Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters

198 Pages·1986·10.45 MB·English

by  Nina M. Hyams (auth.)

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE THEORY OF PARAMETERS
STUDIES IN THEORETICAL
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Managing Editors:
Tom Roeper, Dept. ofL inguistics,
University ofM assachusetts at Amherst
Kenneth Wexler, School ofS ocial Sciences,
University of California at Irvine
Editorial Board:
Robert Berwick, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory,
MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Manfred Bierwisch, Zentralinst. fUr SprachwissenschaJt,
Akademie der WissenschaJten der DDR
Merrill Garrett, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Lila Gleitman, School of Education, University of Pennsylvania
Mary-Louise Kean, University of California at Irvine
Howard Lasnik, University of Connecticut at Storrs
John Marshall, Neuropsychology Unit, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford
Daniel Osherson, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.
Yukio Otsu, Tokyo Gakugei University, Tokyo
Edwin Williams, University ofM assachusetts at Amherst
1986
NINA M. HYAMS
Dept. of Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
AND THE
THEORY OF PARAMETERS
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHTjBOSTONjLANCASTERjTOKYO
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hyams, Nina M., 1952-
Language acquisition and the theory of parameters.
(Studies in theoretical psycholinguistics)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Language acquisition. 2. Parameter estimation. 3. English
language-Acquisition. 4. Italian-language-Acquisition. 5. English
language-Grammar, Comparative-Italian 6. Italian
language-Grammar, Comparative-English. I. Title. II. Series.
P1l8.H39 1986 401'.9 86-17883
ISBN-13: 978-90-277-2219-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-4638-5
DOT: 10.1007/978-94-009-4638-5
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland
All Rights Reserved
© 1986 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1986
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
For Caryn Stok Carpenter
mmemory
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
CHAPTER 1. LINGUISTIC THEORY AND SYNTACTIC
DEVELOPMENT 1
1. Introduction 1
2. A Parameterized Theory of UG 3
3. An Overview 7
3.1 A Note on Methodology 8
4. The Theory of Grammar 10
Notes 23
CHAPTER 2. THE NULL SUBJECT PHENOMENON 26
1. Introduction 26
2. The Structure of INFL 27
2.1 Rule R 30
3. Null Subjects and the Identity of AG 31
3.1 The Properties of PRO 33
3.1.1 Control of AG/PRO 35
3.1.2 Arbitrary Reference of AG/PRO 43
3.1.3 The Auxiliary Systems of Italian and English 46
4. Summary 55
Notes 55
CHAPTER 3. THE AG/PRO PARAMETER IN EARLY
GRAMMARS 63
1. Introduction 63
2. Null Subjects in Early Language 65
2.1 The Avoid Pronoun Principle 71
3. The Early Grammar of English (G1) 74
3.1 The Auxiliaries in Early English 75
3.2 The Filtering Effect of Child Grammars 77
3.2.1 The Semi-Auxiliaries 82
3.2.2 Can't and Don't 84
Vll
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
3.3 G and the Syntax of Be 87
1
4. The Restructuring of G 91
1
4.1 The Triggering Data 92
4.2 The Avoid Pronoun Principle in Child Language 96
5. Summary 98
Notes 99
CHAPTER 4. SOME COMPARATIVE DATA 110
1. Introduction 11 0
2. The Early Grammars of English and Italian: A Comparison 110
2.1 Postverbal Subjects 113
2.2 Modals in Early Italian 115
2.3 Italian Be 118
3. Early German 121
Notes 124
CHAPTER 5. DISCONTINUOUS MODELS OF LINGUISTIC
DEVELOPMENT 128
1. Introduction 128
2. Semantically-Based Child Grammars 129
3. Semantically-Based Grammars: Some Empirical Inadequa-
cies 134
3.1 Evidence from Polish and Hebrew 144
Notes 146
CHAPTER 6. FURTHER ISSUES IN ACQUISITION THEORY 148
1. Summary 148
2. The Initial State 152
2.1 The Subset Principle 154
2.2 The Theory of Markedness 156
2.3 The Isomorphism Principle 162
3. Instantaneous vs. Non-Instantaneous Acquisition 168
Notes 171
BIBLIOGRAPHY 173
INDEX OF NAMES 180
INDEX OF SUBJECTS 182
PREFACE
This book is perhaps the most stunning available demonstration of the
explanatory power of the parametric approach to linguistic theory. It is
akin, not to a deductive proof, but to the discovery of a footprint in a
far-off place which leaves an archeologist elated. The book is full of
intricate reasoning, but the stunning aspect is that the reasoning moves
between not only complex syntax and diverse languages, but it makes
predictions about what two-year-old children will assume about the
jumble of linguistic input that confronts them. Those predictions,
Hyams shows, are supported by a discriminating analysis of acquisition
data in English and Italian.
Let us examine the linguistic context for a moment before we discuss
her theory. The ultimate issue in linguistic theory is the explanation of
how a child can acquire any human language. To capture this fact we
must posit an innate mechanism which meets two opposite constraints:
it must be broad enough to account for the diversity of human
language, and narrow enough so that the child does not make irrelevant
hypotheses about his own language, particularly ones from which there
is no recovery. That is, a child must not posit a grammar which permits
all of the sentences of a language as well as other sentences which are
not in the language. In a word, the child must not create a language in
which one cannot make adult discriminations between grammatical and
ungrammatical.
Traditional transformational analysis was built upon a constructivist
premise. The child would use transformations to make all incoming
sentences fit a common deep structure. This version of growth allowed
