NEWMEYER, FREDERICK J. 1991. Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language. Language and Communication 11.3--28.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....Unit Department of Linguistics University of Edinburgh http: www.ling.ed.ac.uk simon 1 Introduction How can we explain the origins of our uniquely human compositional system of communication 1 Much of the recent work tackling this problem (e. g Bickerton 1990; Pinker Bloom 1990; Newmeyer 1991; Hurford et al. 1998) explicitly attempts to relate models of our innate linguistic endowment with neo Darwinian evolutionary theory. These are essentially functional stories, arguing that the central features of human language are genetically encoded and have emerged over evolutionary time in ....

....respect to a predicate (p. 713) suggesting that their presence in human languages requires a biological adaptationist explanation. There have been many authors (see, e.g. Hurford 1998 for a recent review) who have argued that it is useful to look at syntax as a product of natural selection Newmeyer (1991, 1992) for example, looks in detail at the features of the Principles and Parameters model of syntax and gives them an evolutionary explanation. The reasons for this are clear, as Pinker Bloom (1990:707) point out: Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be ....

NEWMEYER, FREDERICK J. 1991. Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language. Language and Communication 11.3--28.

....and ungrammatical (3) Wh movement. principles governing the grammaticality of sentences. Subjacency, in effect, keeps rules from relating elements that are too far apart from each other , where the distance apart is defined in terms of the number of designated nodes that are between them (Newmeyer, 1991, p. 12) Consider the following sentences: 1. Sara heard (the) news that everybody likes cats. N V Wh N V N 2. What (did) Sara hear that everybody likes Wh N V Comp N V 3. What (did) Sara hear (the) news that everybody likes Wh N V N Comp N V According to the subjacency principle, ....

Newmeyer, F. (1991). Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language. Language and Communication, 11(1/2), 3--28.

....the problem of determining what meaning a signal is intended to convey. 1 The learning barrier There is a long standing tradition of treating the evolution of human language as being roughly synonymous with the evolution of syntax (Bickerton, 1981; Lieberman, 1984; Pinker and Bloom, 1990; Newmeyer, 1991). This position presumably reflects the assumption that, since other animals possess vocabulary like systems of communication, all that is left to be explained is how humans evolved the ability to use syntactic structures. Other species, such as the vervet monkey, have quite adequate systems for ....

Newmeyer, F. J. (1991). Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language.

....beginning of the 1990s, that work on the evolution of syntax was set to take a decidely adaptationist (and biological) course. Lightfoot s chapter in this volume can be seen in this context. It echoes his position in a commentary on another broadly adaptationist proposal from the early 1990s (see Newmeyer 1991; Lightfoot, 1991) Lightfoot here discusses some quite complex and abstract constraints on grammatical structures, underdetermined by any evidence that learners are likely to observe, and hence attributable to a definite bias in the learning mechanism. He shows how these constraints have a ....

Newmeyer, Frederick, 1991 "Functional Explanation in Linguistics and the Origin of Language" Language and Communication, 11:3-28.

....language directly from an evolutionary perspective. There are two ways in which evolutionary theory might bear on language. Firstly, it is possible, indeed highly probable, that the LAD is adaptive and has been selected for via biological evolution in the hominid line (e.g. Pinker and Bloom, 1990; Newmeyer, 1991, 1992) But secondly, language itself can be viewed as a dynamic system which adapts to its niche of human language learners and users (e.g. Cziko, 1995; Hurford, 1987; 1998; Keller, 1994) In this second view, 3 Muller, Schleicher and other 19th century linguists speculated that languages ....

Newmeyer, F. (1991) `Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language ', Language and Communication, vol.11, 3--28.

....paradigm in theoretical linguistics is still generative grammar. Any serious attempt to relate generative grammar to the evolution of language is important. In the last decade, there have been several such important attempts. The most influential paper is undoubtedly Pinker and Bloom (1990) while Newmeyer (1991) also provided a valuable detailed discussion of the issues raised when evolutionary theory meets generative theory. These papers, central to the topic of the Handbook, and available well before it went into print, are not mentioned anywhere in its 900 odd pages. As noted above, the question of ....

