Human Language Faculty Research Articles

Simplicity of what? A case study from generative linguistics

The Minimalist Program in generative linguistics is predicated on the idea that simplicity is a defining property of the human language faculty, on the one hand; on the other, a central aim of linguistic theorising. Worryingly, however, justifications for either claim are hard to come by in the literature. We sketch a proposal that would allow for both shortcomings to be addressed, and that furthermore honours the program’s declared commitment to naturalism. We begin by teasing apart and clarifying the different conceptions of simplicity underlying generative inquiry, in both ontological and theoretical capacities. We then trace a path towards a more robust justification for each type of simplicity principle, drawing on recent work in cognitive science and in philosophy of science, respectively. The resulting proposal hinges on the idea that simplicity is an evolved, virtuous cognitive bias—one that is a condition of our scientific understanding and, ultimately, of successful scientific practice. Finally, we make a case for why minimalists should take this proposal seriously, on the one hand; and for why generative linguistics would make for an interesting case study for philosophy of science, on the other.

Computational Psycholinguistics

Computational Psycholinguistics

Communotion and the Evolution of Human Language

The past two decades has witnessed the controversy revolving around the issue of human language evolution, leading to the emergence of two schools of thought: the biolinguistic school and the sociocultural school. The former maintains that the human faculty of language is characterized by the innate recursion which stems from the neurobiological foundation of language. The latter argues that it is the social communication that accounts for the evolution of human language. This article attempts to scrutinize the beginning point of language evolution and production (i.e. the “communicative notion”, blended as “communotion”) within social communication of humans, and explore therein human language faculty of recursion with respect to the infinite hierarchical structures of human language. Human language as a tool serving human expression and communication has evolved for what is to be expressed and communicated, and developed from and with the communotion. The crucial transition between the non-verbal communotion and verbal expression has long been ignored in linguistics. This article argues that human language has evolved for, from and with the communotion of humans. The communotion is what is targeted to get expressed and communicated. It is kindled in the mind of the speaker at the outset of social communication, impelling him to communicate with others. As the target to be expressed, the well-structured elements of the communotion eventually wed with vocal sounds and give birth to the “verbal notion” --- a binary code for human language. Human language develops with the development of the communotion in the course of serving the purpose of expressing it with the vocal sounds. The human faculty of language with respect to the innate and creative recursion of the infinite hierarchical structures is in reality the faculty of the verbal manifestation of the hierarchically structured elements of the communotion.

A model for L1 grammatical attrition

This article proposes a formal model of the human language faculty that accommodates the possibility of ‘attrition’ (modification or loss) of morphosyntactic properties in a first language. Modeling L1 grammatical attrition entails a quite fundamental paradox: if the structure of the language faculty in principle allows for attrition of morphosyntax, why is it apparently so heavily constrained and rarely attested? We demonstrate that the attrition paradox can be resolved with a model that integrates a formally explicit generative grammar (eschewing classical parameters in favor of functional feature assemblies; see Chomsky, 2000, 2001) into a generalized model of language acquisition that decouples linguistic input from acquisitional intake (following Lidz and Gagliardi, 2015). This implementation makes specific predictions about the input and intake conditions that favor and disfavor L1 attrition. We explore these predictions for one of the most widely studied areas of attrition, namely the realization of pronominals.

Neuronal Encoding in a High-Level Auditory Area: From Sequential Order of Elements to Grammatical Structure.

Sensitivity to the sequential structure of communication sounds is fundamental not only for language comprehension in humans but also for song recognition in songbirds. By quantifying single-unit responses, we first assessed whether the sequential order of song elements, called syllables, in conspecific songs is encoded in a secondary auditory cortex-like region of the zebra finch brain. Based on a habituation/dishabituation paradigm, we show that, after multiple repetitions of the same conspecific song, rearranging syllable order reinstated strong responses. A large proportion of neurons showed sensitivity to song context in which syllables occurred providing support for the nonlinear processing of syllable sequences. Sensitivity to the temporal order of items within a sequence should enable learning its underlying structure, an ability considered a core mechanism of the human language faculty. We show that repetitions of songs that were ordered according to a specific grammatical structure (i.e., ABAB or AABB structures; A and B denoting song syllables) led to different responses in both anesthetized and awake birds. Once responses were decreased due to song repetitions, the transition from one structure to the other could affect the firing rates and/or the spike patterns. Our results suggest that detection was based on local differences rather than encoding of the global song structure as a whole. Our study demonstrates that a high-level auditory region provides neuronal mechanisms to help discriminate stimuli that differ in their sequential structure.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Sequence processing has been proposed as a potential precursor of language syntax. As a sequencing operation, the encoding of the temporal order of items within a sequence may help in recognition of relationships between adjacent items and in learning the underlying structure. Taking advantage of the stimulus-specific adaptation phenomenon observed in a high-level auditory region of the zebra finch brain, we addressed this question at the neuronal level. Reordering elements within conspecific songs reinstated robust responses. Neurons also detected changes in the structure of artificial songs, and this detection depended on local transitions between adjacent or nonadjacent syllables. These findings establish the songbird as a model system for deciphering the mechanisms underlying sequence processing at the single-cell level.

