Principles & Parameters Approach in Linguistics - I

1. Principles & Parameters Approach in Linguistics - I Bibhuti Bhusan Mahapatra

2. Poverty of stimulus: • A child learns a language with only a limited exposure to it; that is, being exposed to a limited number of utterances, which are often fragmented. But, the child comes up with new utterances which it might not have heard of and uses in a new context. How does that happen? Some factors of Language learning: i. Positive evidence ii. Direct negative evidence iii. Indirect negative evidence

3. Some examples of the factors i. Positive evidence SVO order, fixing a parameter Preposition may imply SVO order and Comp-initial structure. ii. Direct Negative evidence Correction by the speech community (play : play-ed : : *bring : bring-ed) iii. Indirect Negative evidence • “if certain structure or rules failed to be exemplified in relatively simple expressions where they would be expected to be found then a (possibly marked) option is selected excluding them in the grammar, so that a kind of “negative evidence” can be available even without correction, adverse reactions etc.” • “There is a good reason to believe that direct negative evidence is not necessary for language acquisition, but indirect negative evidence may be relevant.” (Chomsky: 1981: 9)

4. Modularity i) Lexicon ii) Syntax a) Categorial component/ X-bar theory b) Transformational component (Move-α) iii) Logical Form iv) Phonetic Form

5. Features of Modules Syntax S-structure PF LF • “The rules of syntax generate S-structures.” • “Among the LF-rules is the rule of quantifier movement QR (quantifier rule).” • “… it is reasonable to suppose that the LF rules are subject to very little variation among languages.”

6. Subsystems of Principles i. θ-theory ii. Control-theory iii. Case-theory iv. Government-theory v. Binding-theory vi. Bounding- theory

7. Thank You