2. • How do children learn languages so quickly?
• By practicing a lot?
• Isn’t there too much information?
• Why does it get more difficult after a certain
time?
4. Be careful!
• What does the Innateness Hypothesis claim?
• We are innately better at learning languages
than animals.
• Nobody disagrees with this.
5. We are innately superior to animals at
languages
• Nobody disagrees with that
• Nobody has EVER disagreed with it
• Never in history
• That’s NOT the innateness hypothesis!
6. OK, so what IS the INNATENESS
hypothesis?
• Human language ability is SPECIAL PURPOSE
• It is separate from other mental abilities
• It works INDEPENDENTLY from other mental
abilities
• The skills involved in language ability are
UNIQUE to language
• And humans are born with this ability
7. Why should language be SEPARATE?
• And why should syntax be separate from
meaning?
• Simple answer:
• Linguists just LIKED the idea
• There’s no actual evidence to belive that!!
8. • Anyway, the Innateness Hypothesis became
very popular (because linguists LIKED the idea)
• Chomsky started looking for evidence of how
our unique language ability works
• Evidence that ALL the world’s languages are
basically the same!!!
• Universal Grammar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• 普遍文法
9. All the world’s languages are basically
the same?
• Deep deep deep deep down – they’re the
SAME
• Why should we believe that?
• Because linguists WANTED to believe it
• There’s no actual evidence!
10. All the world’s languages are basically
the same??
Even though they look really different
Different word order
Or no word order
Or very long words instead of sentences
They are ALL basically the same
• So you can just study one (English) and
understand them ALL!
139. What about invisible movement?
• Well, in 1993 …
• Chomsky said …
• … there’s too much invisible movement!
• Stop the invisible movement!
• Or reduce it to a minimum
• The Minimalist Program
140. Problems with the Minimalist
Program?
• Well, if you stop moving things around
• The world’s languages are obviously NOT the
same
• So what’s Universal Grammar?
• Merge?
• Recursion?
• I have a pen
• I have an apple
• Uh … apple-pen
141. The innateness hypothesis … Universal
Grammar?
• Anything special to language?
• Merge?
• Recursion?
• What do YOU think?