Language as an innate
phenomenon; language and
psychology; behaviourism
Language and the Mind
Prof. R. Hickey
SS 2006
Table of contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
An instinct to acquire an art
Chatterboxes
Mentalese
Baby Born Talking- Describing heaven
Language, Darwin, Language Instinct and a few Fallacies connected
with it
Words, Words, Words
The Tower of Babel
Mind Design
An instinct to acquire an art
• Instinct to learn, speak, and understand
language
• Language = wonder of the natural world
• Language = preeminent trait
• Cognitive science
An instinct to acquire an art
• How do children learn language?
• Language = complex, specialized skill
• Cognitive scientist: language =
psychological faculty, a mental organ, a
neural system, and a computational module
• Conception of language as an instinct was
first articulated in 1871 by Darwin
An instinct to acquire an art
•
Most famous argument that language is
an instinct comes from Noam Chomsky
1. Every sentence is a brand-new
combination of words
2. Children develop complex grammars
rapidly and without instruction and grow
up to give consistent interpretations to
new sentence construction
Why should anyone believe that
human language is part of human
biology – an instinct – at all ?
Chatterboxes
• 1920s : Discovering of
unexplored country
• Jabber = language
Chatterboxes
•
Myth: working-class people and less educated
members of middle class speak a simpler
language
• BEV another language?
1. He be working
2. He working
Chatterboxes
• Language development in
children
• Children reinvent language
Chatterboxes
• How do particular languages arose in the
world today?
• Mixed slaves
• Pidgin = language of the slaves
• Creole = language that results when
children make a pidgin their native tongue
Chatterboxes
• Sign languages: no pantomimes and
gestures
• Full language using the same kinds of
grammatical machinery found worldwide in
spoken languages
Chatterboxes
•
Parents do not provide explicit grammar
lessons
• Cildren know things they could not have
been taught
1. A unicorn is in the garden
2. A unicorn that is eating a flower is in the
garden
Chatterboxes
• Language and the brain
• No one has yet located a language organ or
a grammar gene but the search is on
• Stroke or bullet wound
• Intellectual functions are all preserved
You don‘t need to be middle class, you
don‘t need to do well in school, your
parents need‘t to bathe you in language,
indeed, you can posess all these
advantages and still not be a competent
language user, if you lack just the right
genes or just the right bits of brain
Mentalese
Question:
Is thought dependent on words or
Are our thoughts couched in some silent medium of the
brain and clothed in words whenever we want to
express them?
Mentalese
Pinker says that…
- we do not think in language or in words.
- we think in visual and auditory images.
- we think in abstract propositions about
what is true about what.
- language is a way of communicating
thoughts, of getting them out of one
head and into another by making noise.
Mentalese
Pinker points out that…
- words can be ambiguous.
Example: adj. “tame”
→ a tame animal, which is not afraid of human
beings
→ a tame topic (tame = boring)
→ two different subjects = two different
meanings of the same word
≫Therefore words and thoughts can't be the
same thing.
Mentalese
- famous essay called "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary
Hoax" (myth: Eskimos have hundred words for snow)
- someone went to a dictionary of the Eskimo language
- counted the number of words for snow
- found in first dictionary only two, in bigger ones a
dozen or twenty words for snow
- But: the English language has also a lot of words for
snow (avalanche, blizzard, hard pack, powder, sleet,
slush)
Mentalese
≠ you think more thoughts or more finely
discriminating thoughts
→ if you know a lot about sth., you invent new
words to express them (= slang/ jargon)
→ Conclusion: if you are an expert in something
you are going to have more jargon words for
it
Mentalese
We think in visual images:
- autobiographies of great scientists, authors, poets
etc.
- all of them say that their moments of inspiration often
come from a vivid visual image
- then they have to struggle to find the words to
express that image in their mother tongue
- like Einstein : claimed to have come upon his insight
about relativity theory by imagining what it would be
like to be in a plummeting elevator and then to take a
coin out of your pocket and try to drop it
Mentalese
→ Conclusion: language is a very rich part of
the mind, but only one part
≫The mind has a language of its own,
independent of the language that the mouth
uses, which is called Mentalese.
