Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T10:03:25.840Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is Universal Grammar ready for retirement? A short review of a longstanding misinterpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2018

JOSÉ-LUIS MENDÍVIL-GIRÓ
JOSÉ-LUIS MENDÍVIL-GIRÓ*
Affiliation:
University of Zaragoza
*
Author’s address: Department of General and Hispanic Linguistics, University of Zaragoza, C/ Pedro Cerbuna 12, E-50009 Zaragoza, Spain[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper I consider recent studies that deny the existence of Universal Grammar (UG), and I show how the concept of UG that is attacked in these works is quite different from Chomsky’s, and thus that such criticisms are not valid. My principal focus is on the notions of ‘linguistic specificity’ and of ‘innateness’, and I conclude that, since the controversy about UG is based on misinterpretations, it is rendered sterile and thus does unnecessary harm to linguistic science. I also address the underlying reasons for these misunderstandings and suggest that, once they have been clarified, there is much scope for complementary approaches that embrace different research traditions within current theoretical linguistics.

Keywords

faculty of languagelinguistic specificitynativismrecursionUniversal Grammar
Type
Looking Back, Moving Forward
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , 01 November 2018 , pp. 859 - 888
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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.)

Footnotes

[1]

I am grateful to three anonymous JL referees and editor Kersti Börjars for comments and suggestions. My research was supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) & FEDER (EU) grant FFI2017-82460-P.

References

Benítez-Burraco, Antonio & Longa, Víctor M.. 2010. Evo-Devo – Of course, but which one? Some comments on Chomsky’s analogies between the biolinguistic approach and Evo-Devo. Biolinguistics 4, 308–323.Google Scholar
Bergen, Benjamin K.2014. Universal Grammar. http://edge.org/response-detail/25539 (accessed 10 January 2016).Google Scholar
Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 2012. Universals in comparative morphology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Boeckx, Cedric, Horno, María Carmen & Mendívil-Giró, José-Luis (eds.). 2012. Language, from a biological point of view. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Caha, Pavel. 2009. The nanosyntax of case. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tromsø.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1966. Cartesian linguistics. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. The architecture of language. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2004a. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Belletti, Adriana (ed.), Structures and beyond, 104–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2004b. The generative enterprise revisited. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36, 1–22.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2007. Approaching UG from below. In Sauerland, Uli & Gärtner, Hans-Martin (eds.), Interfaces + recursion = language? Chomsky’s minimalism and the view from semantics, 1–30. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Lasnik, Howard. 1993. The theory of Principles and Parameters. In Jacobs, Joachim, von Stechow, Armin, Sternefeld, Wolfgang & Vennemann, Theo (eds.), Syntax: An international handbook of contemporary research, 506–569. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Morten H. & Chater, Nick. 2015. The language faculty that wasn’t: A usage-based account of natural language recursion. Frontiers in Psychology 6, 1182. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01182.Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, Ewa. 2015. What exactly is Universal Grammar, and has anyone seen it? Frontiers in Psychology 6, 852. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00852.Google Scholar
Embick, David. 2015. The morpheme: A theoretical introduction. Boston, MA & Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Levinson, Stephen C.. 2009. The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32, 429–448.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Levinson, Stephen C.. 2010. Time for a sea-change in linguistics: Response to comments on ‘The myth of language universals’. Lingua 120, 2733–2758.Google Scholar
Evans, Vyvyan. 2014. The language myth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Everaert, Martin B. H., Huybregts, Marinus A. C., Chomsky, Noam, Berwick, Robert C. & Bolhuis, Johan J.. 2015. Structures, not strings: Linguistics as part of the cognitive sciencies. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19.12, 729–743.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 2005. Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology 46, 621–646.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L.2010. You drink. You drive. You go to jail. Where’s recursion? http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/001141 (accessed 16 September 2016).Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 2016. An evaluation of Universal Grammar and the Phonological Mind. Frontiers in Psychology 7, 15. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00015.Google Scholar
Fitch, W. Tecumseh. 2009. Prolegomena to a future science of biolinguistics. Biolinguistics 3, 283–320.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2015. Strong evidence that the roots of binding constraints are pragmatic from Cole et al. (2015). http://dlc.hypotheses.org/865(accessed 10 January 2016).Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Marantz, Alec. 1993. Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel J. (eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harbour, Daniel. 2016. Impossible persons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2007. Pre-established categories don’t exist: Consequences for language description and typology. Linguistic Typology 11, 119–132.Google Scholar
Hauser, Marc D., Chomsky, Noam & Fitch, W. Tecumseh. 2002. The Faculty of Language: What is it, who has it, and how it evolved? Science 298, 1569–1579.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2007. The genesis of grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. Foundations of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Joly, André & Stéfanini, Jean (eds.). 1977. La Grammaire Générale. Des modistes aux idéologues. Lille: Publications de l’Université de Lille.Google Scholar
Kauffman, Stuart A. 1993. The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Philip. 1984. The biology and evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Philip. 2013. The unpredictable species: What makes Humans unique. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lobina, David J. 2014. What linguists are talking about when talking about... Language Sciences 45, 56–70.Google Scholar
Longa, Víctor M. & Lorenzo, Guillermo. 2012. Theoretical linguistics meets development: Explaining FL from an epigeneticist point of view. In Boeckx et al. (eds.), 52–84.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1991. Chomsky. London: Fontana Press.Google Scholar
Malmberg, Bertil. 1991. Histoire de la linguistique. De Sumer à Saussure. Paris: P.U.F.Google Scholar
Marr, David. 1982. Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. New York: Freeman.Google Scholar
McMurray, Bob & Wasserman, Edward. 2009. Variability in languages, variability in learning? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32, 458–459.Google Scholar
Mendívil-Giró, José-Luis. 2012. The myth of language diversity. In Boeckx et al. (eds.), 85–133.Google Scholar
Mendívil-Giró, José-Luis. 2014. What are languages? A biolinguistic perspective. Open Linguistics 1, 71–95. doi:10.2478/opli-2014-0005.Google Scholar
Miller, G. A. & Chomsky, Noam. 1963. Finitary models of language users. In Luce, R. D., Bush, R. R. & Galanter, E. (eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology, vol. 2, 419–492. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Moreno, Juan-Carlos & Mendívil-Giró, José-Luis. 2014. On biology, history and culture in human language: A critical overview. Sheffield: Equinox.Google Scholar
Rooryck, Johan, Smith, Neil V., Liptak, Anikó & Blakemore, Diane. 2010. Editorial introduction to the special issue of Lingua on Evans & Levinson’s ‘The myth of language universals’ In Johan Rooryck, Neil V. Smith, Anikó Liptak & Diane Blakemore (eds.), The myth of language universals: Special issue of Lingua 120, 2651–2656.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd 36, 1–6.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Universal Grammar is dead. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32, 470–471.Google Scholar
Uriagereka, Juan. 1998. Rhyme and reason: An introduction to minimalist syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold. 1977. Hierarchies of person. In Beach, Woodford, Fox, Samuel & Philosph, Shulamith (eds.), Papers from the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 714–733. Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar