the analogical interpretation of (1) is not mentioned.
The relation between mind and language
(7)
Gianni si
fece radere il collo.
Gianni REFL made shave the neck
‘Gianni had someone shave his(Gianni’s) neck.’
(8)
Gianni si
fece portare i
ragazzi.
Gianni REFL made bring
the boys
‘Gianni had the boys brought to him.’
(9)
Gianni si
fece radere dai
ragazzi.
Gianni REFL made shave by-the boys
‘Gianni had the boys shave him.’
(10)
Gianni si
fece radere per i
ragazzi.
Gianni REFL made shave for the boys
‘Gianni had someone shave him for the boys.’
(11)
Gianni fece radersi
i
ragazzi.
Gianni made shave-REFL the boys
‘Gianni had the boys shave themselves.’
(12)
I
ragazzi si
fecero radere.
the boys
REFL made shave
‘The boys had someone shave them.’
363
From each of these, children learn something they can use analogically. From
utterances like (7) and (8) they learn that when a nominal is added after the
causative construction, the nominal itself becomes a direct object, while the
clitic si can still refer to the subject, but only as an oblique case. This is more
than sufficient to provide, by analogy, the only possible interpretation of (1).
But even if this were not enough, children still have many available examples
similar to (9) and (10), from which they learn that in order for the clitic si to
remain a direct object when another nominal is added, the nominal itself must
be marked in a different way (e.g., as an Agent, a Beneficiary, etc.). In order to
exclude the clitic in (1) as coreferent with the object (i ragazzi), children can
take utterances like (11) into account, which make it evident that in such cases
the clitic is placed after the verb. Finally, even if it were not evident that in (1) i
ragazzi is the direct object (the subject being Gianni), children can deduce this
information from utterances like (12), which show that when something like i
ragazzi is the subject, it requires morphological agreement on the verb.
This analogical framework is reinforced by utterances with complex verbal
forms, where the alternatives between clitic objects or obliques, between the
clitic’s appearing before or after the verb, and between its coreferring with
the causer or the causee are kept clearly separate and cannot lead to the same
doubts as the simple verbal forms because they select different auxiliaries:
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
(13)
Gianni ha fatto radersii
i
ragazzii / *è fatto
Gianni has made shave-REFLi the boysi
*is made
radersi
i
ragazzi.
shave-REFL the boys
‘Gianni has had the boys shave themselves.’
(14)
è fatto radere i
ragazzi / *si
ha
Giannii sii
Giannii REFLi is made shave the boys
*REFL has
fatto radere i
ragazzi.
made shave the boys
‘Gianni has had someone shave the boys for him.’
As for utterance (2), Chomsky claims that analogy should lead speakers to accept it as “for which person X, Gianni managed that X shaved Gianni?” based
on utterances like (3) where the reflexive pronoun is coreferent with the subject (Gianni). But he ignores the fact that the interrogative version (transformation?) of (3), that speakers certainly have wide experience of, is actually
(15):
(3)
fece radere.
Giannii sii
Giannii REFLi made shave
‘Gianni had someone shave him.’
↓
(15)
fece radere?
Chii sii
Whoi REFLi made shave
‘Who had someone shave him?’
On the contrary, (2) appears to be something quite different, with one more
participant, and it is not plain to see why it should be interpreted analogically
with (3). For the cases where a participant is added, speakers can actually draw
a comparison with utterances like (16), where that participant is morphosyntactically marked in a different way, so that the clitic remains free to have direct
object function and corefer with the subject:
(16)
fece radere Giannii ?
Da chi sii
by who REFLi made shave Giannii
‘Who had Gianni shave him(Gianni) ?’
It would be useful to render completely explicit the role played, through analogy, by the existence of many other types of utterances that belong to the linguistic material available to the child, such as the following, which we can only
rapidly mention here.
The relation between mind and language
(17)
Gianni fece cantare i
ragazzi.
Gianni made sing
the boys
‘Gianni made the boys sing.’
(18)
Chii fece cantare Giannij ?
Giannij
whoi made sing
‘Whoi made Giannij sing?’
(19)
Chij fece cantare i
ragazzii ?
whoj made sing
the boysi
‘Whoi made the boysj sing?’
365
The correspondence between (17) and (18)–(19) makes it clear that the interrogative pronoun never refers to the nominal constituent of the assertive clause
that appears also in the interrogative clause, but always to the constituent which
no longer appears in full after the interrogative transformation. This is also evident in causative utterances like (20):
(20)
Chi fece radersi
Gianni?
who made shave-REFL Gianni
‘Who made Gianni shave himself(not Gianni) ?’
In order to interpret (20), utterances like the following, which we cannot dwell
upon, may also be very useful:
(21)
Chi si
è fatto portare Gianni?
who REFL is made bring
Gianni
‘Who(OBJ) did Gianni(SUBJ) have brought to him (Gianni) ?’/
‘Who(SUBJ) did Gianni(OBJ) have brought to him (not Gianni) ?’
(22)
Cosa si
è fatto radere Gianni?
what REFL is made shave Gianni
‘What did Gianni have someone shave for him(Gianni) ?’
(23)
Cosa si
è fatto cantare Gianni?
what REFL is made sing
Gianni
‘What did Gianni have someone sing for him(Gianni) ?’
(24)
Chi ha fatto radersi
Gianni?
who has made shave-REFL Gianni
‘Who(SUBJ) made Gianni(OBJ) shave himself(Gianni) ?’/
‘Who(OBJ) made Gianni(SUBJ) shave himself(not Gianni) ?’
