Exploring Language and Linguistics

PREVIEW

This chapter examines the question of what limits there are in the ways in which languages can differ from each other structurally. Whenever we utter a sentence in any language, the words come in a particular order and are grouped into phrases in a particular way. While it is obvious that words in a sentence are ordered, the organization into phrases is less obvious, often imperceptible. This chapter argues that the variation between languages is largely confined to perceptible properties of word order, while the imperceptible organization into phrases is the same – or very nearly so – in all languages. Whether this view is true and, if so, why, is at the heart of some of the most fundamental debates in linguistics with implications for all of cognitive science. The chapter starts by motivating the existence of abstract phrase structure and by outlining what kinds of facts the syntactic description of a language must account for. A sufficiently explicit discussion requires some technical tools and notions, which will be introduced. The chapter then explains the goals of a general syntactic theory: to delimit and explain the range of variation found in human languages. This is followed by a case study of the word order found in noun phrases across languages. The case study focuses on the idea that languages differ in word order but resemble each other in phrasal organization.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter introduces you to a problem that has driven research in theoretical linguistics since the middle of the twentieth century. This problem and its potential solutions have shaped the field of theoretical syntax, giving rise to some of the most important debates within linguistics and with neighbouring disciplines.

The problem arises from tension between two basic observations: Firstly, human languages differ immensely in how words are arranged into sentences and ordered. Secondly, children pick up the language spoken in their environment quickly, at a young age; they end up with remarkably complex and largely similar grammars in the absence of explicit instruction.

The first observation suggests that grammars are very different from each other. The second observation suggests the exact opposite; if children acquiring a language had to sift through a vast space of radically different grammars in order to acquire their language, the process should be slow and error prone and it should require explicit instruction.