Abstract
Like those birds born to chirp, humans are born to parse; children are predisposed to assign linguistic structures to the amorphous externalization of the thoughts that we encounter. This yields a view of variable properties quite different from one based on parameters defined at Universal Grammar (UG). Our approach to language acquisition makes two contributions to Minimalist thinking. First, in accordance with general Minimalist goals, we minimize the pre-wired components of internal languages, dispensing with three separate, central entities: parameters, an evaluation metric for rating the generative capacity of grammars, and any independent parsing mechanism. Instead, children use their internal grammar to parse the ambient external language they experience. UG is “open,” consistent with what children learn through parsing. Second, our understanding of language acquisition yields a new view of variable properties, properties that occur only in certain languages. Under this open UG vision, specific elements of I-languages arise in response to new parses. Both external and internal languages play crucial, interacting roles: unstructured, amorphous external language is parsed and a structured internal language system results. My Born to parse (Lightfoot 2020) explores case studies that show innovative parses of external language shaping the history of languages. I discuss 1) how children learn through parsing, 2) the role of parsing at the two interfaces between syntactic structure and the externalization system (sound or sign) and logical form, 3) language change, and 4) variable linguistic properties seen through the lens of an open UG. This, in turn, yields a view of variable properties akin to that of evolutionary biologists working on Darwin’s finches; see section 7.
Highlights
Like those birds born to chirp, humans are born to parse; children are predisposed to assign linguistic structures to the amorphous externalization of the thoughts that we encounter
English has developed complex expressions like DP[DP[The man from LA] D‘s[NPspeech to us]] and other Germanic languages have not, in the same way that English has developed “stranded” prepositions, unlike other European internal language systems, The author was spoken to but not L’auteur a eté parle à. Children use those structures that are expressed by the external language they hear, i.e., required for the analysis of the expressions experienced
English Ilanguage systems have developed idiosyncratic properties; we need an approach to variation that makes this understandable; E-language shifts, leading to new parses, new I-languages
Summary
In (1) the verb saw “projects” to a Verb Phrase containing a direct object, the Determiner Phrase a man with a jacket. Just as displaced interrogative elements may be understood in a wide range of positions (6), (9) illustrates the wide range of contexts where VPs may be deleted but the empty VP is always the complement of the overt, adjacent word to its left, as required by the deletion principle in (8), and always understood as “leave for Rio.” (9a) shows two conjoined clauses, (9b,c) shows a main clause and a subordinate clause in different orders, (9d) shows separate sentences, (9e) shows the ellipsed VP embedded within a very complex structure, and (9f) shows an ellipsed VP with no spoken antecedent at all; the syntactic condition is met; the ellipsed phrase is licensed by the overt, adjacent don’t, of which it acts as the complement, perhaps understood to mean “Don’t tickle me.”. Lightfoot 2020 changes that in ways that I will sketch briefly here
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