In short, children and speakers in general can operate perfectly by analogy because analogy can take into consideration a far greater quantity and variety
of information than that imagined by Chomsky. Moreover, analogy constantly
works with significant support from the interpretation of reality. When they
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
hear utterances like the ones above, children always have contexts at their disposal, which allow them to understand what the meanings of the utterances
may be. For example, when someone produces an utterance like (1), the situation usually makes it clear that Gianni was interested in the boys’ shaving
themselves. An utterance like (16), on the other hand, always appears in contexts where someone has shaved Gianni; and an utterance like (21) appears in
contexts where someone had Gianni brought to him(someone) , or contexts where
Gianni had someone brought to him(Gianni) ; and so on.
Now, this reality that surrounds linguistic activity, is indeed extremely complex and, so far, cannot be formalized. Effectively it is Reality tout court, reality in general. It cannot be expressed by means of simple rules, despite fully
existing; we have evidence of this and no onus probandi that it exists. The interpretation of the surrounding reality leads the child to understand something,
in grammatical terms, along these lines: “In the utterance Gianni si fece radere
i ragazzi, the clitic si does not refer to Gianni as Patient and Object, because
there is already i ragazzi as Patient and Object; if the boys were not Patient but
Agent, one would say dai ragazzi (= by the boys)”. The experience of every
child supports such knowledge through thousands of examples.
Reasoning as if language were acquired in total isolation from reality is very
frequent in the literature, and lies at the very foundation of beliefs about innate
UG. For example, according to Morgan (1986) English sentences like
(25)
The dog bites the cat.
do not help the child to know whether the language is SVO or OVS because
they contain no information about which of the two NPs is the Subject and
which the Object. Morgan ventures as far as claiming that this information
would be available to children only if such utterances were presented to them
with some form of “bracketing” of the VP, as in (26):
(26)
The dog [bites the cat].
For this reason, he underlines the importance of pauses and intonation to indicate syntactic boundaries. It is significant that Vivian Cook and Mark Newson,
in preparing a well-known synthesis on the matter we are discussing, have
taken his argument so seriously as to use it as a step of their own reasoning.20
This can only happen if one completely ignores that the child’s experience is
full of utterances like the teacher punishes the pupils or mum prepares a pudding, where knowledge of the world and the semantics of the utterance (when
not morphological agreement itself) are more than enough to make it clear who
20. See Cook and Newson (1996: 117).
The relation between mind and language
367
is the subject and who/what is the object, ultimately rendering completely obvious the syntactic datum which is not signaled by (25) – in other words, that
the subject normally precedes the verb, while the object follows it.
Summarizing, there are at least two components at work in the comprehension of linguistic utterances, namely comprehension of syntax and comprehension of reality. Of the two, reality is by far the most complex. Consequently, as
we have said in the previous section, perhaps we should not wonder how children manage to master the syntax of a language, but rather how they manage
(conceptually) to master reality.21 Moreover, it is worth underlining that the
knowledge of syntax is probably less important than the knowledge of reality
in the process of interpretation of utterances. If this is true, and if we want to explain how children understand linguistic utterances, it may be insufficient, and
consequently misleading, to concentrate on syntax as if reality did not exist.
It is worth quoting what Slobin (1975: 30) writes on the matter:
Most studies of child language comprehension put the child into a situation
where there are no contextual cues to the meaning of utterances, but in real life,
there is little reason for a preschool child to rely heavily on syntactic factors to
determine the basic propositional and referential meaning of sentences which
he hears. Judith Johnston and I have gone through transcripts of adult speech to
children between the ages of two and five, in Turkish and English, looking for
sentences which could be open to misinterpretation if the child lacked basic syntactic knowledge, such as the roles of word order and inflections. We found almost no instances of an adult utterance which could possibly be misinterpreted.
That is, the overwhelming majority of utterances were clearly interpretable in
context, requiring only knowledge of word meanings and the normal relations
between actors, actions, and objects in the world.
So, besides analogy, there is another very important thing that those who
try to demonstrate the existence of an innate UG tend to ignore, or at least to
underestimate, namely, the capacity of the child, and the speaker in general, to
have recourse to the knowledge of reality.
I think one of the many examples of this attitude can be seen in the argumentation proposed by Hoekstra and Kooij (1988: 38),22 that we resume here.
Let us consider utterances (27) and (28):
(27)
Where did John say that we had to get off the bus?
21. See Arbib and Hill (1988: 60).
22. Arbib and Hill (1988), besides providing an alternative proposal to the innatist one to explain
the acquisition of negative information (which is the topic of our Section 4.2.2.), attack this
example in a radical way, lamenting the complete absence of evidence that small children are
really able to decide on the ambiguity or otherwise of (27) and (28). Although we agree with
their caution, here we keep on a strictly linguistic level, that they do not directly consider.
(See also Lombardi Vallauri (1999: 718)).
368
(28)
Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
Where did John ask whether we had to get off the bus?
Every speaker is aware that (27) is ambiguous, while (28) is not, because in (27)
the interrogative adverb where can belong either to the main or to the subordinate clause, while in (28) it can only belong to the main clause. Consequently,
in (27) the question can be either about the place where John has spoken to
say that we had to get off, or about the place where, in John’s opinion, we had
to get off. On the contrary, in (28) the question is only about the place where
John has spoken. According to our authors, the knowledge of these facts is not
accessible to the speakers through induction, and consequently must depend on
some innate instruction.
If we consider the utterances from a purely syntactic point of view, we may
agree. But as soon as one takes into account some semantics and some of the
extralinguistic reality to which the semantics of the utterances refers, one can
see that they contain the reason why the speaker/acquirer knows that (27) can
be ambiguous and (28) cannot. The difference resides in the different meanings
of the verbs say and ask, therefore in their being suitable for different states of
affairs. The two interpretations of (27) may be paraphrased as follows:
(27)
a.
b.
