Evaluation of Geoffrey Sampsons The Language Debate - Research Paper Example

 Evaluation of Geoffrey Sampson’s The Language Debate Abstract This paper covers Geoffrey Sampson’s attempt to refute mainly Chomsky’s arguments concerning language acquisition and innate knowledge, i.e. nativists’ claims that the biggest part of the complex structure of human language is encoded in the human genetic inheritance. Geoffrey Sampson analyses and refutes all of these, claiming languages are cultural creations, and individually-learned systems of behaviour. However, students interested in linguistics might find this paper helpful in forming personal opinion on this subject after having read all of the included pros and cons Sampson’s “The Language Debate”, which is the main goal of this essay. Evaluation of Geoffrey Sampson’s “The Language Debate” (2005) Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century linguistics develops as an alternative to traditional grammar. However, since grammar has been reduced to stereotyped descriptions, many language analysts of the 1920s and 1930s begin to refer to linguistics as a “scientific” description of language, which defines the functions, categories and classes of each language separately and as a result offers an adequate picture of linguistic reality. Today, linguistic research is characterized by a variety of models, which cover a multitude of facts using a variety of descriptive devices. Some of these models account for the linguistic competence, and others are models of linguistic performance and take into consideration psychological and sociological aspects of language. What linguistic nativists share in common, is the standpoint that every language possesses structure or grammar, which is in a way independent of language use. This independent system of rules determines sentences as grammatical or correct. All native speakers of some language have knowledge of these rules, and more importantly they do not learn these rules and are not even aware of their existence. This way, language acquisition is seen as a process in which children gradually discover all of the regularities of their mother tongue, i.e. native language. For Chomsky, such an independent aspect is represented by the innate human linguistic faculties. According to Chomsky, the problem of explanatory adequacy is mainly a problem of constructing a theory of language acquisition which should account for the specific innate genetic faculties that predetermine language. Chomsky claims that language is an extremely complex system. Nevertheless, children are able to master it in a very short time without formal instruction, and their only source of information is the sample of the speech of their elders and environment, because most probably some genetic inheritance, some innate faculties assist them in constructing the grammar of the language they acquire. This explanation of Chomsky’s about the nature of these innate faculties has raised many scholarly disputes among the linguistics analysts and scholars who offer substantiated arguments against Chomsky’s innateness hypothesis. Geoffrey Sampson is one of the critics of Chomsky’s work. Sampson’s reasons and arguments will be discussed later in this paper. Another strong supporter of Chomsky’s hypothesis and a nativist himself is Chomsky’s younger colleague Steven Pinker. Pinker’s theory that the detailed structure of human languages is contained in our genes is also a subject of Sampson’s criticism. Also, a variety of new aspects that Pinker brings forth in his “Language Instinct” (Pinker, 1994), like the questions concerning cognitive science (modularity, human uniqueness, language acquisition as not just learning to talk but learning to think as well, dissociations between language and general intelligence, etc.), and many others that address syntax and semantic-syntax linking rules to language are things that Sampson does not agree with and tries to argumentatively refute. Who is right: representatives and advocates of nativism or empiricism, will always trigger both positive and negative reactions, but that is something scholars should do. As students, our job is to study both aspects and try to get something relevant from each, not trying to criticize analysts who have been well-known all over the world. Students have to form personal opinion in order to develop skills to justifiably debate on such matters as future linguists. Discussion Now, let’s go deeper into Chomsky’s premises and try to find the answer to the question why Sampson refutes them. Chomsky’s premises defended strongly by many other nativists and refuted by Sampson are: speed of acquisition, age-dependence, poverty of data (or poverty of stimulus), convergence of grammars, language universals, non-linguistic analogies and species specificity. Speed of acquisition According to Chomsky language acquisition is a fast process since children learn their first language with remarkable rapidity, unlike the acquisition of other areas of knowledge like physics for example, which takes generations of hard work and experiments, careful instruction and intervention of individual genius. On the other hand, in his response to this premise of Chomsky, Sampson draws several arguments to point to this “false analogy”. Sampson says that “it is senseless to claim that acquisition is in general ‘remarkably fast’”, and insists that “unless some particular figure