- speaking = translating Mentalese into English
or Japanese
- understanding = translating English or
Japanese into Mentalese depending on which
language you actually speak
Mentalese
- Pinker thinks that this is why we can understand each
other, can translate and why we can coin new words
when we need them.
- If words and thoughts were the same thing it would
be impossible to coin a new word.
But: when speaking or writing, people often have the
sense that they did not express themselves properly
→ there are some researches of the subtle shades of
meaning within different word orders
Example: "I sprayed paint on the wall“
"I sprayed the wall with paint."
Mentalese
- sound like synonyms expressing the same thought
- The thoughts they express overlap a lot, but there's
a little difference:
There are two ways of understanding:
1.) the wall is completely covered with paint
2.) there could just be a little dab in one corner
→ even tiny differences in the order of words can
convey very subtle differences in meaning
Mentalese
- Mentalese = a way of thinking that is quite
independent of language
□ people who were born deaf and never learned
language = able to express thoughts using
sign language (fully expressive, grammatical,
complex language)
→ are cut off from a lot of our culture (we
convey our culture through words)
→ it is clear that they have minds, which are
capable of some abstract understanding
Mentalese
• Question:
Is our Mentalese shaped by language
nonetheless (like when you are listening
to someone else's speech) ?
Mentalese
•
-
the contents of Mentalese = supplied by
language
learning about objects in faraway places
learning about abstract concepts from
conversations with other people
- reading.
• like the entry port into the mind
• The actual sentences of Mentalese often
derive from language (we only remember the
gist).
Mentalese
• the evolution of the human species =
evolution of language +the evolution of language
in thought
Chain: think more complex thoughts → puts
pressure on you → able to share them → people
supplying you with complex language→ puts
pressure on you → able to have those thoughts
≫a kind of feedback loop, where each one helped
the other
Mentalese
• a question of habits
- certain language groups habitually cultivate
certain states that then they like to talk about
- in the habit of dealing with different aspects of
the world
→ dealing with other people who are also
dealing with those aspects
→ going to invent the words to be able to
communicate them
• But the fact that we can invent words is what
makes Pinker think that the experiences
come first.
Conclusion
-Mentalese = a way of thinking that is quite
independent of language; the language of the mind
- People think in visual and auditory images.
- Thoughts are expressed with words but they are
not determined by language.
- Language is a way of communicating thoughts.
- Language is an instinct, because also deaf
people communicate in a way in which a kind of
language is used.
Conclusion
- The fact that people can invent new words
shows that the experiences come first.
- Mentalese is supplied by communication or
reading and is, in some way, influenced by
culture.
References
- Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct
- www.williamjames.com/transcripts/pinker1.
htm
- ….
- …..
- …..
Baby Born TalkingDescribing heaven
Introduction
1. Introduction
2. The Stages of Language Acquisition
3. Common Grammar Mistakes
4. Conclusion
1. Introduction
The Sun, a tabloid daily newspaper published in the UK and the Republic
of Ireland, has the highest circulation of any daily English-language
newspaper in the world:
On May 21, 1985 the Sun wrote:
-“ BABY BORN TALKING – DESCRIBING HEAVEN. Infant’s words proof
reincarnation exists.’’
On June 8, 1993:
-“ AMAZING 2 HEADED BABY IS PROOF OF REINCARNATION. ONE
HEAD SPEAKS ENGLISH – THE OTHER ANCIENT LATIN.”
Why does this only occur in fiction???
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
- most children do not speak until they are one year old
- first start combining words with about 18 months
- start speaking in fluent grammatical sentences until
they are 2-3
Nevertheless Infants already have linguistic skills when
they are born.
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
Psychologists Jacques Mehler and Peter Jusczyk:
- Babies have knowledge of their mother’s language
- French Infants suck harder when hearing their mother tongue
- The babies must have learned something in the womb of the
mother and during the first days after their birth
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
During the first year:
- Learn the sounds of their language
- Get their speech system geared up
- Produce sounds: cries, grunts, sighs, clicks, stops and later
laughs and coos ( ca. 2 months)
- Play with sounds rather then expressing their emotional or
physical state ( ca. 6-7 months)
- Begin to babble: ba-ba-ba, dee-dee-dee,… ( ca. 8 months)
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
- Children who cannot use their speech system during their
first years, are retarded in speech development
- Deaf children babble later and simpler, but if their parents
use sign language, they babble with their hands!!!