Where did John speak, to say that we have to get off the bus?
According to what John said, where do we have to get off the
bus?
Both alternatives make sense. The same doesn’t hold for the corresponding
interpretations of (28):
(28)
a. Where did John speak, to ask whether we had to get off the bus?
b. *According to what John asked, where did we have to get off the
bus?
In fact, since it doesn’t have the sense of “asserting,” the verb to ask cannot
mean a speech act from which information arises (in assertive modality) about
where it is better to get off. It is possible to wonder where John has asked a
question, but it is not possible to wonder what instructions his question contained about where to get off; this is because a question, in virtue of its illocutionary status, does not contain any instructions. This is why (28) has only one
interpretation. World knowledge, and in particular that of the difference between a question and a statement, allows the speaker to exclude the alternative
meaning of (28) despite “syntactic possibility.” In order to do this, there is really no need to imagine that the brain hosts a grammatical module pre-existent
to all experience.
The relation between mind and language
369
4.2.2. Negative information. Another element usually underestimated by
those who support the innateness of grammar23 is the possibility of infering
the ungrammaticality of a structure from its systematic absence. In addition to
the connection between reality, meaning, and syntax, it is reasonable to think
that analogy a negativo is also at work, that is to say, the capacity to infer that
some elements do not belong to the language, simply because such elements
never appear, even if there are no explicit warnings of their being unacceptable
in the stimulus. This is a sore point in the innatist tradition because the argument recurs everywhere, and always naïvely, to say the least. Chomsky (1965:
25) sets out the question by dividing the information received by children into
two types: “positive” and “negative.” The former consists of utterances produced in their presence without warning of their acceptability, and the latter
consists of utterances for which they receive explicit warning of unacceptability, by way of some kind of correction. Even Wexler and Culicover (1980:
63), who devote a ponderous study to the formal conditions constraining the
acquisition of grammars, make the following statement in a paragraph titled
Negative information:
If the learner hears a sentence, he can assume that it is in his language. But if he
does not hear a sentence, it does not imply that the sentence is ungrammatical.
Possibly he has simply not yet heard the sentence.
And, more importantly, all the following discussion addresses the problem
(much studied elsewhere24 ) of if, and in what way, parents present children
with elements of negative evaluation about unacceptable language structures,
mainly (but not only) by correcting them explicitly. In such arguments it is
never hypothesized that the repeated, systematic and infallible absence of a
structure, in spite of thousands of potential opportunities for occurrence, may
at length lead the acquirer to the certitude that such a structure does not belong
to the language.25
For example, one may see some naïvety in the argument of Hoekstra and
Kooij (1988: 37), where innate UG is credited the fact that an English speaker,
aware of the acceptability of (29a–c), is also aware of the unacceptability of
structures like (29d), although nobody ever signals this explicitly:
23. A promising comment by Chomsky (1981a: 8–9), mentioning indirect negative evidence, has
remained poorly developed, perhaps because it fails to grasp the full relevance of the question,
only mentioning the idea that the presence of certain structures with certain functions may
induce the child to exclude the possibility of the same function being expressed by different
structures.
24. Scholars usually focus on the idea that such negative information, based on corrections or
failure of comprehension on the part of parents, is almost absent in the child’s experience.
See, for example, Pinker (1984: 29).
25. This is the “entrenchment” pattern described by Braine and Brooks (1995).
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(29)
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a. He proved the theorem.
b. his proof of the theorem
c. He proved the theorem wrong.
d. *his proof of the theorem wrong
Over time English speaking children are exposed to thousands of sentences
with a transitive verb (e.g., prove) where the object is followed by a predicative
complement (e.g., wrong), but they never hear an example where the same happens after a nominalization (e.g., proof ). So, why should they take the initiative
to consider acceptable a structure that never appears in their experience, and in
whose place (i.e., with the same function), they can observe other structures,
such as (29e), (29f) or (29g)?26
(29)
e.
f.
g.
his proof/proving that the theorem was wrong
his proof/proving of the theorem’s wrongness/falsity
his having proved the theorem wrong
Another example of the underestimation of how significant the constant repetition of a pattern can be is the opinion that the fixing of the pro-drop parameter cannot happen without a pre-existing, innate principle.27 It is well known
that there are (“non-pro-drop”) languages where the subject must always be
expressed and (“pro-drop”) languages where it can be omitted. Children orientate themselves in their language on the basis of what they hear. According
to Cook and Newson (1996), who cite Chomsky a number of times, the only
way a child can understand how things are arranged in his/her language is a
parametric predisposition with two values: pro-drop and non-pro-drop:
Children must be learning either from positive evidence alone or from indirect
negative evidence, such as the lack of null-subject sentences in English. This
is possible only if their choice is circumscribed; if they know there are a few
possibilities, say pro-drop and non-pro-drop, they only require evidence to tell
them which one they have encountered.28
Hyams (1986) goes as far as suggesting that, in acquirers of English, the fixing
of the innate non-pro-drop parameter may be triggered by the existence of expletive subjects. Sentences like once upon a time there were three bears or it’s
time for bed would be necessary for the child to understand that the expression
26. This is the “preemption” pattern described by Braine and Brooks (1995). For an accurate discussion of this kind of induction on the part of children, see also Bowerman (1988), Tomasello
(2000a, 2000b, 2003), Brooks and Tomasello (1999), Brooks, Tomasello et al. (1999).
27. See Hyams (1986) and Cook and Newson (1988: 110–111).
28. Cook and Newson (1988: 110–111). Italics mine.
The relation between mind and language
371
of subjects is obligatory in English. I think that the very reason why Englishspeaking children tend to always produce sentences with subjects is simply the
fact that the thousands of sentences they hear every day all contain overt subjects. Similarly, Italian or Spanish children feel that they do not always need
to use the subject because the subject is not always present in the sentences
they hear. I do not see why an innate switch in the brain is necessary for that.