The Siege of Paris

In a response to Cedric Boeckx, Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky defend and update their argument that the human language faculty is a species-specific property, with no known group differences and little variation.

Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax ed. by Éric Mathieu, Robert Truswell

Reviewed by: Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax ed. by Éric Mathieu, Robert Truswell Chris H. Reintges Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax. Ed. by Éric Mathieu and Robert Truswell. (Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics 23.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. xxiii, 319. ISBN 9780198747840. $84 (Hb). The question of how and why languages change has intrigued linguists for a long time. One of the earliest attempts to address the issue scientifically was made by the Neogrammarians, who, in the 1870s, influentially argued that phonological changes, insofar as they apply mechanically, hold exceptionless (‘Aller lautwandel, soweit er mechanisch vor sich geht, vollzieht sich nach ausnahmslosen gesetzen’; Osthoff & Brugmann 1878:xiii). No such regularity and thoroughgoingness were credited to syntactic change, which was rather seen as an indicator of system-internal weaknesses. As Hermann Paul (1920 [1880]:251, §173), one of the foremost Neogrammarian authorities, put it boldly, ‘there is in language no precaution at all against the imperfections [Übelstände] that penetrate it, but only a reaction against those already present’ (my translation from the German). Paul’s statement sounds surprisingly controversial in the wake of the minimalist program and its foundational hypothesis that the human language faculty is ‘an optimal solution to minimal design specifications’ (Chomsky 2001:1). If the strong minimalist thesis were correct and sentence structures are built incrementally for effective use at the interfaces, why is it that the syntax itself is prone to change, at times with drastic consequences for the grammatical system at large? Over the past decades, much headway has been made in further understanding the logical problem of language change by integrating the conceptual and analytical tools of generative grammar into historical syntax research. Bridging synchrony and diachrony has been the raison d’être of the Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) conference, which is widely recognized as the main international platform for the formal linguistic study of historical grammar change. The chapters of the volume under review here were first presented at the fifteenth meeting of DiGS at the University of Ottawa, August 2013—four years before their publication in the ‘Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics’ series. The book’s title, Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax (MiCMaCDS), is a tad misleading, as the ongoing debate on micro- vs. macro-parametric variation does not play a prominent role, even though questions about diachronic parametric differences between language stages are dealt with. In the introductory chapter, the editors Éric Mathieu and Robert Truswell bring up some interesting conceptual and methodological issues. While one may agree with the observation that ‘modern syntactic theory gives us so little to work with’, it does not follow from it that ‘all syntactic change must ultimately reduce to lexical change’ (1). The version of diachronic minimalism presented here raises a concern about its aptness to capture the complexity of syntax change [End Page 380] in a descriptively and explanatorily adequate way. Alternatively, one may seriously entertain the hypothesis that the syntax can change endogenously, without interface pressures from the lexicon and the morphology playing any decisive role (Reintges 2009). Ailís Cournane sets out to revalidate and reposition the acquisitional perspective on historical grammar change, first articulated in Lightfoot’s (1979) groundbreaking work. From kindergarten age onward, the acquisition process is no longer restricted to the family, but also involves peer-to-peer learning. This allows for the possibility that input-divergent analyses survive. The child-innovator approach to grammatical change is not supported by the parallels between developmental patterns in acquisition and diachronic pathways, nor does the absence thereof necessarily falsify it. We are therefore left with a still unproven working hypothesis, albeit a widely accepted one. The editors did not wish to group the individual chapters of MiCMaCDS into thematic sections, as the reader might expect, insisting that the topics addressed are too intertwined, so that ‘any attempt to draw boundaries just leads to artificiality’ (4). However, it is the present reviewer’s impression that chapters cluster together in both subject matter and approach. The book includes four methodologically oriented chapters, which use mathematical and statistical tools and...