Why is babbling so important?
- Infants have a very complicated piece of audio but no
manual that shows them how to use it
- By experimenting with the articulator children learn how
to produce all kinds of sounds
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
During the 2nd year:
- Babies begin to understand words and start to produce
them ( ca. 12 months)
-
One-word stage:
Infants first words are to 50% objects (food, clothing, body
parts, …)
Words for actions, motions and routines : up, off,
peekaboo, eat, …
Modifiers, like hot, more, dirty,…
Routines, like yes, no, want ,…
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
- With about 18months language starts to develop very fast
- Syntax begins with strings of two:
All dry.
I sit.
Our cat.
All messy.
I shut.
Papa away.
All wet.
No bed.
Dry pants.
- In 95% the word order of the Two-Word Strings is correct
- There is more going on in children minds then that what
the say
2. The Stages of Language
Acquisition
During the 3rd year:
All Hell Breaks Loose:
- Children's language suddenly becomes grammatically
fluent
- Sentence length increases steadily and becomes more
complex
- The number of syntactic types reaches the thousands
before the 3rd birthday
e.g.: before: Give doggie paper and Big doggie
now: Give big doggie paper
3. Common Grammar Mistakes
No matter what grammatical rule is chosen, three-year-olds obey it most of the
time!!!!
-
Errors in sentences like: Can you broke those, Button me the rest only occur in
0.1%-8%
In more then 90% the children are right
They are not only grammatically correct in quantity but also in quality
The errors children make often follow the logic of grammar
The most common mistake is to overgeneralize
e.g.: irregular verbs holded, heared, …
plural -s tooths, mouses, mens
3. Conclusion
-
Babies are born with linguistic skills
They need an input to learn a language
Language Acquisition happens in different stages
1st Language Acquisition happens very rapid and is complete
Infants only make few grammar mistakes
1 Language acquisition is only guaranteed for children up to 6 years
Babies aren’t born talking!!!
References
Pinker, Steven 1994. The language instinct the
new science of language and mind. Lane, Penguin
Pr.
Language, Darwin,
Language Instinct
and a few Fallacies
connected with it
Nonhuman communication :
• A fine repertory of
calls
• A continuous analog
signal that registeres
the magnitude of some
state
• A series of random
variations on a theme
The design of human
language:
• Infinite
• Digital
• Compositional
The seat of the brain:
Primates
• Vocal cords controlled by
the older neural structures
in the brain stem and
limbic system
Humans
• Vocal cords controlled by
the cerebral cortex
Teaching language to animals:
Chimpanzees
Gua - cross fostering
Viki - cross fostering
Washoe - American Sign
Language - about 130 signs
Lana - about 130 symbols
Sarah - Premackese
Nim Chimpsky - American Sign
Language
Bonobo (Pygmy Chimpanzee)
Kanzi - Yerkish, best 'language
learner' so far - learnt about 400
symbols.
KoKo‘s case:
The claims that an ape is
capable of acquiring
ASL(American Sign
Language)
• „Language is no longer
the exclusive domain of
man“
Francine(Penny)
Patterson (Koko‘s trainer)
Nim Chimpsky‘s myth:
• „ Every time the chimp made a sign, we were
supposed to write it down in the log…They(the
hearing people) were always complaining
because my log didn’t show enough signs.(…) I
watched really carefully. The chimp‘s hands
were moving constantly.(…) Every time the
chimp put his finger in his mouth, they‘d say
“Oh, he‘s making the sign for
drink,“(…)Sometimes [the trainers] would
say,“Oh,amazing, look at that, it‘s exactly like
the ASL sign for give!“It wasn‘t.“
Typical sentences from a language-trained
chimp are:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nim eat Nim eat.
Drink eat me Nim.
Me gum me gum.