In the same way, because all the cars they see have wheels, children are led
to put wheels on all the cars they draw; while since only some houses have a
chimney, they learn that they can draw a house with or without one.
Moreover, it seems to me that Italian or Spanish children acquire (it not
being innate) something that is much more complex than the simple notion
that the subject is optional: They learn when and when not to make it explicit,
according to the familiarity of the referent established by the context, and to
the informational status they want to give to the subject.
One of the most frequent examples in support of the innateness of grammar
is the principle of structure-dependency, whereby language knowledge is based
on the structural relations within utterances, and not on simple word sequentiality. Cook and Newson (1996: 3–13, 30, etc.) give it great importance.29 For
example (pp. 82–83, 293), an English utterance like (30) would be recognized
as unacceptable precisely because it violates the innate principle of structuredependency:
(30)
*Is Sam is the cat that brown?
We can accept calling what is violated by an utterance like (30) the “structuredependency principle”, but this does not imply that it constitutes innate linguistic knowledge.
On the contrary, it may be observed that, if it is innate, the principle of
structure-dependency is not specifically linguistic because a great quantity of
what we do is structure-dependent: We continuously manage reality in terms of
complex objects, material or abstract, considering them as structured units and,
so to say, further “grouping” them according to the structural relations we see
among them. For example, when setting a table, we do not treat objects one at
a time and based on the order they originally occupy in space (= in drawers and
cupboards); on the contrary if, say, we want to change or eliminate someone’s
place at table we move the whole setting, which we interpret as a complex and
structured entity. Many other similar examples may be given.30 When we see
29. See also Cook (1991: 104–105). Many recent works by some authoritative representatives
of the theory use this argument in a central role to support the innatist thesis; see also, for
instance, Moro (2002: 43–44).
30. See on the matter some observations by Jean Piaget in Piattelli Palmarini (ed.)(1979), and
Anderson (1983).
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all the parts of a bicycle laid out, do we perhaps not realize that they make up
something other than a bicycle assembled according to its correct structure? Of
course those who produce bicycles do it in a way which depends on structure,
and we all recognize a bicycle that can work from one whose parts are assembled higgledy-piggledy; but there is no need to postulate the existence of an
innate Bicycle Organization Device.
However, the innatist position underlines the fact that children hear lots of
sentences respecting structure-dependency, but they are never exposed to the
explicit censure of sentences like (30), which violate it. Thus, they have no
direct information on the prohibition to violate structure-dependency, and consequently this knowledge could only be innate.
This is a very weak argument. Children see that objects always fall downwards; nobody ever explains to them that objects do not fall upwards, but they
know it all the same, and they are fascinated by colored balloons filled with
helium, precisely because they do not go downwards. The fact that something
always happens and something else never does is very instructive and allows
for generalizations. The very often-cited argument that children have no elements to exclude wrong structures because negative stimuli (parents quoting
a wrong sentence to censure it) are extremely rare in their experience is only
valid if we imagine the child as being completely unconscious and incapable
of generalizations such as Gold’s (1967) algorithm,31 which compares input
data with the grammars and accepts all grammars that do not violate the input.
But there must be a difference between a grammar that does not violate any
data while producing innumerable structures that are not to be found in the input and another grammar that, besides not violating the data, does not produce
any structure unforeseen by the input either! If something never happens in a
corpus of thousands and thousands of utterances where it could theoretically
happen, the child (unlike Gold’s algorithm) ends by inducing that such a thing
is excluded.
However, let us see in detail an example of alleged effectiveness of the innate
principle of structure-dependency in the linguistic faculty of the child. Crain
and Nakayama (1987)32 observe that, in English, it is possible to derive (32)
from (31).
31. See Gleitman and Wanner (1982: 5–7). Sampson (2002: 96–97) suggests an interesting comparison between language acquisition and “the adult scientist seeking to understand a previously unexplored domain of natural phenomena,” who obviously cannot “observe violations
of laws of nature, accompanied by indicators that these are negative rather than positive examples [. . .]”, and still can formulate a theory excluding all irrelevant facts. See also Pullum
and Scholz (2002: 31).
32. Cited in Akmajian et al. (1984). The example and the argument actually derive from Chomsky
(1980); see Pullum and Scholz (2002: 39).
The relation between mind and language
(31)
The man is tall.
(32)
Is the man tall?
373
From this, the child may deduce that the rule for making a question from an
assertive clause is: Take the first verb and put it in first position. The result
would be that one would derive (34) from (33).
(33)
The man who is tall is in the room.
(34)
*Is the man who tall is in the room?
Now, “children do not produce questions like the ill-formed (34). Therefore, it
appears that children know that structure, and not just the more salient linear
order property of sentences, is relevant in the formation of yes/no questions.”33
It is surely true that a small child, in order to build the well-formed interrogative clause with verb fronting (Is the man who is tall in the room?), as well
as having a remarkably precocious or warped mind, must somehow know that
(33) incorporates some structure and is not a mere list of words. In particular, he/she must know that who is tall is something that has unity and cannot
be damaged at will. But, crucially, why should we think that such knowledge
is innate? Isn’t it true that the speech to which the child is exposed is full of
examples of structure-dependency? Isn’t the child often exposed to a sort of
commutation test, such as:
(35)
– Beware of the man with the gun.
– Which man? The tall one?
– The one who has a gun.