How (not) to argue for the Relation between Natural Sciences and Law

The thesis of an innate Universal Moral Grammar ('UMG') relies upon an analogy to the thesis of a universal grammar of the human faculty of language in linguistics. Drawing upon this faculty, John Mikhail, among others, argues that we humans have an inborn moral grammar. In this article this fascinating thesis is juxtaposed with critical perspectives and criticism from the various fields on which it is based. While there might be room for further research within the relevant fields in the natural sciences, the insecurities thus revealed forbid the use of UMG for law, something Mikhail actually suggested doing. Thus, the core argument of this article is that the relevance of UMG for law as claimed by Mikhail, for instance, to advise judges when identifying customary international (criminal) law or general principles of law, has to be rejected. To strengthen this argument I briefly elaborate on the is/ought debate and then engage in a thought experiment on Richard Dawkins' 'selfish gene' in order to address the relationship between natural sciences and law in more general terms as well.

Aparición y desarrollo del lenguaje humano

I will introduce the topic of this paper by demarcating the notion of “language”, as a necessary first step in order to know what we mean when dealing with its appearance and development in the human species. In a first approximation, I’ll highlight the fact of being a human capacity with an intermediary function between a physical signal (i.e., sounds) and an intentional state of the individual (i.e., meanings). Such an intermediary function and its associated features (arbitrariness, symbolism, compositionality, productivity, systematicity) require a multidisciplinary treatment with different levels of explanation (linguistic, psychological, neurobiological) that give rise to corresponding models of that human language capacity. I’ll then review those models and make them converge into the appropriate frame of reference –characteristic of the cognitive science– for dealing with the main topic of this paper. It will be pursued along two sections, one devoted to the acquisition of language by the individual and its development from an ontogenetic perspective; and the other just devoted to language appearance in the evolutionary history of the species and, hence, to its phylogenetic development. I’ll conclude by underlining the natural (innate for its most part) and specialized character of the human faculty of language, together with its specificity as a unique property of the human species, which points to its relatively sudden appearance and to the possibility of facing a genuine example of evolutionary discontinuity.

Neural substrates of word category information as the basis of syntactic processing.

The ability to use word category information (WCI) for syntactic structure building has been hypothesized to be the essence of human language faculty. The neural substrate of the ability of using the WCI for the complex syntactic hierarchical structure processing, however, is yet unknown. Therefore, we directly conducted an fMRI experiment by using a pseudo-Chinese artificial language with syntactic structures containing a center-embedded relative clause. Thirty non-Chinese native (Korean) speakers were randomly divided into two groups: one acquired WCI and WCI-based syntactic rules (the WCI group) before the scanning session, and the other did not (the non-WCI group). Both groups were required to judge the grammaticality of the testing sentences, with critical long-distance dependencies between two elements (the main verb and the relativizer). Behaviorally, the WCI group's accuracy was significantly higher and its reaction time was shorter. The scanning results showed that the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) and Broca's area were more strongly activated for the WCI group, and the dynamic causal modeling analyses revealed a distinct effective connectivity pattern for this group. Therefore, the present research, for the first time, reveals that the activation of and the functional connectivity between Broca's area and the left STG play a critical role in the ability of the rule-based use of the WCI which is crucial for complex hierarchical structure building, and might be substantially corresponding to the "labeling competence" within the linguistic framework.

Sobre linguagem, cognição e cérebro: Uma entrevista com Peter Hagoort

Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, founding Director of the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (DCCN, 1999), and professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University, all located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, PETER HAGOORT examines how the brain controls language production and comprehension. He was one of the first to integrate psychological theory and models from neuroscience in an attempt to understand how the human language faculty is instantiated in the brain.

Animal Studies in the Language Sciences

This paper explains how recent changes in the ways we study other animals to better understand the human faculty of language are indicative of changing narratives concerning the intelligence of other animals. Uexkull’s concept of Umwelt as a species-specific model of the world is essential to understanding the semiotic abilities of all organisms, including humans. From this follows the view that human language is primarily a cognitive tool for making models of the world. This view is consistent with the basic premises of cognitive linguistics. The rejection of behaviorism in linguistics represents a turning point in the history of animal studies. The resulting criticism of long-term studies with primates illustrates this shift concerning the study of wild animals within the language sciences and beyond. New insights in dog cognition and research on the processing of human language in canines are reflective of a change in focus away from anthropocentrism towards the species-specific semiotic abilities of animals in the twenty-first century. This new orientation away from comparing animal sign-systems to human language and the importance of studying intelligent wild animals in the wild instead of in captivity have lead to an important re-evaluation of our relationship with other animals and our views of their cognitive and semiotic profiles. This leads to questions such as what role non-human organisms can play in the language sciences, and what our limitations are of studying the sign systems of other animals. Recent research on the signifying abilities of wild dolphins, for instance, has identified a new set of characteristics by which to study intelligence in other species.

