Cognitive scientists and linguists have abandoned Chomsky\u2019s \u201cuniversal grammar\u201d theory in droves because of new research examining many different languages \u2014 and the way young children learn to understand and speak the tongues of their communities. That work fails to support Chomsky\u2019s assertions.<\/p>\n
The research suggests a radically different view, in which learning of a child\u2019s first language does not rely on an innate grammar module. Instead the new research shows that young children use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all \u2014 such as the ability to classify the world into categories (people or objects, for instance) and to understand the relations among things.<\/p>\n
These capabilities, coupled with a unique human ability to grasp what others intend to communicate, allow language to happen. The new findings indicate that if researchers truly want to understand how children, and others, learn languages, they need to look outside of Chomsky\u2019s theory for guidance.<\/p>\n
This conclusion is important because the study of language plays a central role in diverse disciplines \u2014 from poetry to artificial intelligence to linguistics itself; misguided methods lead to questionable results. Further, language is used by humans in ways no animal can match; if you understand what language is, you comprehend a little bit more about human nature.<\/p>\n
Chomsky\u2019s first version of his theory, put forward in the mid-20th century, meshed with two emerging trends in Western intellectual life. First, he posited that the languages people use to communicate in everyday life behaved like mathematically based languages of the newly emerging field of computer science. His research looked for the underlying computational structure of language and proposed a set of procedures that would create \u201cwell-formed\u201d sentences. The revolutionary idea was that a computerlike program could produce sentences real people thought were grammatical. That program could also purportedly explain as well the way people generated their sentences. This way of talking about language resonated with many scholars eager to embrace a computational approach to, well, everything.<\/p>\n
As Chomsky was developing his computational theories, he was simultaneously proposing that they were rooted in human biology. In the second half of the 20th century, it was becoming ever clearer that our unique evolutionary history was responsible for many aspects of our unique human psychology, and so the theory resonated on that level as well. His universal grammar was put forward as an innate component of the human mind \u2014 and it promised to reveal the deep biological underpinnings of the world\u2019s 6,000-plus human languages. The most powerful, not to mention the most beautiful, theories in science reveal hidden unity underneath surface diversity, and so this theory held immediate appeal.<\/p>\n
But evidence has overtaken Chomsky\u2019s theory, which has been inching toward a slow death for years. It is dying so slowly because, as physicist Max Planck once noted, older scholars tend to hang on to the old ways: \u201cScience progresses one funeral at a time.\u201d …<\/p>\n
Some native Australian languages, such as Warlpiri, had grammatical elements scattered all over the sentence \u2014 noun and verb phrases that were not \u201cneatly packaged\u201d so that they could be plugged into Chomsky\u2019s universal grammar \u2014 and some sentences had no verb phrase at all.<\/p>\n
These so-called outliers were difficult to reconcile with the universal grammar that was built on examples from European languages.<\/p>\n
Other exceptions to Chomsky\u2019s theory came from the study of \u201cergative\u201d languages, such as Basque or Urdu, in which the way a sentence subject is used is very different from that in many European languages, again challenging the idea of a universal grammar.<\/p>\n
These findings, along with theoretical linguistic work, led Chomsky and his followers to a wholesale revision of the notion of universal grammar during the 1980s.<\/p>\n
The new version of the theory, called principles and parameters, replaced a single universal grammar for all the world\u2019s languages with a set of \u201cuniversal\u201d principles governing the structure of language. These principles manifested themselves differently in each language. An analogy might be that we are all born with a basic set of tastes (sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami) that interact with culture, history and geography to produce the present-day variations in world cuisine. The principles and parameters were a linguistic analogy to tastes. They interacted with culture (whether a child was learning Japanese or English) to produce today\u2019s variation in languages as well as defined the set of human languages that were possible.<\/p>\n
Languages such as Spanish form fully grammatical sentences without the need for separate subjects \u2014 for example, Tengo zapatos (\u201cI have shoes\u201d), in which the person who has the shoes, \u201cI,\u201d is indicated not by a separate word but by the \u201co\u201d ending at the end of the verb. Chomsky contended that as soon as children encountered a few sentences of this type, their brains would set a switch to \u201con,\u201d indicating that the sentence subject should be dropped. Then they would know that they could drop the subject in all their sentences.<\/p>\n
The \u201csubject-drop\u201d parameter supposedly also determined other structural features of the language. This notion of universal principles fits many European languages reasonably well. But data from non-European languages turned out not to fit the revised version of Chomsky\u2019s theory. Indeed, the research that had attempted to identify parameters, such as the subject-drop, ultimately led to the abandonment of the second incarnation of universal grammar because of its failure to stand up to scrutiny.<\/p>\n