Commutation tests like (35) may well make the child understand that the relative clause (the thing introduced by who) constitutes a unit. Besides, English
speaking children are exposed to thousands of occurrences of the relative pronoun, among which not even one is followed by a predicative adjective. After
the relative pronoun comes the verb (or a Subject, if the relative is not a subject). Consequently, there is no need for innate knowledge to judge that who
tall in (34) is not acceptable.
Moreover, the semantics of utterances can very well lead to understanding
that the function of relative clauses is to specify or restrict the meaning of their
heads, while the main predication is effected by the main clause. Therefore,
after hearing a number of relative constructions, it is possible to work out that
an interrogative sentence must be derived from them without touching the relative clause. This is because what one wants to turn into a question is not the
33. Akmajian et al. (1984: 470).
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
content expressed by the verb in the relative clause, but rather the content of
the main verb. In fact, all the questions containing a relative clause that a child
may encounter will be questions where the relative clause is left untouched and
fronting (or the do/does construction) takes place in the main clause. This is already apparent in sentences that, as Crain and Nakayama’s example illustrates,
contain the verbal form is in both clauses. But there are also many main-relative
clause constructions in the language where this is even more evident because
the two verbs are different, thus having different semantic content.
Children may well be exposed to examples containing elements that can prevent them from making mistakes. There will be no discussion here of Chomsky’s probably exaggerated assertion (in Piattelli Palmarini 1980: 40) that “a
person might go through much or all of his life without ever having been exposed to relevant evidence” (such as ex. 38 or 42 below) that may lead him/her
to know that the verb to be fronted in order to make a question out of a relative construction is that of the main clause. For its confutation, see Pullum and
Scholz (2002), Sampson (2002). Still, the issue is controversial (see Legate and
Yang 2002: 155). The points we make here are obviously relevant if Chomsky’s
claim is wrong, but may still be significant if it is right. Quite evidently, if the
content of the main verb in (36) has to be turned into a question, its interrogative version cannot be (37), where the verb of the relative clause undergoes the
interrogative transformation:
(36)
(37)
The man who owns a dog sleeps in the room.
*Does the man who own a dog sleeps in the room?
Rather it must be:
(38)
Does the man who owns a dog sleep in the room?
One may object that neither of the verbs here admits fronting and that the example is not significant because, containing no verb movement, it does not
allow us to act by analogy when forming the interrogative version of utterance
(33). So, let us examine a “pitfall” case, where the verb in the relative clause
admits fronting, while the main verb does not, thus encouraging the mistake
represented by (34):
(39)
The man who is in the room owns a dog.
If we applied the “rule” that disregards the structure, and moved the first verb
to the first position we would obtain:
(40)
*Is the man who in the room owns a dog?
The relation between mind and language
375
Such an error is excluded quite simply because no child has reason to think that
when you move the verb is to first position what becomes interrogative is the
content of the verb owns. The rule followed by the child is actually something
like this: when allowed by the verb, moving it to the first position has the effect
of interrogating ITS content (and not the content of another verb). In attaining
this conclusion, children may be helped by the fact that the interrogative version of an utterance such as (41) is (42) because it is the idea of being old that
has to be questioned, and not that of having won the battle.
(41)
The man who won the battle is old.
(42)
Is the man who won the battle old?
But even if such sentences are rare or absent in the stimulus, children confronted with this problem for the first time (as perhaps those tested by Crain
and Nakayama) can easily imagine that if one wants to turn the main clause into
an interrogative clause, one has to move to first position the verb of the main
clause, and not that of the relative clause. The same happens, for instance, with
negation: If you want to negate the content of a verb, you put the negation close
to it, and not close to another verb in the same sentence.
This explains why children know that one has to respect relative clauses
when building interrogative utterances. So, we can certainly refer to a principle
and call it structure-dependency principle, but there is no reason to believe it
is innate, since the information required for its acquisition is present in the
stimulus.
Let us finally consider an authoritative example of alleged phonologic innateness. Chomsky (1988: 25) claims:
the person who has acquired knowledge of a language has quite specific knowledge about facts that transcend his or her experience, for example, about which
nonexistent forms are possible words and which are not. Consider the forms
strid and bnid. Speakers of English have not heard either of these forms, but
they know that strid is a possible word, perhaps the name of some exotic fruit
they have not seen before, but bnid, though pronounceable, is not a possible
word of the language. Speakers of Arabic, in contrast, know that bnid is a possible word and strid is not; speakers of Spanish know that neither strid nor bnid
is a possible word of their language. The facts can be explained in terms of rules
of sound structure that the language learner comes to know in the course of acquiring the language.
Acquisition of the rules of sound structure, in turn, depends on fixed principles
governing possible sound systems for human languages, the elements of which
they are constituted, the manner of their combination and the modifications they
may undergo in various contexts. These principles are common to English, Arabic, Spanish, and all other human languages and are used unconsciously by a
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
person acquiring any of these languages; the principles belong to the innate
language faculty, a component of the mind/brain.
Although this argument is proposed in favor of the innateness hypothesis, it can
obviously be seen as supporting the hypothesis of acquisition from the environment. Chomsky is aware that different languages have different sound systems,
and must elaborate some explanation to reconcile this fact with the existence
of an innate universal phonology. Such an explanation should be based on the
idea that if the speakers can exclude sequences they have never heard without anybody having ever told them that such sequences are unacceptable, the
only reason why they can do this is some innate knowledge. But it must be
observed that every speaker listens very many times a day to all the possible
sound sequences of their language. This makes them able to recognize them
and to develop the awareness that they know them all. In other words, they can
distinguish what is part of the language and what is not, exactly as the director
of a school recognizes all the pupils and, upon running into some new face in
the corridor, understands it is probably a newcomer or an occasional visitor.