Tickle me Nim play.
Me eat Me eat
Me banana you banana me you
give .
• Banana me me me eat.
• You me banana me banana you.
• Orange give me you.
Darwin‘s theory and the big bang
„If
the basic principles of language cannot
be learned or derived, there are only two
possible explanations for their existence:
either Universal Grammar was endowed to
us directly by the Creator, or else our species
has undergone a mutation of unprecedented
magnituide, a cognitive equivalent of the Big
Bang …“
Elizabeth Bates
The Wrong Theory
Amoebas
|
Sponges
|
Jellyfish
|
Flatworms
|
Trout Frog
|
Lizards
|
Dinosaurs
|
Anteater
|
Monkey
|
Ape
|
Chimpanzee
|
Homo sapiens
The Right Theory
A
B
Gorillas
Chimpanzees
C
A.africanus
A.afarensis
A.robustus
Homo habilis
Homo erectus
Archaic
Homo sapiens
Modern
Homo sapiens
Neanderthal
Analogy and Homology:
• „Analogous“ traits are
ones that have a
common function but
arose on different
branches of the
evolutionary tree
(wings of a bird and
the wings of a bee)
• „Homologous“ traits
are those that were
inherited after the
same ancestor and
hence have some
common structure that
bespeaks their being
„the same organ“ (the
wing of a bat, the hand
of a human)
Homology in nature
The DNA fallacy
• The findings show that chimpanzees and humans
share 98% to 99% of their DNA, a factoid that has
become widely circulated
The evolution of the chimphuman common ancestor
• Complex artifacts are
thought t o reflect a
complex mind which
could benefit from
complex language
The beginnings of language:
• 30,000 years ago-the
age of the gorgeous
cave art and decorated
artefacts of CroMagnon humans in the
Upper Paleolithic (the
date most commonly given in
magazine article and textbooks
for the origin of language)
The Traces of Language
• Australopithecus afarensis-5 to
7 million years ago(probably
the first traces of language)
• Homo habilis-2,5 to 2 million
years ago(caches of stone
tools,imprints of the wrinkle
patterns of the brain)
• Homo erectus 1,5 to 500,00
years ago(control of fire, wellcrafted hand-axes)
• Homo sapiens-thought to
appear 200,000 years
ago(biologically they were us)
• „Can the problem of the evolution of language be addressed
today? In fact, little is known about these matters.
Evolutionary theory is informative about many things, but it
has little to say as of now, about questions of this nature. The
answers may well lie not so much in the theory of natural
selection as in molecular biology, in the study of what kinds of
physical systems can develop under the conditions of life on
earth and why, ultimately because of physical principles. It
surely cannot be assumed that every trait is specifically
selected. In the case of such systems as language . . . it is not
easy to imagine a course of selections that might have given
rise to them.”
Chomsky
Topic
Words, Words, Words
Introduction
• - sentences are built out of words (syntax)
- words are built out of smaller units (morphology)
- small units of words are called morphemes
English morphology:
noun
= two forms (ball, balls)
verb= four forms (kick, kicks, kicked, kicking)
inflectional morphology
- modifying a word to fit into a sentence (e.g. times)
derivational morphology
- create a new word out of an old one (e.g. add a
suffix)
compounding
- „glue“ two words together (e.g. noun + noun = new
word)
First rule
A noun can consist of a noun stem followed by
a noun inflection.
N
Nstem
ball
Ninflection
-s
Second rule
A noun stem can consist of a noun stem
followed by another noun stem.
Nstem
Nstem
foot
Nstem
ball
Third rule
An adjective stem can consist of a stem joined
to a suffix.
Astem
Vstem
Astemaffix
crunch
-able
- verb + -able
- verb + -er
- adjective + -ness
= adjective
= noun
= noun
Fourth rule
A noun stem can be composed of a noun root
and a suffix.