for predicted acquisition time without innate knowledge can be specified”, Chomsky’s argument about absolutely fast acquisition is “wholly vacuous” (Sampson, 2005: 37). In response to this argument of Samson’s we can say that many psycholinguists have dealt with this question of period of language acquisition. Lenneberg claims that “the child’s capacity to learn language is a consequence of maturation because “the milestones of language acquisition are normally interlocked with other milestones that are clearly attributable to physical maturation,,,” (Lenneberg, 1967 : 178). Gockova Tatjana is one of the psycholinguists who claim that the sequence of language acquisition consists of three phases. According to Gockova, the development of speech perception is achieved in the first phase, and very soon after birth infants distinguish speech from non-speech. When they are 9 months old they understand phonotactic regularities. At 12 months they lose ability to distinguish phonemes (sound combinations) that are not in the native language. At the end of this phase (18 months) and at the start of the second phase a child’s vocabulary does not exceed 50 words. The aspect to bear in mind here is meaning (Gockova 2005 : 46,47). The second phase involves the development of the lexicon - child’s first words: holophrases: at 18-20 months the child’s lexicon comprises of 50 words, at 24 months the child’s vocabulary has spurt to 200-400 words (Gockova 2005 : 50-56). In the third phase development of grammatical speech is achieved through three stages, which means that during the telegraphic stage the child is about 20-24 months old, during the stage of the grammatical morphemes the child is 24 to 30 months old, and during the third stage called complex constructions the baby is older than 30 months. (Gockova, 2005 : 56-58). Furthermore, Sampson does not believe in Chomsky’s distinction between physical activities (knowledge of physics) to which he refers as to skills and tacit knowledge of language (grammar) which is not skill at all (Sampson 2005 : 38). Age-dependence Speed of acquisition and age-dependence are closely related. Although Lenneberg points out that “most individuals of average intelligence are able to learn a second language after the beginning of their second decade...” and although “…a person can learn to communicate in a foreign language at the age of forty…” he maintains the basic hypothesis on age limitation because cerebral organization for language learning as such takes place durin childhood, thus supporting the nativist standpoint on age-dependence (Lenneberg, 1967 : 176). Chomsky remarks that it is natural that children acquire languages more easily and faster than adults, thus believes that there must be a critical period of mental development for the language acquisition system to be fully functional. Chomsky also claims that age (by puberty or somewhat later) is the relevant factor in learning languages, and not the fact whether a child is learning a first or a second language. Age is also very important in cases of the so called “wild children” who have been deprived of any communication with the outside world, referring to the well-known case of Genie who was kept in isolation from the age of 20 months to 13 years 7 months. What Sampson does not accept as true but finds controversial here is the “claim that biology controls not merely quantitative aspects of learning but also qualitative: not just the rate at which hypotheses are produced, but also their content” (Sampson, 2005 : 41). As far as Chomsky’s comments on the Genie case go, Samson agrees that what Chomsky says about it is reasonable, but disapproves with Susan Curtiss and Derek Bickerton’s commentaries (Sampson, 2005 : 41,42). Age-dependence has also been a matter of interest to many other linguists, who give different definitions of critical period or sensitive period of language acquisition, yet all of them agree that it is not possible to draw a precise, strict and firm borderline between various periods of age that can be considered best for learning any subject and not just language. Poverty of data (or poverty of stimulus) The third premise of Chomsky, that is, poverty of data (or poverty of stimulus) is based on his belief that children learn from a qualitatively poor linguistic behaviour induced from individual examples from their elders, thus during the acquisition period children are exposed to adults’ slips of the tongue, ungrammatical speech, etc. In his “Aspects of The Theory of Syntax” Chomsky says: “It seems plain that language acquisition is based on the child’s discovery of what from a formal point of view is a deep and abstract theory – a generative grammar of his language – many of the concepts and principles of that are only remotely related to experience by long and intricate chains of quasi-inferential steps…A consideration of…the degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent of the available data…leaves little hope that much of the structure of the language can be learned by an organism initially uninformed as to its general character” (Chomsky, 1965 : 58). Sampson here tries to draw the parallel between Chomskyan and Popperian view of language acquisition, and analyses several other linguists in favour and against Chomsky’s thesis (some of them are Chomsky’s associates and followers). However, Sampson does not give any own firm proof or a new thesis