More recently, in a famous paper published in Science in 2002, Chomsky and his co-authors described a universal grammar that included only one feature, called computational recursion (although many advocates of universal grammar still prefer to assume there are many universal principles and parameters). This new shift permitted a limited number of words and rules to be combined to make an unlimited number of sentences.<\/p>\n
The endless possibilities exist because of the way recursion embeds a phrase within another phrase of the same type. For example, English can embed phrases to the right (\u201cJohn hopes Mary knows Peter is lying\u201d) or embed centrally (\u201cThe dog that the cat that the boy saw chased barked\u201d). In theory, it is possible to go on embedding these phases infinitely. In practice, understanding starts to break down when the phrases are stacked on top of one another as in these examples. Chomsky thought this breakdown was not directly related to language per se. Rather it was a limitation of human memory. More important, Chomsky proposed that this recursive ability is what sets language apart from other types of thinking such as categorization and perceiving the relations among things. He also proposed recently this ability arose from a single genetic mutation that occurred be\u00adtween 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
As before, when linguists actually went looking at the variation in languages across the world, they found counterexamples to the claim that this type of recursion was an essential property of language. Some languages \u2014 the Amazonian Pirah\u00e3, for instance \u2014 seem to get by without Chomskyan recursion.<\/p>\n
As with all linguistic theories, Chomsky\u2019s universal grammar tries to perform a balancing act. The theory has to be simple enough to be worth having. That is, it must predict some things that are not in the theory itself (otherwise it is just a list of facts). But neither can the theory be so simple that it cannot explain things it should. Take Chomsky\u2019s idea that sentences in all the world\u2019s languages have a \u201csubject.\u201d The problem is the concept of a subject is more like a \u201cfamily resemblance\u201d of features than a neat category. About 30 different grammatical features define the characteristics of a subject. Any one language will have only a subset of these features \u2014 and the subsets often do not overlap with those of other languages.<\/p>\n
Chomsky tried to define the components of the essential tool kit of language \u2014 the kinds of mental machinery that allow human language to happen. Where counterexamples have been found, some Chomsky defenders have responded that just because a language lacks a certain tool \u2014 recursion, for example \u2014 does not mean that it is not in the tool kit. In the same way, just because a culture lacks salt to season food does not mean salty is not in its basic taste repertoire. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning makes Chomsky\u2019s proposals difficult to test in practice, and in places they verge on the unfalsifiable.<\/p>\n
A key flaw in Chomsky\u2019s theories is that when applied to language learning, they stipulate that young children come equipped with the capacity to form sentences using abstract grammatical rules. (The precise ones depend on which version of the theory is invoked.) Yet much research now shows that language acquisition does not take place this way. Rather young children begin by learning simple grammatical patterns; then, gradually, they intuit the rules behind them bit by bit.<\/p>\n
Thus, young children initially speak with only concrete and simple grammatical constructions based on specific patterns of words: \u201cWhere\u2019s the X?\u201d; \u201cI wanna X\u201d; \u201cMore X\u201d; \u201cIt\u2019s an X\u201d; \u201cI\u2019m X-ing it\u201d; \u201cPut X here\u201d; \u201cMommy\u2019s X-ing it\u201d; \u201cLet\u2019s X it\u201d; \u201cThrow X\u201d; \u201cX gone\u201d; \u201cMommy X\u201d; \u201cI Xed it\u201d; \u201cSit on the X\u201d; \u201cOpen X\u201d; \u201cX here\u201d; \u201cThere\u2019s an X\u201d; \u201cX broken.\u201d Later, children combine these early patterns into more complex ones, such as \u201cWhere\u2019s the X that Mommy Xed?\u201d<\/p>\n
Many proponents of universal grammar accept this characterization of children\u2019s early grammatical development. But then they assume that when more complex constructions emerge, this new stage reflects the maturing of a cognitive capacity that uses universal grammar and its abstract grammatical categories and principles.<\/p>\n
For example, most universal grammar approaches postulate that a child forms a question by following a set of rules based on grammatical categories such as \u201cWhat (object) did (auxiliary) you (subject) lose (verb)?\u201d Answer: \u201cI (subject) lost (verb) something (object).\u201d If this postulate is correct, then at a given developmental period children should make similar errors across all wh-question sentences alike. But children\u2019s errors do not fit this prediction. Many of them early in development make errors such as \u201cWhy he can\u2019t come?\u201d but at the same time as they make this error \u2014 failing to put the \u201ccan\u2019t\u201d before the \u201che\u201d \u2014 they correctly form other questions with other \u201cwh-words\u201d and auxiliary verbs, such as the sentence \u201cWhat does he want?\u201d<\/p>\n
Experimental studies confirm that children produce correct question sentences most often with particular wh-words and auxiliary verbs (often those with which they have most experience, such as \u201cWhat does\u2026\u201d), while continuing to make errors with question sentences containing other (often less frequent) combinations of wh-words and auxiliary verbs: \u201cWhy he can\u2019t come?\u201d<\/p>\n