for too many false steps. Acquisition data did not reveal many false
steps. The child seemed to have more direct insight into the nature of
his language than a constructivist account would allow.
Chomsky (1981) therefore proposed a theory in which the child
assumed a selectivist bias. The languages of the world are limited in
number and specific pieces of data allow a direct clue as to which
language family, and ultimately which rules, were present in the
language. This hypothesis constituted a powerful limitation on possible
ix
x PREFACE
grammars and upon the transparency of input data to children. It was
buttressed by extensive cross-linguistic work, showing remarkable
similarities among quite diverse languages. It produced a raft of
potential hypotheses about how acquisition should in fact proceed.
One major example of the parametric approach lay in the observa
tion that languages divided between what are called pro-drop languages
and non-pro-drop languages. The technical name does not reveal the
central fact: some languages, like Italian, allow there to be no subject in
a case-marked position. Others always require a subject. Thus in Italian
one can say went where in English one must say he went. There are
several other factors which covary here: the presence of expletives (it
and there), the content of auxiliaries, and the possibility of having
empty case-marked positions. Under the parametric theory the child
could begin with one system and switch to the other when the critical,
triggering data appear.
Consider now the context in which the child lives and grows.
Children notoriously speak in incomplete sentences, and adults use
incomplete utterances more often than they are aware of. It is easy to
omit subjects, objects, prepositional phrases, as well as to duplicate
them via false starts. In other words, the child is confronted with
sizeable amounts of highly misleading data about where information
can be deleted. The hypothesis which proceeds from linguistic theory is
that some deletions are reflections of linguistic principle while others
are accidents of speech without significance. If the child is endowed
with linguistic theory, she will make that discrimination without effort.
Hyams achievement is twofold. First she demonstrates that in fact
subjects are deleted in a systematic fashion that differs from objects in
English. In effect, she shows that children begin with the assumption
that English is a pro-drop language, as if it were Italian. They say things
like "yes, is toys in the kitchen". How do they escape into English? The
answer cannot be that they hear sentences with SUbjects. It was always
apparent that sentences could have subjects. The issue is how a child
could learn that they must have subjects. There is no data which makes
this a biological necessity. Hyams shows that expletives appear at a later
point and immediately trigger the subject-requirement in English. This
is a direct reflection of what the parameter states: if a language has
obligatory subjects, then it will have expletives. In addition her acquisi
tion data leads her to a different theory about the structure of the
auxiliary. The same assumptions, with a different outcome, can be
demonstrated for acquisition data in Italian.
PREFACE xi
One can argue with some of her appraisals of the data. It has been
suggested that object deletion is as frequent as subject deletion
(although we do not believe that this is true for verbs where no
intransitive is available). If it were true, it would not disprove her
theory. In general, a theoretical explanation as powerful as hers puts the
burden of proof on any opposition. Is there any other way that children
could make the correct discriminations, amid the welter of misleading
information, without the theoretical assumptions she proposes?
Hyams work, since its initial appearance in dissertation form, has led
to important subsequent work. Harald Clahsen, in a study of the
development of German, finds that children begin to use obligatory
subjects exactly at the moment when tense marking appears on the
auxiliary. This is a predictable variant on the trigger for obligatory
subject. Guilfoyle (1985) and Lebeaux (to appear) propose other
variants based on Tense for the analysis of English. Nishigauchi and
Roeper (to appear) show that the empty subject, which allows case
marking, shows up elsewhere in the language of children, for instance
after prepositions ("Vitamins are for to grow"). The parametric
approach is being pursued elsewhere with positive results as well. The
work of Otsu (to appear) on subjacency follows the same logic.
The intuitional data of linguistics is so rich, extensive, and often
confusing, that many theories can be supported and are currently
entertained. There are in fact numerous non-parametric theories of
adult grammar. The capacity of a parametric theory to receive support
in acquisition data should be seen as an important development in
behalf of this range of theories.
Many lessons for the future of acquisition work also lie herein.
Hyams weaves together argumentation from acquisition data, experi
mentation, linguistic theory, and cross-linguistic analysis. Where each
isolated area might seem questionable, once enmeshed in a larger
tapestry, all of the subtheories receive support. In other words, she does
not assume that linguistic theory must achieve certainty in some domain
before it can be subjected to acquisition analysis.
The acquisition path is predictable under a linguistic account but not
even entirely visible without that account. Linguistic theory operates
like a microscope under which details of acquisition theory come to
light. The fact that the details fall into place constitutes important
support for the original theory.