The same holds for the commander of a battalion, a prison governor, etc. An
English speaker, having never met an initial bn- sequence, is simply able to say,
“I’ve never heard this one, and if it’s new to me who listens to English all the
time, then it can’t be English.” And they really don’t need anyone to tell them,
“initial bn- is unacceptable.” I think this is the most economical explanation, far
more so than imagining that the brain contains deep, innate rules stipulating the
unacceptability of initial bn- in a phonological system that presents the “deep
characters” of English, while at the same time admitting it in a phonological
system such as that of Arabic.
4.2.3. Cumbersome innate information. Some rules put forward for UG are
more complex than those of any single language because they are the result
of trying to prove that black is white and white black in order to account for
all languages at the same time, something a child can happily ignore. A good
example is the rule for the reference of reflexive elements (the “Governing Category Parameter”, see Section 4.1) proposed by Wexler and Manzini (1987).
They wonder: How do children learning English set the parameter on the most
restrictive value, since all the examples they hear are also compatible with
the most extensive value? We can answer that, because of the absolute nonoccurrence of cases b, c, d, and e, a child can obviously deduce that they are
not grammatical. This is, in fact, what any person who does not feel the need to
postulate an innate UG will conclude: The systematic absence of an option can
be interpreted by the child as evidence of its unavailability. In order to avoid this
explanation, Wexler and Manzini are forced to accept (and they imagine that it
resides in the brain) the so-called subset principle, which would lead children
The relation between mind and language
377
to test certain values of the parameter before others, so that English children
are content with the most restrictive one as soon as they have experimented
with it, and raise no further questions. Children acquiring another language, on
the contrary, change their minds and set the further value of the parameter because they hear positive examples that oblige them to do so. In short, children
do not immediately make hypothesis (e), rather they first check (a), and only
extend the range of possibilities if they find violations. This is very reasonable,
but it is not clear why we should make the hypothesis that children have all
these pre-set and so to say built-in options, when it is sufficient for them to
produce all the structures they hear by imitation, and not to produce those they
do not hear. We have already observed that such a hypothesis presupposes that
the brain has a high capacity for containing data, and a poor capacity for processing them. We will explore some possible consequences of this assumption
in the next section.
4.3. More general arguments
4.3.1. A greater stock. As we have observed, the innate-UG thesis, being
based (although not explicitly) on the hypothesis that the mind/brain is a machine with an unlimited hard disk and a weak CPU, a hypothesis logically
bound to the idea of Principles and Parameters, ends up justifying further conjectures. We briefly return to the question here, simply hinting at one of the
possible alternative scenarios. For example, what if the hard disk were able to
store an even greater amount of information? What if children acquiring language were able to (and actually did) store not only elements of the lexicon,
but also most of the sentences they heard – if, at least in a certain stage, instead
of the rules of the grammar, they had many sentences stored “whole” and used
them as patterns for the production of similar sentences by simply substituting
the lexical elements? It would be possible to hypothesize that when producing a sentence like dad is bad, a child does not apply any rule (i.e., the child
doesn’t “dress” an abstract syntactic structure in the mind with appropriate lexical items), but simply substitutes dad and bad for the lexical entries of some
sample sentence (such as mom is good) that is in memory and that works as
a concrete pattern for countless other sentences.34 Then dad is bad may also
34. A similar hypothesis is often exposed in M. Tomasello’s works and corroborated experimentally for the production of children’s first complex sentences by Diessel and Tomasello (2000,
2001). It is not excluded that such a process can also take place in foreign language acquisition. I probably learned French in this way. My father used to sing French boy-scouts songs
with us children (and translate them for us). We soon learned them by heart. Thirty songs represent a considerable inventory of sentences. Long before opening our first French grammar
book, my brother and I were able to speak French by analogy, simply producing innumerable
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
join the set of sample sentences, which might become extremely extensive and
varied, thus rendering the task of creating new sentences most straightforward.
The growth of language would resemble that of an oil stain expanding partly
from its centre through the addition of sentences with new structures that the
child hears from adults, and partly from the periphery, through the continuous
creation (by the child), and immediately subsequent annexation, of sentences
built on the pattern of already existing ones. After a while, of course, there
would be no more need to expand the number of sample sentences. A certain
number would be enough to set off all necessary creative automatisms.
It must be stressed that, in order to replace mom with dad and good with bad,
there is no need for the children to have a theory of lexical categories like nouns
and adjectives. Rather, it is sufficient that they have an idea of the meaning of
each word, conceived as its usefulness in actual situations. In other words, it is
sufficient to be eager to say that dad is bad. Now, it is reasonable to think that in
the child the attribution of meaning to a certain number of words precedes any
beginning of syntactic organization, this being probably reflected in the stage
(that all children go through) of one-word utterances, and partly also in the
stages of two- and three-word utterances with poor syntactic organization.35
4.3.2. Brain compulsion, or optional respect of legality? A problem for UG
also arises from the fact that in most cases, speakers are perfectly able to understand the meanings of grammatically incorrect utterances. This happens frequently for utterances produced by non-native speakers, where, although they
violate the grammar rules, it is clear what they are “getting at”. More generally,
producing unacceptable utterances is very easy, and we are all able to do it. In
short, grammar- (and UG-) violating utterances are both producible and processable; the brain is perfectly able to produce them and, in innumerable cases,
to understand much or even all of their meaning. Their supposed “incompatibility” with the brain seems limited to the fact that the latter can recognize
their not belonging to a certain language. This seems to undermine the idea of
innate grammar. If it were innate, it would be very difficult or even impossible for us to violate it, exactly as we cannot hear acoustic frequencies that are
higher or lower than a certain range, or as we cannot prevent our nervous systems from upturning the images that form on our retinas, as we cannot prevent
it from secreting adrenalin in case of danger, or other hormones in the presence
of an attractive person, etc. These are processes determined by innate characsentences whose structure was identical to that of at least one of the sentences we knew by
heart from one of the songs. Later on, occasional contact with French speakers allowed us to
extend our data base slightly, and when at the age of eleven we started studying that language
at school, the teacher couldn’t believe we had never been taught French before.
