Chomsky ’ s Innatism

1. Chomsky’s Innatism

2. Behaviourist position (Skinner, 1950s) • Main behaviourist claim: all learning, including language learning, is the product of habit formation. • We learn through imitation and repetition. • Emphasis on the importance of the observable in any theory claiming to be scientific (empirical view). • Since only behaviour is observable, we must study learning by observing behaviour patterns.

3. Behaviourist position • We learn through: • Imitation + reinforcement (praise or success in communication) = habit formation. • According to this view Stimulus-Response-Reinforcement IS the learning mechanism. • Language is considered ‘verbal behaviour’. • Children practise and repeat what they hear, and in this way learn their L1.

4. Who is Chomsky? • You’ve probably heard of him already • Noam Chomsky, 1928-present, American • Professor in Linguistics at MIT • (more famous outside our field as a political commentator) • Chomsky is a syntactician • His work on syntax led him to believe language is innate • Chomsky is a theorist, not an experimenter • But others have applied his theories

5. What is Chomsky’s theory? • An innatist theory • “Nature” over “Nurture” • According to Chomsky, crucial parts of the human language ability are built into the brain – part of our biology, programmed into our genes

6. Chomsky V Skinner • Remember Skinner? • Late 1950s: environment-only theories of language acquisition in the ascendant • Chomsky (1959) reviewed Skinner’s book Verbal Behaviour • Chomsky found flaws in Skinner’s mechanism • Chomsky argued that environment-only mechanisms couldn’t possibly account for language acquisition

7. How so? Evidence for Chomskyan innatism (and against environment-only mechanisms)

8. The brain: missing evidence? • Neuroscience could be convincing… • …but our knowledge of the brain is not that advanced. • We cannot see the proposed language structures • Even if we could, we could not establish that these structures were innate

9. Creativity • Language is CREATIVE • We can produce and understand an infinite range of novel grammatical sentences • Children do not imitate a fixed repertoire of sentences • Chomsky: creativity is not explicable if language is learnt just from the environment

10. Degeneracy of the data • The child’s language data is degenerate • Ungrammatical utterances are frequent and are not marked out as “wrong” • Therefore it is impossible to deduce the grammar of a language, if your only input data is utterances from the environment

11. Poverty of the stimulus • Chomskyan syntax: more complex than people had previously thought syntax to be! • The grammar of a sentence can’t be deduced from its surface form • The schoolchildren were difficult to teach • The schoolchildren were eager to learn • So environmental language data is insufficient: grammar can’t be learned from it

12. Misleading feedback • Adults correct children for truth, not grammaticality • … so the feedback data children receive does not actually tell them how well they are doing • Misleading feedback makes it even harder for children to learn grammar

13. Evidence from Creoles • Pidgin: simple language that arise in contact situations • Creole: a fully complex language descended from a pidgin • The grammar of a Creole is created by children as they learn it • This is evidence that this grammar comes from some innate source

14. Universal features of language • Languages vary greatly, but have some common features • Example: nouns and verbs • Example: structure dependency • Grammatical rules rely on the structure of the sentence, not the surface order of the words

15. Structure dependency • Mr Smith was a good man • Was Mr Smith a good man? • Mr Smith was a good man • Man good a was Smith Mr? • Joe was a good man • A Joe was good man?

16. Universals explained • Universals unexpected if language is learnt from the environment alone • Universals due to innate language • Or due to something else? • Universal functions of language • Universal forms of cognition

17. The theory: innate language knowledge • If children don’t/can’t learn the rules of grammar from the language around them in their environment… • … then these rules must have been in-born • This explains all the difficulties we found with environment-only acquisition theories

18. The Essentials Key points of Chomskyan Theory

19. Innatism • What is innate? • Chomsky: the essential core of grammar is innate • A generative grammar that can produce an infinite range of novel sentences • The innate system for language learning • Language Acquisition Device (LAD) • Universal Grammar (UG) • “bioprogram” • “language organ” • “language instinct”

20. Autonomy Inside the Chomskyan brain

21. Is language autonomous? • Chomsky thinks that language is autonomous in the mind • This means that language (i.e. UG) is a separate system in the brain’s architecture • It is connected to, but does not interact extensively with, other sorts of thought

22. (The diagram)

23. Maturation • Chomsky’s theory is a maturationist theory • Language acquisition runs to an innate biological timetable • UG matures in the brain and is slowly released in predetermined stages as the child grows • This linguistic maturation is analogous to the sexual maturation we go through at puberty… • … and is just as involuntary! • Only the younger ones were at the right stage of maturation

24. Language is species-specific • UG and the language system only occur in the human brain • Therefore, no other animals can acquire a human language • But is this solely due to their lesser intelligence? • Can chimps learn language? We’ll look at this next term!

25. Evolution?? • How did UG get there in the first place? • There is much disagreement on this • Chomsky: not by natural selection! • Chomsky, Bickerton: a single lucky language mutation (a “Hopeful Monster”) • Pinker: by normal natural selection

26. Universal Grammar • But what exactly is Universal Grammar? • What knowledge does it contain? • How does it function in the process of language acquisition? www.english-tc.tk