Newmeyer, Frederick J., 1991 "Functional Explanation in Linguistics and the Origins of Language" Language and Communication, 11,1/2:3-28.

....of language. More precisely, the LAD in this view is set up in such a way that it constrains humans from acquiring languages that are dysfunctional in some way, for example by being hard to parse. The remaining question is how the LAD came to be endowed with these functional constraints. Newmeyer [30] argues that the obvious answer is that the LAD has evolved through a process of natural selection. Fitter individuals are presumably those that are able to receive and transmit linguistic signals most efficiently, and hence it is unsurprising that LADs that lead to linguistic systems that are ....

Frederick J. Newmeyer. Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language. Language and Communication, 11:3--28, 1991.

....are between them. Subjacency accounts for the violations of grammaticality in the English sentences (4a b) 4) a. What i do you wonder where John put i b. What i do you believe the claim thet John ate i In these sentences, two bounding nodes intervene between the gap and the word what. (Newmeyer, 1991:12) Given the assumption under consideration, we have to explain how a creature innately disposed to internalize a grammar conforming to the principle of Subjacency has a reproductive advantage over one that doesn t. Newmeyer s (1991) paper makes a brave and worthwhile start at such an account. ....

....two bounding nodes intervene between the gap and the word what. Newmeyer, 1991:12) Given the assumption under consideration, we have to explain how a creature innately disposed to internalize a grammar conforming to the principle of Subjacency has a reproductive advantage over one that doesn t. Newmeyer s (1991) paper makes a brave and worthwhile start at such an account. He cites the widely accepted conclusion that the Subjacency Principle is a helpful constraint on the assignment of an understood grammatical role for displaced elements such as question words and relative pronouns (e.g. what) because ....

Newmeyer, Frederick, (1991) `Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language' Language and Communication, 11,1/2:3-28.

.... How can we explain the origins of our uniquely human compositional system of communication Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in this and other questions surrounding the evolution of human language and the origins of syntax in particular (Bickerton 1990; Pinker Bloom 1990; Newmeyer 1991; Hurford et al. 1998) 1 Much of this is due to an explicit attempt to relate models of our innate linguistic endowment with neo Darwinian evolutionary theory. These are essentially functional stories, arguing that the central features of human language are genetically encoded and have emerged ....

....a predicate (p. 713) suggesting that their presence in human languages requires a biological adaptationist explanation. Of course, there have been many authors (see, e.g. Hurford 1998 for a recent review) who have argued that it is useful to look at syntax as a product of natural selection Newmeyer (1991); Newmeyer (1992) for example, looks in detail at the features of the Principles and Parameters model of syntax and gives them an evolutionary explanation. The reasons for this are clear, as Pinker Bloom (1990:707) point out: Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should ....

NEWMEYER, FREDERICK J. 1991. Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language. Language and Communication 11.3--28.

....the phylogenetic argument. 5.2 Selection for parsability In order to solve our problem of the origin of typological fitness all we need to do now is argue that different possible LAD s could be selected for on the basis of the parsability of the output of the grammars they allow to be acquired. Newmeyer (1991) has made precisely this argument with respect to features of the LAD specific to the Government and Binding theory of syntax (see, e.g. Haegeman 1991) It is quite plausible that the design of the grammatical model as a whole or some particular grammatical principle might have become encoded in ....

....plausible that the design of the grammatical model as a whole or some particular grammatical principle might have become encoded in our genes by virtue of its being successful in facilitating communication that the survival and reproductive possibilities of those possessing it were enhanced. (Newmeyer 1991:7) emphasis my own) One such feature of UG that Newmeyer approaches in this fashion is the Subjacency Condition (the object of Lightfoot s scorn as mentioned above) Briefly, the Subjacency Condition is a universal that constrains the structural distance between two elements that are related by ....

[Article contains additional citation context not shown here]

NEWMEYER, FREDERICK J. 1991. Functional explanation in linguistics and the origins of language. Language and Communication 11.3--28.

Online articles have much greater impact   More about CiteSeer.IST   Add search form to your site   Submit documents   Feedback  

CiteSeer.IST - Copyright Penn State and NEC