SRGAP2 and the gradual evolution of the modern human language faculty

In this paper we argue that vocal learning in Homo preceded the emergence of Anatomically Modern Humans. We build our claim on the evolutionary history of the SLIT-ROBO GTPase 2 gene (SRGAP2). The SLIT-ROBO pathway has been shown to have an important role in the context of vocal learning. Though the influence of particularly SRGAP2 in the emergence of this aspect of language has not gone unnoticed, recent results now allow us to articulate a mechanistic hypothesis of its role in the context of axon guidance. Specifically, SRGAP2C, a duplication of SRGAP2 crucially also found in Neanderthals and Denisovans, but not in extant mammals, inhibits the “original” SRGAP2A, which in turn modulates the axon guidance function of SLIT-ROBO. This, we claim, could have played a role in achieving the critical cortico-laryngeal connection of the vocal learning circuit. Our conclusions support the idea that complex vocal learning could already have been part of the arsenal of some of our extinct ancestors.

Beyond Recursion: Critique of Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch

In 2002, Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch published an article in which they introduced a distinction between properties of language that are exclusively part of human communication (i.e., the FLN) and those properties that might be shared with other species (i.e., the FLB). The sole property proposed for the FLN was recursion. Hauser et al. provided evidence for their position based on issues of evolution. The question of the required properties of human language is central to developing theories of language processing and acquisition. In the present critique of Hauser et al. we consider two examples from non-English languages that argue against the suggestion that recursion is the sole property within the human language faculty. These are i) agreement of inflectional morphemes across sentence constructions, and ii) synthetic one-word constructions.
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Morality between nativism and behaviorism: (Innate) intersubjectivity as a response to John Mikhail’s “universal moral grammar”.

The thesis of an innate Universal Moral Grammar (‘UMG’) relies upon an analogy to the thesis of a universal grammar of the human faculty of language in linguistics. Drawing upon this faculty, John Mikhail, among others, argues that we humans have an inborn moral grammar. In this article this fascinating thesis is juxtaposed with counter-perspectives from the various fields on which it is based, with substantial criticism from such fields as neurobiology, evolutionary and developmental psychology, and philosophy leaving ample space for doubting UMG and especially its claimed innateness. In methodological terms, Mikhail suggested using collective evidence from the various disciplines to prove the hypothesis of an innate UMG as there is not sufficient substantial support for UMG within each discipline alone. This multi- and interdisciplinary approach is also contested in this article. In lieu of UMG this article proposes thinking of intersubjectivity in order to deal with the origins and development of the biological set-up of human morality. In so doing it refers to Colwyn Trevarthen’s concept of primary, secondary, and tertiary intersubjectivity, which is gaining more and more in popularity. This enables us, so runs the argument, to align morality and its development with core concepts of (developmental) psychology. Such an understanding of morality furthermore lays bare the origins of moral normativity, which is essential in order to evaluate moral behavior.

„Il linguaggio tra natura e storia“ – sprachtheoretische und sprachphilosophische Reflexionen Tullio De Mauros im Spannungsfeld von europäischer Tradition und angloamerikanischem Sprachdiskurs

AbstractThis article analyses Tullio DeMauro’s linguistic thought and highlights the originality of his contribution to the current linguistic debate, which revolves around two essential questions: 1.What is special about the human language (faculty)?, and 2. Why and how did it arise in the selectional process of evolution? De Mauro’s approach to language between the poles of “nature” and “history” is contrasted with the basic tenets and ideas of two main paradigms of the contemporary Anglo-American linguistic discourse, namely Noam Chomsky’s generative approach (in its minimalist version) and Ray Jackendoff’s theory of the Tripartite Parallel Architecture of language. In this way, the peculiarities and the special value of De Mauro’s approach come to the fore, combining and synthesizing the European tradition of linguistic thought, especially with its strong semiotic imprint, and modern “naturalist” linguistic theory.

The Locus Preservation Hypothesis: Shared Linguistic Profiles across Developmental Disorders and the Resilient Part of the Human Language Faculty.

