Why Only Us Berwick, Robert C; Chomsky, Noam
2015, 2016-01-15
eBook
Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it.
There is substantial evidence that the human language capacity (LC) is a species-specific biological property, essentially unique to humans, invariant among human groups, and dissociated from other ...cognitive systems. Each language, an instantiation of LC, consists of a generative procedure that yields a discrete infinity of hierarchically structured expressions with semantic interpretations, hence a kind of “language of thought” (LOT), along with an operation of externalization (EXT) to some sensory-motor system, typically sound. There is mounting evidence that generation of LOT observes language-independent principles of computational efficiency and is based on the simplest computational operations, and that EXT is an ancillary process not entering into the core semantic properties of LOT and is the primary locus of the apparent complexity, diversity, and mutability of language. These conclusions are not surprising, since the internal system is acquired virtually without evidence in fundamental respects, and EXT relates it to sensory-motor systems that are unrelated to it. Even such properties as the linear order of words appear to be reflexes of the sensory motor system, not available to generation of LOT. The limited evidence from the evolutionary record lends support to these conclusions, suggesting that LC emerged with
Homo sapiens
or not long after, and has not evolved since human groups dispersed.
•The capacity for language emerged along with or not long after the appearance of Homo sapiens.•The complexity/variety of languages derives from changes since the shared capacity evolved.•The Basic ...Property provides the means to yield a digitally infinite array of hierarchically structured expressions with interpretations at thought and (usually) sound.•By virtue of the Basic Property each I-language is a system of ‘audible signs for thought’.•The rules of language are sensitive to structural properties but not linear order.
Inquiry into the evolution of some biological system evidently can proceed only as far as its nature is understood. Lacking such understanding, its manifestations are likely to appear to be chaotic, highly variable, and lacking significant general properties; and, accordingly, study of its evolution cannot be seriously undertaken. These truisms hold of the study of the human faculty of language FL just as for other biological systems. As discussed below, FL appears to be a shared human capacity in essentials, with options of variation of a kind to which we return.
After a long lapse, the problem of evolution of language arose in mid-twentieth century when the first efforts were made to construct accounts of FL as a biological object, internal to an individual, with particular internal languages – I-languages in current terminology – as manifestations of FL.
This is an annotated transcription of Noam Chomsky's keynote presentation at the University of Reading, in May 2017. Here, Chomsky reviews some foundational aspects of the theory of structure ...building: essentially, Merge and Label. The aim is to eliminate what he refers to as extensions of Merge which are seemingly incompatible with the Strong Minimalist Thesis while still accounting for recursive structure, displacement, and reconstruction (as the main empirical goals of the Minimalist Program). These include sidewards movement, multi-dominance, and late- Merge; all of which have been developed throughout the life cycle of transformational generative grammar. Furthermore, Chomsky formulates a series of conditions that an adequate formulation of Merge must meet, and sketches how the aforementioned extensions may violate these conditions. Chomsky arrives at a formulation of an operation MERGE, which maintains the core properties of Merge but is further restricted by limitations over what MERGE can do to the workspaces where syntactic operations apply.
The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an "organ of the body," along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) ...languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language- or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena.
The goal of theory construction is explanation: for language, theory for particular languages (grammar) and for the faculty of language FoL (the innate endowment for language acquisition). A ...primitive notion of simplicity of grammars is number of symbols, but this is too crude. An improved measure distinguishes grammars that capture genuine properties of language from those that do not. The theory of FoL must meet the empirical conditions of learnability (under extreme poverty of stimulus), and evolvability (given the limited but not insignificant evidence available). Recent work provides promising insights into how these twin conditions may be satisfied.
A comprehensive account of the neurobiological basis of language, arguing that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language.
Language makes us human. It is ...an intrinsic part of us, although we seldom think about it. Language is also an extremely complex entity with subcomponents responsible for its phonological, syntactic, and semantic aspects. In this landmark work, Angela Friederici offers a comprehensive account of these subcomponents and how they are integrated. Tracing the neurobiological basis of language across brain regions in humans and other primate species, she argues that species-specific brain differences may be at the root of the human capacity for language.
Friederici shows which brain regions support the different language processes and, more important, how these brain regions are connected structurally and functionally to make language processes that take place in milliseconds possible. She finds that one particular brain structure (a white matter dorsal tract), connecting syntax-relevant brain regions, is present only in the mature human brain and only weakly present in other primate brains. Is this the “missing link” that explains humans' capacity for language?
Friederici describes the basic language functions and their brain basis; the language networks connecting different language-related brain regions; the brain basis of language acquisition during early childhood and when learning a second language, proposing a neurocognitive model of the ontogeny of language; and the evolution of language and underlying neural constraints. She finds that it is the information exchange between the relevant brain regions, supported by the white matter tract, that is the crucial factor in both language development and evolution.
In their Essay on the evolution of human language, Martins and Boeckx seek to refute what they call the "half-Merge fallacy"-the conclusion that the most elementary computational operation for human ...language syntax, binary set formation, or "Merge," evolved in a single step. We show that their argument collapses. It is based on a serious misunderstanding of binary set formation as well as formal language theory. Furthermore, their specific evolutionary scenario counterproposal for a "two-step" evolution of Merge does not work. Although we agree with their Essay on several points, including that there must have been many steps in the evolution of human language and the importance of understanding how language and language syntax are implemented in the brain, we disagree that there is any justification, empirical or conceptual, for the decomposition of binary set formation into separate steps.
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