35. See Anderson (1983: 270–271).
The relation between mind and language
379
ters, which consequently constrain us in an unavoidable way. We are able to do
certain things, and we cannot do them in a way other than the way we are “programmed” to. Grammar, on the contrary, seems to be a matter of legality, rather
than of capacity. We recognize that certain structures (i.e., certain patterns of
behaviour) are “illegal”, that is to say, different from the conventions ruling that
aspect of our behaviour, but nothing within us prevents us from adopting them.
At most it is a preference, but surely not a biological obligation. Respecting
the rules of UG is far more similar to respecting the rules of basketball than to
the fact that, to move on the basketball court, we adopt an upright position and
activate our five senses. In short, if grammar is as constraining and unavoidable
as the inversion of the visual image, at the most it is so for the community that
adopts it, but not for the individual. However, the seat of innatism has to be the
individual, otherwise it is no longer innatism, but environmental learning.
The innatist thesis confuses the level of the community with the level of the
individual. The inviolability of grammar rules only holds within the community
(and even there, in a variable and relative way), by way of convention; the
individual conforms to them for the sake of the community and in order to
avoid friction with it, but the brain would be perfectly able to produce any
odd-sounding utterance prohibited by any putative UG.36
We can wonder what would happen if a community of children were to grow
linguistically isolated from birth, for instance brought up by a group of mute
or aphasic nurses. How would they set the parameters? Would they be able
to develop a language, in spite of the absence of necessary information? They
would all walk (even if the nurses weren’t able to) and carry out other innate
human functions, but linguistically would they falter, because innate grammar
is only potential? The idea of principles and parameters, conceived to reconcile
innateness with language diversity, ends by describing quite a strange innate
capacity, which, after all, only allows us to do what we . . . learn. One can guess
that those children would probably develop some communication system, not
necessarily verbal and articulated, and even less necessarily conforming to the
latest version of UG.37 A very primitive communication system would evolve,
36. Fabio Rossi points out to me that if we change the analogy from the examples above to
others such as the use of our legs, it becomes conceivable that UG is as innate as walking,
and like walking it may admit some dispreferred options, such as hopping on one foot. The
objection is good, and the whole problem obviously deserves further in-depth analysis; but
Daniele Portolan’s (personal communication) reponse to Rossi is also true: Hopping on one
foot is not a disorderly and imperfect use of our legs, rather a “further” use, organized and
highly voluntary, to be compared with speaking with gestures, rather than with “grammarless”
speaking.
37. The study of pidgins and creole languages obviously provides hypotheses on this kind of
problem. However, even when the grammar to be acquired is so “rarefied”, it cannot be said
to be completely lacking.
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Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
becoming more powerful and sophisticated through the successive history of
that community, down the generations. But this is actually nothing more than
an opinion, derived from the persuasion that language is a product of history,
belonging to the phylogenetic development of communities, not a product of
individual, ontogenetic development.
4.3.3. A weaker UG is superfluous to language justification. UG may also
be conceived more soberly in a “weak” and extremely generic form, and therefore less specifically linguistic than in the Chomskyan tradition: as the very
general fact that a language cannot do without a syntax characterized by regularity and recursive patterns. And it may be argued that this is already specifically linguistic. But even such an extremely general feature is not necessarily
to be regarded as determined by some innate configuration of the brain. In
fact, even without postulating the innateness of grammar, many reasons why
language tends to assume some universal characteristics, independent of single languages, are already apparent, not only on pragmatic grounds and as a
consequence of speech organ physiology, but also and above all for structural
reasons, deriving from the very definition of a system designed for communication. In order for languages to be confined within quite narrow margins of
variation, there is no need to hypothesize an innate grammar in the brain. If
we admit the existence of some ten constraints like the ones listed below (but
many other, more detailed ones may be called upon38 ), we will already have
narrowed the field considerably:
Constraint 1. Monogenesis:
All languages still carry within them the remnants of the first one,
which prevented them from varying in a completely free way.
Constraint 2. Structure of reality and social interaction:
A verbal language is far more efficient than a proxemic/gestural one.
This is both because of the variety of distinctions it allows us to manage, and because it allows communication in discontinuous environments, keeping eyes and hands free for other tasks.39
Constraint 3. a. Structure of the articulatory and auditory organs, that do not
allow an infinite number of distinctions to be in operation, and b. Cognition of reality as composed by many entities:
38. See Lombardi Vallauri (1999) for an overview of the constraints that bind any form of articulate language, thus determining linguistic universals.
39. See Lombardi Vallauri (1999: 726).
The relation between mind and language
381
In order to produce as many words as requested by our conceptualization of reality, phonemes are not sufficient, and something like double
articulation is required.
Constraint 4. Cognition of reality as made up of at least entities, states and
processes:
Necessity for any language to be equipped with (if not precisely nouns
and verbs) instruments for designation and predication.
Constraint 5. Cognition of reality as composed of entities that interact with
each other in relations and happenings:
Since the relations between entities are to be expressed, instruments
are needed to express the relations between words denoting those entities. The nature of such instruments is determined by Constraint 6.
Constraint 6. Development of the signal in time, and its linearity:
Relations between words can only be expressed through linearity –
that is, either morphologically: bound relational morphemes agglutinated to the lexical ones; or syntactically: free relational morphemes,
grammatical exploitation of constituent order (= “configurationality”).