Nstem
Nroot
Nrootaffix
electric
-ity
Irregularity
messy patterns in irregular plurals
- mouse-mice, man-men
messy patterns in irregular past-tense forms
- drink-drank, seek-sought
- irregular verb forms often come in families
- irregular forms must be learned
• when a big word is built out of smaller words, the big
word gets all its properties from one special word
sitting inside it at the extreme right: the head
V
N
P
V
over
shoot
N
N
work
man
Conclusion
• 1. Words consist of morphemes
2. Regular forms can be formed easily
3. Irregular forms must be learned
4. New words have the properties from
their heads.
The Tower of Babel
• And the whole earth was of one language, and of
one speech. [....] And they said, Go to, let us build
us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto
heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be
scattered aboard upon the face of the whole earth.
[….] And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one,
and they have all one language; and this they
begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do. Go
to, let us go down, and there confound their
language, that they may not understand one
another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them
abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth:
and they left off to build the city. [….] (Genesis
11:1-9)
Differences vs. Universals
• 1957:
• Linguist Martin Joos
• - Joos declared that “languages could differ from
each other without limit and in unpredictable
ways, so God had gone much farther in
confounding the language.
• Chomoskyan-Revolution ->
publication of
“Syntactic Structures”:
• -a visiting Martian scientist would conclude that
aside from their different vocabularies, Earthlings
speak a single language
• Linguist Joseph Greenberg:
• -1963 he examined a sample of 30 languages from
5 continents, including Serbian, Italian, Basque,
Finnish, Swahili, Nubian, Masaai, Berber, Turkish,
Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Burmese etc.
• -In the first investigation, which focused in the
order of words and morphemes, he found more
than 45 universals.
• Example: No language forms questions by
reversing the order of words within a sentence
• Chomsky’s claim is based on the discovery that the same
symbolmanipulating machinery, without exception,
underlies the world’s languages:
• -Languages use the mouth-to-ear channel
• -a common grammatical code
• -words have stable meanings, linked to them by arbitrary
convention
• -speech sounds are treated discontinuously:
• a sound that is acoustically halfway between bat and pat
doesn’t meaning something halfway between batting and
patting
• -languages can convey meanings that are abstract and
remote in time or space from the speaker
• -all languages have a vocabulary in the thousands or tens
of thousands, sorted into part-of-speech categories
including noun and verb
• A few properties of language are simply not
specified in Universal Grammar:
• -it is upon to each language to choose
whether the order of elements within a
phrase is head-first or head-last (eat sushi
and to Chicago versus sushi eat and
Chicago to)
• -whether a subject is mandatory in all
sentences or can be leave out when the
speaker desires
We need to understand why there is more
than one language
• Darwin himself expressed the key insight: We find
in distinct languages striking homologies due to
community of descent, and analogies due to a
similar process of formation.[…] Languages, like
organic beings, can be classed in groups under
groups; and they can be classed either naturally,
according to descent, or artificially by other
characters. Dominant languages and dialects
spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction
of other tongues. A language, like a species, when
extinct, never [...] reappears.
• -English is similar to German for the same reason
that foxes are similar but not identical to wolves:
• English and German are modifications of a
common ancestor language spoken in the past.
• And foxes and wolves are modifications of a
common ancestor species that lived in the past.
• Differences among languages, like differences
species, are the effect of three processing acting
over long spans of time:
1. Variation-Genetic- Inheritance
• -learning is an option like camouflage or horns, that nature
gives organisms as needed
• -evolutionary theory has shown that when an environment
is stable, there is a selective pressure for learned abilities to
become increasingly innate
• -why might it pay for the child to learn parts of a language
rather than having the whole system hard-wired?
• -a reason for language to be partly learned is that language
inherently involves sharing a code with other people
• -an innate grammar is useless if you are the only one
possessing it
• -evolution may have given children an ability to learn the
variable parts of language as a way of synchronizing their
grammars with that of the community
2. Variation-Mutation
• -some person, somewhere, must begin to speak differently from
their neighbours
• -this innovation must spread and catch on like contagions
disease
• -Change can arise from many sources:
• words can coined
• borrowed from other languages
• stretched in meaning
• and forgotten
• -new speech styles then infiltrate the mainstream
• -people are occasionally apt to reanalyze the speech they hear:
• orange -> borrowed from the Spanish:
naranjo
• a creative speaker reanalyzed a norange as an orange
3. Separation
• -separation among groups of speakers is the
cause that successful innovations do not
take over everywhere but accumulate
separately
• -at all times, in all communities, language
changes in different ways
• -some old dialects are still spoken
elsewhere:
•
•
•
•
•
•
afeared
yourn
hisn
et
holp
clome
- afraid
- your
- his
- eat
- help
- climb
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
From the Proto-Germanic (1st millennium B.C.)
