Is Grammar Innate?

Re: Is grammar innate? | Tom Bloor | October 1st, 2004

Tisa emailed:

Hi Paul and others,

Thanks for the link. I can highly recommend Steven Pinker's two books, The Language Instinct and The Blank Slate, in this regard. He's an amazingly learned man and a super writer. His ideas are also extremely nourishing food for thought on the whole topic of how we learn.

Tisa

Dear Tisa,

I can understand your enthusiasm for Pinker and I am glad you enjoyed reading his books. He is a very impressive operator and a brilliant popularizer of academic theory. I was responsible for putting The Language Instinct on the pre-reading list for the MSc as soon as the book came out. It is intriguing and he is a clever writer, providing food for thought, as you say. However, I think that readers should approach his work with caution. He frequently presents contentious hypotheses as if they were indisputable facts and he deals with alternative views by trashing them without due consideration or by ignoring them altogether.

Pinker gets a lot of undue credit for ideas which are essentially taken directly from Chomsky, whom he does acknowledge to a certain extent, but, in my view, not as much as he should. Moreover, many serious linguists consider these ideas to be misguided and most would agree that they are overstated by Pinker. Of course, in a work of popularization there is less room for caution and debate than in more specialist publications, and it is true that all schools of thought tend to overstate their case, but Pinker is a bit extreme and I think he should be taken with more than a pinch of salt. I just wish that linguistics with more social and communicative orientations had such a dazzling propagandist working for them.

Incidentally, after some thirty years of thinking about the question of innate grammar, I find I have moved from a committed acceptance of Chomskyan innateness theory to bewildered ambivalence; this is mainly because I have read a lot of innate-oriented acquisition research (notably on parameter theory) and found it pretty unconvincing though I still think that the early stuff by Roman Jakobson ('Why Mama and Papa?' etc.) is very impressive.

Best

Tom

Honorary Fellow
Language Studies Unit
Aston University

Re: Is grammar innate? | Rob Salter | October 1st, 2004

I am happy to see that Pinker is being read.

I agree with Tom about everything he has mentioned, especially about the "ethics" of Pinker.

In regard to the "ethics" of Pinker and Chomsky, there are some informative lessons in reading about how they treat other academics who disagree with them. I recommend having a look at Postal's Skeptical Linguistic Essays. The essays are rather negative, but do raise many important issues in regard to how individuals such as Pinker and Chomsky treat the work of other academics by ignoring them and their well-argued positions, not crediting their work, or simply stealing ideas.

As I am doing research now on discourse intonation, I find myself reading a lot of Jakabson's work. He is quite interesting. Of course Roy Harris has had some nasty words about Jakabson in regard to the mistreatment of Saussure in Jakobson's career, but on the whole there are lots of interesting and persuasive arguments in Jakobson's writings. I also think it cannot be stressed enough how much Trubetzkoy influenced Jakobson.

I just wish that linguistics with more social and communicative orientations had such a dazzling propagandist working for them.

I hope that Ronald Carter's latest book, Language and Creativity, will do some good in that regard. I quite enjoyed it and recommend it for a different perspective on this issue of whether grammar is innate or whether the question is as important as folks such as Pinker and Chomsky suggest it is.

Best regards to everybody on the course! I finished in 2001 but still follow things on here when I can.

Rob Salter

Re: Is grammar innate? | Ramesh | October 1st, 2004

Hi Tom, Rob, and everyone.

Ramesh here. I'm the new tutor for LEX, CL, and GLE.

If any of you are interested in Chomsky's current thinking on linguistics, there is an interview with him in the 1st issue of the journal Intercultural Pragmatics   (1,1 2004 pp 93-111)

A free electronic sample of the inaugural issue is available here.

Best

Ramesh

Re: Is grammar innate? | Dave Mackie | October 1st, 2004

Hi-

I think I'd put it more succinctly, if way less delicately than Mr. Bloor: Pinker is an impressive debater, but he contradicts himself, and he tells fibs.

There are alternatives to Chomsky and Pinker. Anyone who wants a nice, argumentative, but easy-ish read should try "Educating Eve", by Gregory Sampson, Cassell, open linguistics series, 1997.

If anyone wants to know how thoroughly nasty Chomsky can be, I'll try to resurrect my "Anti-Chomsky" files from their old floppy disk. On the other hand, you could "google" it! Suffice it to say that he is not entirely the benign liberal.

Chomsky is a persuasive, plausible exegesist, but he doesn't believe in experiments or objective evidence.

As a scientist, Pinker has from time to time tried to dissociate himself.

Dave Mackie

Re: Is grammar innate? | Dave Mackie | October 1st, 2004

Hi-

If any of you are interested in Chomsky's current thinking on linguistics, there is an interview with him in the 1st issue of the journal Intercultural Pragmatics   (1,1 2004 pp 93-111)

Free electronic sample of the inaugural issue is available here.

