Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution

(ff) #1

some justification come to be known as the Linguistic Wars. In the end, for reasons detailed by Newmeyer (1980),
Harris (1993), and Huck and Goldsmith (1995), Chomsky emerged victorious—but with a theory, the so-called
Extended Standard Theory, in which Deep Structure no longer had the privilege of determining meaning: rather, this
role was shared by Deep and Surface Structure.And then he turned his interest away fro m meaning, to constraints on
syntactic derivations (e.g. Chomsky 1973; 1977).


The reactionin thewider communitywas oneof disillusionment,aboveall at thebad behavior displayed by bothsides
in the dispute (including the present author). But the disillusionment was intellectual as well: Chomsky's theory turned
out not to reveal meaning after all, at least in the sense that had been anticipated. The consequence was that many
researchers felt as though they had been seriously misled by linguistics, and they lost all trust in thefield.^41 Many
psychologists who had been intrigued with generative grammar and its nativist underpinnings came to reject both.
Many philosophers interested in formal theories of meaning turned from Generative Semantics to formal logic (e.g.
Montague Grammar, Partee 1975; 1976), with its explicitly apsychological underpinnings. Nor was anyone outside
linguistics impressed (iftheywereevenpaying attention) whensome years later, Chomsky (1981) proposed a new level
of syntax, Logical Form, that again was supposed to determine meaning. They had all been therebefore. In short, this
painful episode was an important factor in the alienation of linguistics from the rest of cognitive science.


4.3 Linguistic universals


Returning to our main theme, the claims of the hypothesis of Universal Grammar, let me deal with some common
questions about linguistic universals. As mentioned above, the term “Universal Grammar” is sometimes used
interchangeably with“linguistic universals.”This suggests that Universal Grammar is to be found uniformly in the
structure of all languages, leading to the following sorts of questions:


74 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS


(^41) This turn away fro mlinguistics is docu mented in the following quote fro mWalter Kintsch:“...the work on syntax was the showpiece of psycholinguistics. Linguists were
goingtotellpsychologistswhattolookfor,and psychologistsweregoingtofind itsooner orlater.“But thislinguistics-gone-psychologicaldisappearedfromthescenealmost
as fast as it came. This was partly because the psychologists wanted to share the fun of theorizing and partly because many linguists between MIT and Berkeley kept
changing their minds and contradicting each other. But the chief reason was that the linguists talked syntax and, from a psychological point of view, there seemed to be so
many more significant, more pressing problems [i.e. meaning—RJ] about which our linguistic mentors had much less to say.”(Kintsch 1984: 112)In conversation, other
prominent researchers have reported similar experiences.

Free download pdf