The main response of universal grammarians to such findings is that children have the competence with grammar but that other factors can impede their performance and thus both hide the true nature of their grammar and get in the way of studying the \u201cpure\u201d grammar posited by Chomsky\u2019s linguistics. Among the factors that mask the underlying grammar, they say, include immature memory, attention and social capacities.<\/p>\n
Yet the Chomskyan interpretation of the children\u2019s behavior is not the only possibility. Memory, attention and social abilities may not mask the true status of grammar; rather they may well be integral to building a language in the first place.<\/p>\n
For example, a recent study co-authored by one of us (Ibbotson) showed that children\u2019s ability to produce a correct irregular past tense verb \u2014 such as \u201cEvery day I fly, yesterday I flew\u201d (not \u201cflyed\u201d) \u2014 was associated with their ability to inhibit a tempting response that was unrelated to grammar. (For example, to say the word \u201cmoon\u201d while looking at a picture of the sun.) Rather than memory, mental analogies, attention and reasoning about social situations getting in the way of children expressing the pure grammar of Chomskyan linguistics, those mental faculties may explain why language develops as it does.<\/p>\n
As with the retreat from the cross-linguistic data and the tool-kit argument, the idea of performance masking competence is also pretty much unfalsifiable. Retreats to this type of claim are common in declining scientific paradigms that lack a strong empirical base \u2014 consider, for instance, Freudian psychology and Marxist interpretations of history.<\/p>\n
Even beyond these empirical challenges to universal grammar, psycholinguists who work with children have difficulty conceiving theoretically of a process in which children start with the same algebraic grammatical rules for all languages and then proceed to figure out how a particular language \u2014 whether English or Swahili \u2014 connects with that rule scheme.<\/p>\n
Linguists call this conundrum the linking problem, and a rare systematic attempt to solve it in the context of universal grammar was made by Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker for sentence subjects. Pinker\u2019s account, however, turned out not to agree with data from child development studies or to be applicable to grammatical categories other than subjects. And so the linking problem \u2014 which should be the central problem in applying universal grammar to language learning \u2014 has never been solved or even seriously confronted.<\/p>\n
All of this leads ineluctably to the view that the notion of universal grammar is plain wrong. Of course, scientists never give up on their favorite theory, even in the face of contradictory evidence, until a reasonable alternative appears.<\/p>\n
Such an alternative, called usage-based linguistics, has now arrived. The theory, which takes a number of forms, proposes that grammatical structure is not innate. Instead grammar is the product of history (the processes that shape how languages are passed from one generation to the next) and human psychology (the set of social and cognitive capacities that allow generations to learn a language in the first place).<\/p>\n
More important, this theory proposes that language recruits brain systems that may not have evolved specifically for that purpose and so is a different idea to Chomsky\u2019s single-gene mutation for recursion.<\/p>\n
In the new usage-based approach (which includes ideas from functional linguistics, cognitive linguistics and construction grammar), children are not born with a universal, dedicated tool for learning grammar. Instead they inherit the mental equivalent of a Swiss Army knife: a set of general-purpose tools \u2014 such as categorization, the reading of communicative intentions and analogy making, with which children build grammatical categories and rules from the language they hear around them.<\/p>\n
For instance, English-speaking children understand \u201cThe cat ate the rabbit,\u201d and by analogy they also understand \u201cThe goat tickled the fairy.\u201d They generalize from hearing one example to another. After enough examples of this kind, they might even be able to guess who did what to whom in the sentence \u201cThe gazzer mibbed the toma,\u201d even though some of the words are literally nonsensical. The grammar must be something they discern beyond the words themselves, given that the sentences share little in common at the word level.<\/p>\n
The meaning in language emerges through an interaction between the potential meaning of the words themselves (such as the things that the word \u201cate\u201d can mean) and the meaning of the grammatical construction into which they are plugged. For example, even though \u201csneeze\u201d is in the dictionary as an intransitive verb that only goes with a single actor (the one who sneezes), if one forces it into a ditransitive construction \u2014 one able to take both a direct and indirect object \u2014 the result might be \u201cShe sneezed him the napkin,\u201d in which \u201csneeze\u201d is construed as an action of transfer (that is to say, she made the napkin go to him). The sentence shows that grammatical structure can make as strong a contribution to the meaning of the utterance as do the words. Contrast this idea with that of Chomsky, who argued there are levels of grammar that are free of meaning entirely.<\/p>\n
The concept of the Swiss Army knife also explains language learning without any need to invoke two phenomena required by the universal grammar theory. One is a series of algebraic rules for combining symbols \u2014 a so-called core grammar hardwired in the brain. The second is a lexicon \u2014 a list of exceptions that cover all of the other idioms and idiosyncrasies of natural languages that must be learned.<\/p>\n
The problem with this dual-route approach is that some grammatical constructions are partially rule-based and also partially not \u2014 for example, \u201cHim a presidential candidate?!\u201d in which the subject \u201chim\u201d retains the form of a direct object but with the elements of the sentence not in the proper order. A native English speaker can generate an infinite variety of sentences using the same approach: \u201cHer go to ballet?!\u201d or \u201cThat guy a doctor?!\u201d So the question becomes, are these utterances part of the core grammar or the list of exceptions? If they are not part of a core grammar, then they must be learned individually as separate items. But if children can learn these part-rule, part-exception utterances, then why can they not learn the rest of language the same way? In other words, why do they need universal grammar at all?<\/p>\n
In fact, the idea of universal grammar contradicts evidence showing that children learn language through social interaction and gain practice using sentence constructions that have been created by linguistic communities over time. In some cases, we have good data on exactly how such learning happens.<\/p>\n
For example, relative clauses are quite common in the world\u2019s languages and often derive from a meshing of separate sentences. Thus, we might say, \u201cMy brother \u2026 He lives over in Arkansas \u2026 He likes to play piano.\u201d Because of various cognitive-processing mechanisms \u2014 with names such as schematization, habituation, decontextualization and automatization \u2014 these phrases evolve over long periods into a more complex construction: \u201cMy brother, who lives over in Arkansas, likes to play the piano.\u201d Or they might turn sentences such as \u201cI pulled the door, and it shut\u201d gradually into \u201cI pulled the door shut.\u201d<\/p>\n
What is more, we seem to have a species-specific ability to decode others\u2019 communicative intentions \u2014 what a speaker intends to say. For example, I could say, \u201cShe gave\/bequeathed\/sent\/loaned\/\u00adsold the library some books\u201d but not \u201cShe donated the library some books.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recent research has shown that there are several mechanisms that lead children to constrain these types of inappropriate analogies. For example, children do not make analogies that make no sense. So they would never be tempted to say \u201cShe ate the library some books.\u201d In addition, if children hear quite often \u201cShe donated some books to the library,\u201d then this usage preempts the temptation to say \u201cShe donated the library some books.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such constraining mechanisms vastly cut down the possible analogies a child could make to those that align the communicative intentions of the person he or she is trying to understand. We all use this kind of intention reading when we understand \u201cCan you open the door for me?\u201d as a request for help rather than an inquiry into door-opening abilities.<\/p>\n
Chomsky allowed for this kind of \u201cpragmatics\u201d \u2014 how we use language in context \u2014 in his general theory of how language worked. Given how ambiguous language is, he had to. But he appeared to treat the role of pragmatics as peripheral to the main job of grammar. In a way, the contributions from usage-based approaches have shifted the debate in the other direction to how much pragmatics can do for language before speakers need to turn to the rules of syntax.<\/p>\n
Usage-based theories are far from offering a complete account of how language works. Meaningful generalizations that children make from hearing spoken sentences and phrases are not the whole story of how children construct sentences either \u2014 there are generalizations that make sense but are not grammatical (for example, \u201cHe disappeared the rabbit\u201d).<\/p>\n
Out of all the possible meaningful yet ungrammatical generalizations children could make, they appear to make very few. The reason seems to be they are sensitive to the fact that the language community to which they belong conforms to a norm and communicates an idea in just \u201cthis way.\u201d They strike a delicate balance, though, as the language of children is both creative (\u201cI goed to the shops\u201d) and conformative to grammatical norms (\u201cI went to the shops\u201d). There is much work to be done by usage-based theorists to explain how these forces interact in childhood in a way that exactly explains the path of language development.<\/p>\n
At the time the Chomskyan paradigm was proposed, it was a radical break from the more informal approaches prevalent at the time, and it drew attention to all the cognitive complexities involved in becoming competent at speaking and understanding language. But at the same time that theories such as Chomsky\u2019s allowed us to see new things, they also blinded us to other aspects of language.<\/p>\n
In linguistics and allied fields, many researchers are becoming ever more dissatisfied with a totally formal language approach such as universal grammar \u2014 not to mention the empirical inadequacies of the theory.<\/p>\n
Moreover, many modern researchers are also unhappy with armchair theoretical analyses, when there are large corpora of linguistic data \u2014 many now available online \u2014 that can be analyzed to test a theory.<\/p>\n
The paradigm shift is certainly not complete, but to many it seems that a breath of fresh air has entered the field of linguistics.<\/p>\n
There are exciting new discoveries to be made by investigating the details of the world\u2019s different languages, how they are similar to and different from one another, how they change historically, and how young children acquire competence in one or more of them.<\/p>\n
Universal grammar appears to have reached a final impasse. In its place, research on usage-based linguistics can provide a path forward for empirical studies of learning, use and historical development of the world\u2019s 6,000 languages.<\/p>\n
_____<\/p>\n