Abstract
The idea that the form of linguistic expressions is modulated by output requirements is widely accepted in current approaches in linguistics, including those taking “extremely nativist” positions. Thus, for instance, the Minimalist Program developed in recent years by Chomsky (1995) holds that language form is strongly determined by the requirements imposed on it by the two main interfaces it links: on the one hand the conceptual-intentional domain of meaning, and on the other, the sensorimotor domain by means of which linguistic expressions are externalized. Within psycholinguistics, consideration of the impact that processing requirements have on the form of sentences can be traced back to Yngve's Depth Hypothesis (Yngve, 1960), which identified an asymmetry in the incidence of left-branching and right-branching grammatical structures in English due to processing constraints. Thomas Bever (Bever, 1970), in a seminal paper generally acknowledged to pioneer modern psycholinguistics, put forth and discussed the hypothesis that the form of language reflects general cognitive laws, in such a way that mechanisms of language learning and processing partially determine the form of grammar. Fodor et al. (1974) integrated ideas in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics to explain what was called language performance, that is, language production and comprehension. At the time, the possibility that the form of grammatical structures might be determined by domain-general behavioral systems was thought of as an important challenge to linguistics. However, after decades of interdisciplinary language study, this view it is now endorsed to varying degrees by most linguists and cognitive scientists, including those in “classic theories” which also hold the view that certain central architectural aspects of human language are not dependent on experience but rather imposed on it by organism-internal biases (Berwick et al., 2013).
Highlights
The question, is not whether output/input factors related to the production and perception of language modulates linguistic form, but rather how they do it and whether that is all there is to linguistic form
The discussion is adequately framed within the general theme of the relative weight that organism internal factors and experience have in cognition
The paper opens with some reference to findings on motion perception and object-face recognition, and it summarizes the state of the art acknowledging that “While such accounts don’t deny innate factors in perception, they are notable in ascribing a central role for experience in development and in adult performance.”
Summary
The question, is not whether output/input factors related to the production and perception (i.e., externalization) of language modulates linguistic form, but rather how they do it and whether that is all there is to linguistic form. One is whether externalization (production) demands can fully account for language form, or whether externalization demands modulate language form in concurrence with other factors, some of which are organism internal and previous to experience, as in other aspects of cognition.
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