Grammatical markers are not uniformly impaired across speakers of different languages, even when speakers share a diagnosis and the marker in question is grammaticalized in a similar way in these languages. The aim of this work is to demarcate, from a cross-linguistic perspective, the linguistic phenotype of three genetically heterogeneous developmental disorders: specific language impairment, Down syndrome, and autism spectrum disorder. After a systematic review of linguistic profiles targeting mainly English-, Greek-, Catalan-, and Spanish-speaking populations with developmental disorders (n = 880), shared loci of impairment are identified and certain domains of grammar are shown to be more vulnerable than others. The distribution of impaired loci is captured by the Locus Preservation Hypothesis which suggests that specific parts of the language faculty are immune to impairment across developmental disorders. Through the Locus Preservation Hypothesis, a classical chicken and egg question can be addressed: Do poor conceptual resources and memory limitations result in an atypical grammar or does a grammatical breakdown lead to conceptual and memory limitations? Overall, certain morphological markers reveal themselves as highly susceptible to impairment, while syntactic operations are preserved, granting support to the first scenario. The origin of resilient syntax is explained from a phylogenetic perspective in connection to the “syntax-before-phonology” hypothesis.

Narrative Representation Theory: Identifying the human language with superstructure

Narrative Representation Theory (NRT), an evolved framework of Verse Analysis, has come into existence with the mission of explaining the operation of macro-systemic structure that could be hardwired in the brain. Based on the analyses of creoles or archetypal human languages, the theory puts forward the premise stating that the fundamental design of the human language faculty possesses the computational system for internalized discourse. The theory preserves the principles of Quint-patterning, Idea-formatting, N-ary-branching and X-numbering, complying respectively with the hierarchical orderings of constituency, the atomic elements of componentiality, the linear sequences of precedence and the specific measurement of terminal nodes. NRT tells that the macro-system of narrative superstructure must have emerged autonomously, yet links closely with the micro-system of phonology, morphology and syntax. This article explores for the first time scientific insights into the nature of human language, referring to recent research on the right cerebrum as well as on the prefrontal lobes of the brain, the relationship between mental disorders and their genetic deficiencies, and the investigations of human evolution during the period 200,000–40,000 years BP. All the converging evidence in biological sciences reinforces the hypothesis that the narrative superstructure of language faculty manifests as an inherent linguistic capacity in our mind.

The Faculty of Language Integrates the Two Core Systems of Number.

Only humans possess the faculty of language that allows an infinite array of hierarchically structured expressions (Hauser et al., 2002; Berwick and Chomsky, 2015). Similarly, humans have a capacity for infinite natural numbers, while all other species seem to lack such a capacity (Gelman and Gallistel, 1978; Dehaene, 1997). Thus, the origin of this numerical capacity and its relation to language have been of much interdisciplinary interest in developmental and behavioral psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and linguistics (Dehaene, 1997; Hauser et al., 2002; Pica et al., 2004). Hauser et al. (2002) and Chomsky (2008) hypothesize that a recursive generative operation that is central to the computational system of language (called Merge) can give rise to the successor function in a set-theoretic fashion, from which capacities for discretely infinite natural numbers may be derived. However, a careful look at two domains in language, grammatical number and numerals, reveals no trace of the successor function. Following behavioral and neuropsychological evidence that there are two core systems of number cognition innately available, a core system of representation of large, approximate numerical magnitudes and a core system of precise representation of distinct small numbers (Feigenson et al., 2004), I argue that grammatical number reflects the core system of precise representation of distinct small numbers alone. In contrast, numeral systems arise from integrating the pre-existing two core systems of number and the human language faculty. To the extent that my arguments are correct, linguistic representations of number, grammatical number, and numerals do not incorporate anything like the successor function.

A conjecture about the neural basis of recursion in light of descent with modification

The goal of this paper is to examine the possible neurobiological basis of a defining property of the human language faculty: recursion. I suggest that recursion should be understood in light of Darwinian's descent with modification. Descent: that is, based on ingredients of neural circuitry found in ‘non-linguistic’ species; and modification: a reconfiguration that is specific to anatomically modern humans. I argue that the expansion of the parietal region associated with the globularization of the neurocranium in our species contributed to the transformation of the connection between Broca's and Wernicke's region via Geschwind's territory, and enabled the pairing of evolutionary ancient networks that together became capable of constructing and processing not just sequences, but sequences of sequences.