Bickerton, D. (1984). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 173-188.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....study uses self organizing feature maps to model the acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. Previous research has identified a strong association between lexical aspect and grammatical aspect in child language, on the basis of which some researchers proposed innate semantic categories (Bickerton, 1984) or prelinguistic semantic space (Slobin, 1985) Our simulations indicate that this association can be modeled by self organization and Hebbian learning principles in a feature map model, without making particular assumptions about the structure of innate knowledge. In line with results from ....

....and the perfective suffixes with different lexical aspect categories. Capitalizing on this strong association in early child language, some researchers hypothesized that children have innate semantic categories that roughly correspond to the lexical aspect distinctions of verbs. In particular, Bickerton (1984) argued that the semantic distinctions between punctual (e.g. jump ) and nonpunctual (e.g. walk) and between state (e.g. want) and process (e.g. walk) are biologically programmed as part of a Language Bioprogram. Bickerton s initial claim for the proposed bioprogram was based on evidence from ....

Bickerton, D. (1984). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 173-188.

....has questioned the t between the logistic curve and Kroch s case study, arguing that the t is statistically as good for the period up to 1700 even though, the data looks less S curve like over this window. There are attested cases, such as the rapid adoption of Hawaiian creole described by Bickerton (e.g. 1984) which are often characterised as an instantaneous or rapid spread of the creole via the rst generation of rst language learners exposed to the pidgin. There are clearly other logical possibilities: random drift or monotonic change but linear, polynomial, exponential rate of growth; ....

....in fact a more fundamental requirement of any successful model of LA. Without it, LA will not be able to cope with noise in the input caused by trigger miscategorizations due, for example, to the indeterminacy of parameter expression (Clark, 1992, Briscoe, 2000c) nor with the scenario envisaged by Bickerton (e.g. 1984) and carefully documented by Newport (1999) in which con icting and inconsistent input is regularised and fashioned into a single consistent generative grammar. Inductive bias over and above the hard constraints in UG yields soft constraints or preferences on grammars within the hypothesis ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173-222.

....course, not entirely clear that (E )language change always or even ever follows the logistic pattern. Osagawa (19 ) has questioned the fit between the logistic curve and Kroch s case studies. More generally, there are attested 1 cases, such as the rapid adoption of Hawaiian creole described by Bickerton (e.g. 1984) which suggest an exponential spread of the creole via the first generation of first language learners exposed to the pidgin (though the work of Roberts (1998) tempers this claim slightly) I ll assume that S curves are attested and the norm, but return to the issue of language genesis briefly at ....

....in fact a more fundamental requirement of any successful model of LA. Without it, LA will not be able to cope with noise in the input caused by trigger miscategorisations due, for example, to the indeterminacy of parameter expression (Clark, 1992, Briscoe, 2000c) nor with the scenario envisaged by Bickerton (e.g. 1984) and carefully documented by Newport (1999) in which conflicting and inconsistent input is regularised and fashioned into a single consistent generative grammar. Inductive bias over and above the hard constraints in UG yields soft constraints or preferences on grammars within the hypothesis ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....marked idiosyncratic constructions for which positive evidence was provided by a given speech community. Thus, such a mechanism might account for some of the partially inaccurate inductive biases, for example of the type noted by Wanner and Gleitman (1982) within the parameter setting framework. Bickerton (1984) also argues that the abrupt transition from pidgin to creole suggests that children are endowed genetically with initial unmarked parameter settings specifying the stereotypical core creole grammar. Pullum (1983) criticizes the parameter setting framework because it predicts that the space of ....

....gendir, subjdir, v1 and v2 which specify a minimal SVO right branching grammar. The unset learner represents a pure principles and parameters learner with innate knowledge of the noun verb distinction and their (predicate argument) mode of combination. The default learner is loosely modelled on Bickerton s (1984) bioprogram hypothesis, representing, additionally, a language learner with a preference for SVO canonical order and predominantly right branching syntax. 28 These two initial p settings 28 Briscoe (2000b) applies the simulation presented here to the Hawaiian pidgin creole transition and argues ....

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Bickerton, Derek (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....every attested human language, of constructions, such as morphological negation or non compositional idioms. And, most parameters of grammatical variation set during language acquisition appear to have default or so called unmarked values retained in the absence of robust counter evidence (e.g. Bickerton, 1984; Hyams, 1986; Lightfoot, 1992) A variety of explanations have been offered for the emergence of a partially innate language acquisition device (LAD) with such properties based on saltation (Berwick, 1998; Bickerton, 1990, 1998) or genetic assimilation (Pinker and Bloom, 1990) But none provide a ....