The tribe splits into groups and came to speak:
-Anglo-Saxon
-German and offshoot Yiddish
-Dutch and offshoot Afrikaans
-Swedish
-Danish
-Norwegian
-Icelandic
4) Languages are perpetuated by the
children who learn them
• -when a language is spoken only by adults, it is doomed
•
• The linguist Michael Krauss estimates:
• -150 North American Indian languages (80% of the
existing ones) are going to die
• -40 languages in Alaska and northern Siberia
• -160 in Central and South America
• -45 in Russia
• -225 in Australia
• -perhaps 3000 worldwide
• -only about 600 are reasonable save
The Language Mavens
Hannah Heinrichsen
Language and Culture
Prof. R. Hickey
SS06
Hauptstudium LN
Contents
1. Rules
2. “Correct English“
3. Language Mavens
3.1 Types of Mavens
3.2 History of the Mavens
4. Standard English vs. Non Standard English
5. Conclusion
6. References
1. Rules
• Prescriptive rules: prescribe how one
„ought“ to talk
• Descriptive rules: describe how people do
talk
• Fundamental rules: create sentences, define
the infinitives and list the words…
2. „Correct English“
• What is “correct English”? Who tells us so?
– no English language Academy
– no Founding Fathers at some English Language
Constitution Conference at the beginning
2. „Correct English“
– Legislators of “correct English”:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
network of copy-editors
dictionary usage panellists
style manual and handbook writers
English teachers
Essayists
Columnists
pundits
3. The Language Mavens
• Maven from a Yiddish word meaning
expert
• make prescriptive rules or keep them alive
3.1 Types of Mavens
1.
2.
3.
4.
The Wordwatcher
The Jeremiah
The Sage
The Entertainer
3.1 Types of Mavens
1. The Wordwatcher
Wordwatchers train their binoculars on the
especially capricious, eccentric, and poorly
documented words and idioms that get sighed
from time to time
3.1 Types of Mavens
2. The Jeremiah
Jeremiahs express their bitter laments and
righteous prophecies of doom
3.1 Types of Mavens
3. The Entertainer
The entertainer shows off his collection of
palindromes, puns, anagrams, rebuses,
malapropisms, Goldwysms, eponyms,
sesquipedalian, howlers, and bloopers.
3.1 Types of Mavens
4. The Sage
The sages are known for taking a moderate,
common-sense approach to matters of usage,
and they tease their victims with wit rather than
savaging them with invective
3.2 History of the Language
Mavens
18th century:
• London political and financial centre of England
• England centre of a powerful empire
→ London dialect suddenly became an important world language
→ Unprecedented social mobility for anyone who desired education
→ demand for handbooks and style manuals
→ Competition: manuals tried to outdo one another by including
greater numbers of increasingly fastidious rules that no refined
person could afford to ignore
4. Standard vs. Non Standard
• The American Language (H.L. Mencken):
– dialect of English spoken throughout the
country
– didn’t become the standard of government and
education
– the language maven claims that non-standard
American English is not just different but less
sophisticated and logical
4. Standard vs. Non Standard
• e.g.: the notorious double negative
– Non Standard English:“I can’t get no
satisfaction.” The two negatives chancel each
other out
– “I can’t get no satisfaction.” = “I am satisfied.”
– Standard English: “I can’t get any satisfaction”
4. Standard vs. Non Standard
• Logical grammatical errors:
– Everyone returned to their seats.
– Everyone means every one, singular subject
which may not serve as the antecedent of a
plural pronoun like them
– Everyone returned to his seat.
4. Standard vs. Non Standard
• Logical grammatical errors:
– If anyone calls, tell them I can’t come to the phone.