Constraint 7. Existence of events and change in time, consequently the distinction between what is known because it has already appeared and what
appears for the first time and is therefore new:
Every language needs means to express given and new, topic and focus, presupposed and asserted information.
Constraint 8. Limited short-term memory and limited computing capacity:
A set of rules is needed. It is not feasible (in terms of time and energy)
to invent a new method on the spot every time one has to translate
a thought into an utterance. It is better to have routines one can rely
upon, in order to “work automatically”. The demand for a structured
system already arises in ensuring the simple (and purely interior) expressive function of language: Grammar is needed in so far as it is an
automatized structure one can rely upon in order not to be obliged to
invent every time a means by which to express one’s thoughts, like,
for example, the painter who has to choose the lines and colors for a
picture. The reasons for the establishment of regularity, no matter of
what kind, are therefore, above all, economic in nature. It evidently
allows us to reduce the mental load during coding. If speakers were
obliged, for every utterance, to decide ex novo where to put every element of the sentence and how to signal their functions, they would
consume far more energy and would probably speak far more slowly
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than they do, relying on the habit of conforming to the already established rules of grammar, not to mention how difficult the task of
interpretation would be for the addressee (Constraint 9).
Constraint 9. Communicative function:
A set of rules is needed. In order to be understood, it is not enough to
throw a mass of words/concepts, whose reciprocal relations we perceive somewhat idiosyncratically, at our addressee. We must do this
in a conventionalized way where intended relations can be understood
intersubjectivally. Therefore, in order to communicate, there must be
agreement not only on the meaning of lexical items, but also on the
interpretation to be given to the relations among them when they appear in utterances: this is to say, to a set of grammatical signals. In
short, the presence of grammar rules (morphology and syntax) is rendered unavoidable by the function of sharing language. Language is
an intersubjective activity which, in order to work, presupposes the
agreement of two or more subjects on the modalities of its working. If
such an agreement were lacking, the language would no longer work,
just as any legal system (the laws of a State or the rules of baseball)
wouldn’t, because for the purposes of such systems, working differently for each single participant means not working at all. This means
language has to be a system rather than a series of spontaneous behavioral acts that may vary freely on the initiative of single individuals,
and therefore be unforeseeable and unmanageable by the others. In
other words, its nature as an intersubjective and shared device requires
the presence of regularity. This is a good reason why language tends
to regularize itself more than many other aspects of human behavior. Therefore, such regularity should not necessarily be interpreted as
being genetically motivated. Of course the conformation of the brain
allows it to manage regularity and recursion, but it does not require
language to use them. Such a requirement is, on the contrary, imposed
from outside.40
If we refer to the last two constraints, we can say that in any intersubjective communication system there is the need for a fair amount of regularity.
This suffices to ground the universality of grammar qua talis, but not of the
same grammar in all languages. Some concrete aspects of grammars may be
40. Something similar is implied by Searle (1972: 34–35) when he claims that “functional phenomena [. . .] function the way they do because we assign them a certain status,” and that this
status requires “a system of rules,” which he calls “constitutive rules” because “such rules
do not merely regulate existing activities, [. . .] but they create the very possibility of such
activities.”
The relation between mind and language
383
universal because of constraints like 1–7 above, but for the rest every language
chooses which regularities to adopt as a consequance of the interaction of many
internal and external factors, which we do not dwell upon here.
5. Conclusion
The appeal of biological orientation in generative grammar, as presented for
instance by Moro (1988: IX – X), is the assumption that (our translation) “grammar must not only account in a unitary way for all facts of the different languages (descriptive adequacy), but it must above all provide a model of language acquisition capability exclusive to our species (explanatory adequacy).”
In view of what we have been saying here, it seems to me that the presupposition contained in this kind of statement, namely the existence of a specifically
grammatical capability at the basis of language acquisition, still needs appropriate foundation. Moreover, it seems to me that in spite of extensive research
and formulation efforts, such an assumption is as weakly founded today as it
was at its early stages, particularly with regards to the PSA, which has not
made any progress since its first formulations; at the same time, it is scarcely
confirmed a posteriori by a satisfactory unitary model of UG. All this makes it
increasingly hazardous, decades on, to go on proposing it as a self-evident and,
so to say, “starting point” hypothesis.
Besides, since the first formulation of the problem, there have been attempts
to propose language acquisition models that do not presuppose an innate grammar, some of which are extremely interesting. We cannot go into the theses, upholding Piaget’s position, and which include those of Martin Braine, John Anderson, Michael Arbib and Jane Hill, Melissa Bowerman, Michael Tomasello
and many others who deserve great attention41 . Clearly, if language is not conceived as the product of specifically and exclusively devoted faculties, but as
the product of general faculties of the mind, then it can be regarded not only as
a “window on the Language Faculty” but also as a “window on the Mind”, and
this surely doesn’t make it less interesting.
The aim of this work was, however, simply to specify a possible destruens
and strictly linguistic argument against the very central innatist argument of
the poverty of the stimulus which, in spite of its frequent general formulations,
is far less demonstrated than is usually presumed, and is perhaps accepted by
many with excessive confidence42 . It is perhaps not completely wrong to call
41. See for example Piattelli Palmarini (ed.) (1979), Anderson (1983), Braine (1971a, 1971b,
1992); Arbib and Hill (1988); Bowerman (1988), Tomasello (2000a, 2000b, 2003). Some of
them, like Braine’s proposal on the so-called discovery procedures, seem to be surprisingly
corroborated by recent developments of neurological sciences, such as the so-called “neural
darwinism” by G. M. Edelman, and others.
384
Edoardo Lombardi Vallauri
it back into question, thus challenging the presumed specifically linguistic and
even grammatical nature of the biological bases of language, in particular those
that are seen as located in the brain.
Università Roma Tre
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