....an unseen syntactic category as a result of setting a supertype parameter on the basis of other data, and thus converge to a superset language. In fact, when exposed exclusively to a proper subset language, learners converge to that language. However, the pidgin creole transformation (e.g. Bickerton, 1984) suggests that in special circumstances, children can converge to superset languages (see Briscoe, 2000b for detailed discussion and an account of creolisation within the framework presented here) 19 Lner L(g t ) Trigger Proportions SVO N L(g t ) 15 85 30 70 40 60 50 50 60 40 SOVv2 Unset ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....theories of language acquisition and processing. In particular, the move from a random drift, neutral theory of change to an adaptive account may be a necessary prerequisite to an understanding of how some changes can spread from very small beginnings. 27 Creolisation has been characterised by Bickerton (1984:173) as a process of invention in terms of the learner s innate bioprogram; first language learners exposed exclusively to an impoverished pidgin subset language acquire a superset creole grammar. If this view is correct, then it would undermine the claim that significant language change can be ....

....of a functor category which licences relative clause modifiers of nominal heads. However, whether the wh element precedes or follows the relative clause and whether this is pre postnominal depends on potentially interdependent but distinct ordering parameters. The bias assumed in LP is based on Bickerton s (1984) account of Saramaccan, as the prototypical creole grammar, and models a preference for SVO rightbranching grammars. Such learners, exposed exclusively to pidgin data, modelled as clauses with a verb and single word subjects and objects appearing in random orders, tend to acquire a grammar ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....before the structures are triggered by the insistent existence of such structures in the language. There is a tendency for children to use language in a more consistent manner, i.e. to reduce variability, which has lead researchers to propose a large innate basis for language (Bickerton, 1981; Bickerton, 1984). The growth of language is characterised by an increasing size of the vocabulary, and a gradually increasing conformity. In the normal case there is no reason why any feature would be lost since there is no reason that the average child would not be able to learn what its parents and its elders ....

Bickerton, D. (1984). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioural and Brain Sciences(7), 173-212.

....time event time relation can be established without a grammatical operator. It is highly likely that children are sensitive to the eventive non eventive (action state) contrast. An argument is provided by the similarity in the grammaticization of this contrast across various creoles, which, as Bickerton (1984) has claimed, indicates it status as part of the human language bioprogram. Consequently, the distinction can be exploited as a window onto the status of Tense in the representation of root infinitivals. Crucially, if the absence of overt Tense marking is only a matter of not phonetically ....

Bickerton, D. (1984). `The language bioprogram hypothesis', Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 173221.

....with human (proto)language(s) given plausible assumptions, and explore the consequences of the resulting model of both language and the language faculty for theories of language change. The paper builds on the earlier work by examining the model s ability to account for the process of creolization (Bickerton, 1981; 1984; 1988; Roberts, 1998) within a selectionist theory of language change. x1.1 and x1.2 describe the theoretical background to this research. x2 presents a detailed model of the LAD utilizing generalized categorial grammars embedded in a default inheritance network integrated with a Bayesian ....

....the face of ongoing linguistic change, in simulation runs with LAgts initialized with all default parameters, populations evolve away from such fully assimilated LADs (e.g. Briscoe, 1998) when linguistic variation is maintained. 7 Creolization The abrupt transition from pidgin to creole, which Bickerton (1981, 1984, 1988) argues occurs in one generation, constitutes one of the most dramatic and radical attested examples of language change. In more recent work, Roberts (1998) using a large database of Hawaiian pidgin and creole utterances, has revised Bickerton s original claim slightly, by arguing that ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....framework developed here is capable of expressing any such start state within the grammatical space explored. The learnability of each grammar may be affected by this starting point (e.g. Gibson and Wexler, 1994) but linguists have often argued for default initial values for specific parameters. Bickerton (1984), in particular, argues that the abrupt transition from pidgin to creole suggests that children are endowed genetically with initial parameter settings specifying the stereotypical core creole grammar. The consequences of several starting points for the acquisition procedure are explored ....

