Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T00:14:51.219Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grammars for people

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David Lightfoot
David Lightfoot
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

TWO VIEWS OF GRAMMAR

For many years, many people have used the term ‘grammar’ to indicate something which represents an individual's mature linguistic capacity and which arises in the mind/brain of that individual on exposure to some relevant childhood experience. The grammar interacts with other aspects of a person's mental make-up, in a modular conception of mind. Different experiences may give rise to different grammars in different individuals, but it is a plausible initial assumption that grammars arise in everybody in the same way, subject to the same principles, parameters and learning constraints, which are common to the species. This is a biological view of grammars. Countless questions arise about these grammars, about their internal properties, about how they are represented in brains, about how they emerge in young children. Under this view there is no grammar of English, rather various grammars which exist in the minds of English speakers; grammars hold of people and not of languages. Let us distinguish terminology from reality here: proponents of the biological view of grammars sometimes use ‘the grammar of French’ to refer to the grammars of French speakers in a kind of shorthand which abstracts away from individual variation. This usage may have been misleading but, as noted in Lightfoot (1991, henceforth HSP, 162), it is comparable to references to the French liver, the American brain, or the Irish wit; nobody believes that there is such an entity but sometimes it is a convenient abstraction.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , September 1995 , pp. 393 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aitchison, J. (1980). Review of Lightfoot 1979. Linguistics 18. 137–146.Google Scholar
Andrews, I. (1982). Review of Lightfoot 1979. International Review of Applied Linguistics XX.2. 166–168.Google Scholar
Berwick, R. & Niyogi, P. (1995). The logical problem of language change. Ms., MIT.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1993). A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In Hale, K. & Keyser, S. J. (eds.) The view from Building 20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, O. C. M. & van, Der Leek F. (1981). Optional vs. radical re-analyses: mechanisms of syntactic change (review of Lightfoot 1979). Lingua 55. 301–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, P. (forthcoming). The rise of positional licensing in Germanic. To appear in van, Kemenade & Vincent, (eds.).Google Scholar
Kemenade, A. van & Vincent, N. (eds.) (to appear). Inflection and syntax in language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Keyser, S. J. & O'neil, W. (1985). Rule generalization and optionality in language change. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroch, A. (1989). Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1. 199–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroch, A. & Taylor, A. (forthcoming). The syntax of verb movement in Middle English: dialect variation and language contact. To appear in van, Kemenade & Vincent, (eds.).Google Scholar
Lightfoot, D. W. (1979). Principles of diachronic syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, D. W. (1991). How to set parameters: arguments from language change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lightfoot, D. W. (1994). Review of Roberts (1993). Language 70. 571–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lightfoot, D. W. (forthcoming). Shifting triggers and diachronic reanalyses. To appear in van, Kemenade A. & Vincent, N. (eds.).Google Scholar
Paul, H. (1887). Die Vocale der Flexions- und Ableitungssilben in den ältesten germanischen Dialecten. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 4. 314–475.Google Scholar
Paul, H. (1880). Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte. Halle: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Pintzuk, S. (1991). Phrase structures in competition: variation and change in Old English word order. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Roberts, I. G. (1993a). Verbs and diachronic syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Roberts, I. G. (1993b). A formal account of grammaticalization in the history of Romance futures. Folia Linguistica Historica 13. 219–258.Google Scholar
Traugott, E. (1969). Toward a grammar of syntactic change. Lingua 23. 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traugott, E. & Smith, H. (1993). Arguments from language change. Journal of Linguistics 29. 431–447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, A. (1983). Review of Lightfoot 1979. Journal of Linguistics 19. 187–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, U., Labov, W. & Herzog, M. I. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y. (eds.). Directions for historical linguistics: a symposium. Austin: University of Texas Press. 95–189.Google Scholar