– Anyone means any one, singular subject which may not
serve as the antecedent of a plural pronoun like them
– If anyone calls, tell him I can’t come to the phone.
4. Standard vs. Non Standard
• Further Errors:
– Hopefully, the treaty will pass.
– Mavens say, it should be used only when the
sentence refers to a person who is doing
something in a hopeful manner
– Mavens’ suggestions:
• It is hoped that the treaty will pass.
• If hopes are realized, the treaty will pass.
4. Standard vs. Non Standard
• 2 kinds of adverbs:
– “verb phrase” adverbs, e.g. carefully  refer to
the actor
– “noun phrase” adverbs, e.g. frankly 
indicate the attitude of the speaker toward the
content of the sentence
– some other sentence adverbs:
accordingly
curiously
oddly
admittedly
generally
honestly
5. Conclusion
The whole presentation is based on Steven
Pinker‘s book "The Language instinct.“ In
his chapter about the language Mavens it
becomes obvious that not all rules the
Mavens prescribe make sense, nor are they
useful.
6. References
• Steven Pinker; The Language Instinct:
The New Science of Language and Mind,
Penguin 1994
Mind Design
• 3 models of how the mind is designed
– Standard Social Science Model (SSSM)
– Integrated Causal Model
– Folk Biology
Standard Social Science Model
• „there is no universal human nature“
• „there is no existence of a language
instinct“
BUT:
• „behavior is determined by culture and an
autonomous system of symbols and values“
• „babies are born with only a few reflexes
and the ability to learn“
Margaret Mead:
• „…human nature is almost unbelievably malleable,
responding accurately and contrastingly to
contrasting cultural conditions…“
John Watson:
• „Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed,
and my own specified world to bring them up in
and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and
rain him to become any type of specialist I might
select, …, regardless of his talents, penchants,
tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his
ancestors.“
all behavior based on interaction between
nature and nurture
But:
- heredity factors cannot be ignored
pre – scientific model
Heredity
causes
Behavior
causes
Environment
Pinker says:
• „language instinct is more than dichotomies
of heredity – environment, nature – nurture,
innate – acquired, ...
 following model is much better
Environment
provides input to
develops and
accesses
builds
Heredity
innate psychological mechanisms,
including learning mechanisms
causes
Behavior
learning is not an alternative to innateness
skills,
values,
knowledge
• important roles for heredity and
environment are given
• no two people‘s behavior is the same
• a person‘s potential behavior is infinite
• language comes naturally to us but mental
language mechanisms must have a complex
design
underlying machinery of the Universal
Grammar
• learning without the basic design built into
the mechanism = impossible
• learning mechanisms designed for particular
areas
Integrated Causal Model
• language requires its own well–engineered
software
• there is no learning without some innate
mechanisms that makes the learning happen
• learning accomplished by different modules keyed
to different domains
• language = process whereby the different speakers
in a community acquire highly similar mental
grammars
• language is universal among human
societies
• assumption of an infinitely acquisitive
learning ability:
- least important: pedagogy
- most learning takes places through
generalization
- generalization according to SIMILARITY
• similarity = mainspring of the hypothetical
general-purpose-learning
device
• similarity spaces must be innate
concerning language acquisition:
• similarity = analysis of speech inot nouns,
verbs, phrases
computed by the Universal
Grammar
e.g.
John likes fish.
John might fish.
similar to
not similar to
Mary eats apples.
John might apples.
• learning a grammar from examples requires
a special similarity space
• there must be many similarity spaces to
generalize in a particluar domains of
knowledge
Folk Biology
• = cognitive study of how people classify and
reason about the organic world
• people classify plants and animals into specieslike groups
gives people‘s intuitive concepts a logical
structure
• reasoning about natural kinds differs from
reasoning about artefacts
Special intuitions about living things begin
early in life:
• 3-6-month infants:
- know about objects and their possible
motions and their number
• before 12 months:
- know distinction between living and
nonliving things
• little children:
- generalization follows the similarity defined by
category membership
Summary
• The language instinct:
- is innate
- suggests a mind of adapted computational
modules
- people all have the same minds
existence of a single universal mental
design
The end