....gendir, subjdir, v1 and v2 which specify a minimal SVO right branching grammar. The unset learner represents a pure principles and parameters learner with innate knowledge of the noun verb distinction and their (predicate argument) mode of combination. The default learner is loosely modelled on Bickerton s (1984) bioprogram hypothesis, representing, additionally, a language learner with a preference for SVO unmarked order and predominantly right branching syntax. 22 These initial p settings were combined with two acquisition procedures. One, n4, in which 4 parameters were updatable per trigger but ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....values for (some) parameters and or partially ordering the setting of parameters during learning (Briscoe, 1997a) Another possibility is that filtering learning data, say, according to parsability, in accord with the starting small hypothesis may avoid problematic presentation sequences. Bickerton (1984) argues for the Bioprogram Hypothesis as an explanation for universal similarities between historically unrelated creoles, and for the rapid increase in grammatical complexity accompanying the transition from pidgin to creole languages. From the perspective of the parameters framework, this ....

....(predicate argument) mode of combination. This corresponds to what Deacon (1997) identifies as the minimal syntactic knowledge required to support his neo Piercian concept of symbolic reference and, therefore, what he argues has been genetically assimilated. The default learner is modelled on Bickerton s (1984) Bioprogram Hypothesis, representing, additionally, a language learner with a preference for SVO predominantly right branching syntax. The two types of predefined learner LAgt were tested against an adult LAgt initialized to randomly generate triggers from one of seven full languages in the set ....

Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....grammatical structure and in which communicative understanding therefore must rely mostly on constraints provided by lexical semantics, and perhaps intonation. A creole, on the other hand, displays a clear albeit, from the standpoint of established languages, not perfect grammatical structure. Bickerton (1984) reports a case of creolization in a single generation. At the end of the last century, workers from a variety of countries were brought together on Hawaiian sugar plantations. The need for communication soon led to the development of a pidgin. Many of the plantation workers children spent most ....

....theirs. Moreover, Simon s performance was shown to be equal to that of children whose parents were native speakers of ASL, despite receiving a more inconsistent set of linguistic input. Simon was thus able to become a native speaker of ASL, something his parents never achieved. Pinker (1994) and Bickerton (1984) take such creolization as strong evidence for an innate UG, permitting (or rather, forcing) children to impose structure on inconsistent CHAPTER 5. THE EVOLUTION AND ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE 156 input, as in Simon s case, or on almost structure less input, in the case of the children on the ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) The Language BioProgram Hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 173--212.

....despite the use, in every attested human language, of non compositional constructions, such as morphological negation or idioms. And, most parameters of grammatical variation set during language acquisition appear to have default values retained in the absence of robust counter evidence (e.g. Bickerton, 1984; Lightfoot, 1992; Briscoe, 1997, 1998a,b) A variety of explanations have been offered for the emergence of a partially innate language acquisition device (LAD) with such properties, such as biological saltation (Chomsky, 1972; Berwick, 1998; Bickerton, 1998) or genetic assimilation (Pinker and ....

....be set by default on the basis of the posterior or even prior probabilities of more general (supertype) parameters. This suggests that a Bayesian learner may be able to provide an insightful account of the most radical form of grammatical change known, the pidgin creole transformation (e.g. Bickerton, 1984), when a generation of learners exposed to degenerate and often conflicting pidgin data acquire a consistent and more expressive creole grammar. 5 Coevolution of the LAD and of Language The acquisition experiments of x4 demonstrated the effectiveness of the Bayesian parameter setting procedure ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

....in every attested human language, of constructions, such as morphological negation or non compositional idioms. And, most parameters of grammatical variation set during language acquisition appear to have default or so called unmarked values retained in the absence of robust counter evidence (e.g. Bickerton, 1984; Hyams, 1986; Lightfoot, 1992) A variety of explanations have been offered for the emergence of a partially innate language acquisition device (LAD) with such properties based on saltation (Berwick, 1998; Bickerton, 1990, 1998) or genetic assimilation (Pinker and Bloom, 1990) But none provide a ....

....to any subset SVO language does not converge to a superset SVO language. The critical question here is not whether the (formal) framework countenances such apparently sub optimal learners, but whether they would be preferentially selected during evolution. The pidgin creole transformation (e.g. Bickerton, 1984) suggests that in unusual circumstances, children are superset language learners (see below) See Niyogi and Berwick (1996) and Muggleton (1996) for further discussion of high probability convergence from finite data. i.e. that VCA(t) is always given) However, this is an unrealistic ....

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Bickerton, D. (1984) `The language bioprogram hypothesis', The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol.7.2, 173--222.

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Bickerton, D. (1984). The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behaviour and Brain Sciences, 7, p173-222.

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