But this takes us back to the monad and its complexity: the human brain is
effectively too complex a watch to do without a watch-maker.
And, if we avoid these metaphysical complications, limit the innate to the
universal principles of grammar, and thus leave the parameters that determine
individual languages to experience and instruction, we shall end up by saying
that almost all the rules governing reciprocal pronouns are defined language
by language. Thus, my francophone students err as to the ungrammatical
nature of sentences (8) and (9) because the rules governing the reciprocal
pronoun are not the same in English and in French.
I begin with an actual error drawn from work by a student on an English
degree:
(10) In Gogol’s ‘The Picture’, the character’s dreams are embedded one within each
other.
The grammar that I try to teach my students stipulates that you should
write: ‘one within the other’. We can see the source of the error: the student
is illicitly combining two reciprocal constructions – ‘they looked at each other’
and ‘each looked at the other’. Chomsky only considers the latter and ignores
the former. It is easy to see why: they do not have the same syntax. Thus,
the first construction likewise obeys principles for selecting the antecedent
(i.e. the innate component of language: Chomsky is not interested in reciprocal
constructions as such, but in the more general principles governing them);
and it should be the same principles, the difference being that the antecedent
‘each’ is always the same – which facilitates recognition of it. But the linguistic
facts do not match this prediction, as the following sentences show:
(11) Each candidate wanted the other to win.
(12) Each candidate wished that the other might win.
According to Chomskyan principles, the first of these sentences is typically
grammatical, but the second should not be.
And, if we turn to French, the difference is still greater, for French invariably
neutralises the difference between reciprocal and reflexive, leaving it to the
context to enable the listener to understand the sentence:
(13) Ils se regardaient[they looked at themselves/each other].
(14) Je m’entends[I understand myself].
(15) Ils se sont compris[They understood one another].
Sentence (13) is ambiguous (in order to disambiguate it, it is sufficient to
add a clarification: ‘they looked at themselves in the mirror’ has a reflexive
30 • Chapter Two