Instructor: Adriana Todea

atodea@yahoo.com
Office hours: Friday 12-14 p.m., Alpha Centre room

Introduction to Generative Grammar

Course 1: Language as an instinct WEEK 1

Outline1

What is the nature of what we call “language”?

-----Is it an instinct, which means that it is an innate genetically
determined skill?
or
-----Is it a cultural artifact, which presupposes an inventor, and a rapid
spread of the knowledge from a community to another?

Fact file:
1. There is no community of Homo Sapiens on the planet that does not
use language as a means of communication.

2. The complexity of a language does not depend on the cultural or

technological sophistication of the community speaking it.
Ex. Kivunjo (Bantu language in Tanzania):
-- a verb can add up to 7 affixes;
-- two moods, 14 tenses;
-- verb agrees with its subject, object and benefactive nouns;
-- the nouns come in 16 genders.

3. Specific languages today are derived from earlier versions of

languages which have been phonologically, morphologically or
syntactically modified in time by particular communities of speakers.
 Then what about the first language? Was it invented, is it a
cultural artifact like Mathematics or computer programming? Or is
it a natural instinct encoded in our genes? Are we “programmed” to
speak?
 Pidgin and creole languages: Atlantic slave trade (African tribes),
the Hawaiian sugar plantations (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans,
Portuguese, Puertoricans )-- pidgin is a form of protolanguage:
words or strings of words borrowed from the language of the
colonizers or plantation owners with virtually no grammar. When
the workers’ children were taken care of by another worker
1 You find in this outline the content of the slides that I project during the course,
which contain the main topics and also structures and diagrams which may be difficult
and time consuming for you to copy during my lecture. They are made available to you
before class to save time and to make note-taking easier, but not unnecessary!
The outline as such (without your notes covering the detailed explanations that I give
during the course) cannot constitute a sufficient source of information when preparing
for the exam. If you miss the class, it is strongly recommended that this outline be used
as a guide to the bibliography indicated at the end of this document.

Course 1 Page 1
 speaking to them in pidgin, the children acquired not the pidgin
they were exposed to, but a new more complex language, called
creole, infused with the grammatical complexity necessary to
express complex thoughts.
4. Children learn their mother tongue by intense training done by
caretakers, which begins in their infancy. Do they? Evidence from the
birth of creole languages points out the fact that child language
acquisition is creative not imitative.

5. But languages cannot be born out of nothing. Can’t they?

Contrary to popular belief sign languages have NOT been invented by
scholars and educators to help deaf people, but have been created by
communities of deaf people, and each community “speaks:” its own
sign language which also differs from the articulated language used
around them. For example ASL and BSL resemble more Navaho and
Bantu than English.
Until 1979 there was no sign language in Nicaragua because deaf
people remained isolated in their families. The first schools for deaf
people created there focused on teaching the children lip reading and
speech, not sign language. But it did not matter. On the playgrounds
children (ten years old or older at the time) created their own sign
language now called Lenguaje de Signos Nicaraguense (LSN), which
more or less resembled a pantomime, in effect a pidgin language.
Then children started to attend the school from a younger age (four
and older). Younger children din not only acquire the pidgin sign
language, but, in one leap, developed it into a creole language: Idioma
de Signos Nicaraguense (ISN).
LSN and ISN are the collective product of many deaf children by
communicating with each other. LSN of children aged 10 and older,
ISN of children aged 4 and older.

6. In what way do language abilities of children differ from the ones of

young adults and adults? Think of the experience of families
emigrating to foreign countries.

and

Are all languages products of creolization?

7. Is language independent of cognition? Language impairments such as

Broca’s aphasia and Specific Language Impairment (SLI): language is
impaired, cognition seems more or less intact.
SLI is hereditary. Those affected make frequent grammatical
errors, and cannot master complex syntax.
Broca’s aphasia is caused by strokes or wounds that damage the
lower part of the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere. Its symptoms show

Course 1 Page 2
lack of grammar (no use of functional categories: plurals, agreement,
tense, aspectual affixes, auxiliaries, etc.)
Williams syndrome is a rare form of retardation: the cognitive
functions are not well developed. But their language abilities are intact.
Cognitive impairment may not affect language abilities.
Language impairment may not affect cognitive abilities.

8. Discussion on language and thought.

Can you control thought if you control speech? Banning the use of
offensive language and political correctness.
If we think in words, then how is translation possible?
Do other species lack cognition because they lack articulated language?
Can we assume they are unconscious?
We often assume that people who do not express themselves well are
stupid. Is that correct?

9. Is there a language gene? In 2002 a sensational piece of news was

reported by popular press: FOXP2, the first language gene, had been
discovered. The scientists confirmed that any “mistake” in its code
severely impairs speech. As the gene seems to have last mutated
200,000 years ago, which corresponds with the time frame when
modern humans evolved, the discovery confirmed the hypothesis that
language could have been the decisive event that made human
culture possible. In other words, what made our species so successful
was intense social cooperation based on a very complex and
expressive system of communication.

Conclusions:
 Language is a property of the human mind.
 Language is innate, that is it is genetically determined.
 Language is a computational system whose rules or properties are
shared by all human beings.
 A child is born with a Universal Grammar, a system of universal
principles and parameters. In response to the Primary Linguistic
Data (exposure to a specific language) the child creates a core
grammar. The principles of the syntactic computational system are
not learned but applied. What is learned is lexical information:
pronunciation, meaning, syntactic valences.
 This computational system seems to be independent of cognition.

Bibliography:
Steven Pinker (1995) The Language Instinct, Penguin
(you can find a copy in the Generative Grammar dossier at the library)
Recommended chapters:
An Instinct to Acquire an Art
Chatterboxes

Course 1 Page 3
 Mentalese
Baby Born Talking-- Describes Heaven

Course 1 Page 4