Entangled Parametric Hierarchies: Problems for an Overspecified Universal Grammar

Cedric Boeckx,Evelina Leivada

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072357

Abstract

This study addresses the feasibility of the classical notion of parameter in linguistic theory from the perspective of parametric hierarchies. A novel program-based analysis is implemented in order to show certain empirical problems related to these hierarchies. The program was developed on the basis of an enriched data base spanning 23 contemporary and 5 ancient languages. The empirical issues uncovered cast doubt on classical parametric models of language acquisition as well as on the conceptualization of an overspecified Universal Grammar that has parameters among its primitives. Pinpointing these issues leads to the proposal that (i) the (bio)logical problem of language acquisition does not amount to a process of triggering innately pre-wired values of parameters and (ii) it paves the way for viewing language, epigenetic (‘parametric’) variation as an externalization-related epiphenomenon, whose learning component may be more important than what sometimes is assumed.

Highlights

Ever since Chomsky’s introduction of the terms ‘principle’ and ‘parameter’, Universal Grammar (UG), conceived as the initial state of the human language faculty, has been described in terms of properties with fixed values and as such invariant across languages (‘principles’), and parameters, which are initially unvalued – parameterizable – principles that come equipped with a finite set of possible values and that await setting on the basis of the primary linguistic data that a child is exposed to [1]
The present study aims to offer arguments against a parametric approach to UG from a third perspective: the nature of parametric hierarchies – inherent to the notion of parameter, by exploiting robust findings in the field of parametric approaches to UG that articulate the relations and hierarchies between parameters in sufficient detail so as to allow us to falsify them [6]
What was not shown in the case of figure 1, but is shown through the program analysis for figure 2, is that languages differ yet across another dimension: the number of setability paths that each language makes available for the same parameter

Summary

Introduction

Ever since Chomsky’s introduction of the terms ‘principle’ and ‘parameter’, Universal Grammar (UG), conceived as the initial state of the human language faculty, has been described in terms of properties with fixed values and as such invariant across languages (‘principles’), and parameters, which are initially unvalued – parameterizable – principles that come equipped with a finite set of possible values and that await setting on the basis of the primary linguistic data that a child is exposed to [1] This conception of the initial state of human language faculty (FL) has since been criticized within a generativist perspective from both a conceptual [2] and an empirical point of view [3], and outside the generativist camp [4], [5]. The observation that macroparameters ‘leak’, resulting in microparameters, has led to a number of proposals that question the feasibility of the classical notion of parameters, suggesting that this concept should be abandoned (e.g., [2], [3], [5], [7,8,9,10])

Methods

Results

Conclusion