Is this a different argument from "Is Language Innate" ?

Mr. Bloor, Sir -

I thank you deeply for what you wrote before. I am quite an oldish curmudgeon, and I have survived many fashions in "Applied Linguistics". I do remember Chomsky saying that his ideas had no special relevance for teachers (1967, I think) and I wish that his audience had taken it to heart.

I'd like to write more, but it's a very big, opaque topic.

Dave Mackie

More Chomsky | Dave Mackie | October 1st, 2004

Hi. y'all-

I will dig out the exact reference if anyone wants, but just for thinking I have a Chomsky quote re the English Language "we must first ask what the English Language is, not what it does, or how it is used."

Minus what the language does, and minus how it is used,   . . . erm . . . what is left for a pedagogue ?

At the time of utterance, Chomsky was under the influence of ideas like "the Language Organ". As a thought experiment, take the quote above replace English Language with any other bodily organ with which you are familiar. For example : "... we must first ask what the tongue is, not what it does, or how it is used."

I think you will admit that, minus function and usages, the tongue is a damp flap of muscle.

G'night

Dave Mackie

Re: Pinker | Tisa | October 1st, 2004

Hi Dave,

I think I'd put it more succinctly, if way less delicately than Mr. Bloor: Pinker is an impressive debater, but he contradicts himself, and he tells fibs.

Can you give me some examples of those fibs?

Thanks,

Tisa

Re: Is Grammar Innate? | Tisa | October 2nd, 2004

Dear Tom,

Thanks very much for your frank views on Pinker and your 'warning' to take him with a grain of salt.

What I've taken from Pinker is not so much the nitty-gritty of his arguments. Actually, I'm in no position to do so. Given my rather basic understanding of Chomsky's work, I'm sure I'd contradict myself right left and centre!

Instead, what appeals to me about Pinker (besides his ability to express the complex in flowing prose and with just the right amount of humor), is what I've taken to be his overarching point, namely, that all humans are equipped with a brain that allows learning (language being one component of this) to take place. Perhaps because I'm fascinated by developments in evolutionary biology and psychology, perhaps because I often get annoyed by the wishy-washy tone of many academic articles that I read, or perhaps, simply, because for the moment I do believe that there is nothing wrong with saying that my world and my place in it are not mere social constructs, I find his arguments refreshing.

I don't know if I've articulated myself very well, but your message forced me to try! Thanks again for your thoughts.

Tisa

PS:   I'll have to look into Roman Jackobson.

Re: Is Grammar Innate? | Ramesh | October 2nd, 2004

Is this a different argument from "Is Language Innate" ?
Dave Mackie

I think so.

Two different planes, as far as I could make out:

a) what is 'scientific'

b) can corpus/'performance'-based work ever contribute anything 'scientific'

Of course, 'language is innate' is a given....

Best

Ramesh

Re: Is Grammar Innate? | Paul Raper | October 3rd, 2004

In away, I would say yes, and in another, no. May be a point might be: is any aspect of language innate. I certainly see in my son, who is growing up bilingual many factors that would draw me to the conclusion that language, grammar etc is anything but far from innate. But then I'm forming my opinion on the so far limited knowledge I have of the subject.

Certainly watching a child grow up in a bilingual environment, and noting the mistakes is an extremely enlightening experience. Like all things though, a useful starting point for the arguments put forward by people like Chomsky would be to define clearly the parameters and assumptions that are being made.

For those of you who know the German language, you will well know that it doesn't differentiate between countable and uncountable in the same way as in English, thus many German speakers learning English have problems with much and many. This is precisely a problem my son has when he is relating what he wants to say in English but he is connecting his ideas to those concepts he has which are in German. Also in German they tend to use only one word for: for, since, between, as far as. So my son will often use this word instead of the correct English word if he can't remember it and likewise with "when", because in German they don't use "because" in the same way.

These ideas are not related to false friends. They are simple thought patterns and aspects of learning the language. If I think back to some grammar examples, I can recall him putting the verb on the end of the sentence in the same way as they do in German. Example: Can I in come, rather than: Can I come in. That was a relatively short-lived thing, as he does seem to have learnt the sentence structure far quicker than those points connected to vocabulary discussed above. My feeling though is that children are good at mimicking. They copy what we say and follow the patterns we make. The patters are fewer than the vocabulary, thus they are quicker to learn the grammatical forms than the vocabulary items. I notice that as soon as I add a new idea, such as an ironical structure, "That's a good place to park" meaning what a silly place to leave a car, he has a problem with it. Explain only a couple of times though, and he's mimicking what I say.

My wife, I have to say, is doing a fantastic job teaching him English in a formal way. Her main limitation being some aspects of pronunciation, but that being said, she can explain it better than me. Pronunciation never was my strongest point.

I hope this may be of help in the discussion.

Paul

 

Archive Categories