that would “knock down” Chomskyan approach as false. Convergence among individuals Convergence among individuals as an argument of Chomsky explains that individuals who grow up in a speech community and are exposed to different finite samples acquire nearly identical grammars, i.e. essentially the same language that is spoken by their elders, and that the level of mastery of the grammar of different individuals does not correlate with their level of intelligence. In his response to the argument from convergence Sampson points out that Chomsky admits that “individuals who are more intelligent and/or educated than others have a greater degree of mastery of their common mother tongue”, but individuals of very low intelligence also acquire language skills they need in order to participate in a society’s activities, which is their strong motif. Referring to human mind, creativity and intelligence in an attempt to deny Chomsky, Sampson says: “We think of ourselves as a supremely creative species… If … human cognition results from an interplay between experience and minds that are equipped with no specific initial contents, then we are bound to ascribe true creativity to the human mind. Individuals must be capable of “making ideas out of nothing”, bringing into being cognitive elements whose potential existence could in no way be inferred from the structure of men’s minds before the ideas were invented (Geoffrey Sampson.Empiricism v. Nativism:Nature or Nurture? from http://www.grsampson.net/REmpNat.html ). More important for Sampson here is the question of the possibility for various individuals to have formulated nearly identical grammars from various independent data-sets in the same speech community Sampson, 2005 : 50). Apparently Sampson advocates Popper’s concept of language and claims there is no universal grammar. Yet, neither Sampson nor Popper can deny the fact that “the idea of universal grammar formed from provided descriptions that stem from a set of rules common to all languages in the world is not new. It has been speculated upon by the seventeenth century rationalists, who have maintained that such a grammar should cover what languages have in common, leaving the grammars of particular languages to provide supplementary accounts of specific features” (Tomic, M. Olga, 1987 : 80). Language universals Defending Chomsky’s claim about universal language, language universals and universal grammar, Pinker says: “Chances are that if you find two or more people together anywhere on earth, they will soon be exchanging words” (Pinker,1994 : 3). Furthermore, he points out that “all languages have words for ‘water’ and ‘foot’ because all people need to refer to water and feet; no language has a word a million syllables long because no person would have time to say it” (Pinker,1994 : 19). Chomsky claims that upon examination one will notice that all languages used by humans resemble one another in regards to a number of structural features. For example, a given rule of a language holds for a great variety of languages. Thus, it is a task for the linguists to set up rules or grammars that can be universally applicable, since all languages, though unrelated, possess such sets of principles that do not vary among one another. Yet, one may ask how is the decision to be made about which of the grammars that claim to be universal is descriptively adequate for handling even not examined further related phenomena. Chomsky’s answer to this question is that “linguistic theory should provide the general basis for selecting a descriptively adequate grammar from among given grammars consistent with the relevant data. When this basis has been provided, then the theory will offer an explanation for the linguistic intuition of the native speaker” (Tomic, M. Olga, 1987 : 75). In addition, Chomsky deals with language universals that are related to abstract properties of grammatical structure like the structure-dependence of the grammatical rules. The abstract level, i.e. Chomsky’s deep (or underlying) structure is specified by three sets of rules: a) phrase structure rules which generated specific labelled rooted trees which in addition to the branches and nodes representing the sentential constituents, embodied markers for those transformations whose application was not self-evident; b) lexical sub-categorization rules provided information on the features of the lexical items, which were projected from the ultimate nodes of the underlying phrase structure trees; and c) lexical insertion rules, which related the lexical items of the underlying phrase structure trees to lexical items in a dictionary or lexicon. Although in part five of “Language Debate” (2005) Sampson gives Chomsky credit for being the first to have realized the tree structure in human grammar as a linguistic universal, and after having admitted that there are some universal features in human languages, still Sampson denies innate knowledge of language in humans (Sampson, 2005 : 141). Non-linguistic analogies In “Rules and Representations” (1980) Chomsky argues that “the capacity to deal with the number system or with abstract properties of space is surely unlearned in its essentials” (Chomsky, 1980 : 39). For Chomsky, it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic analogies. He believes that the cognitive systems are our common property. Discussing number systems in “Language and Problems of Language: The Managua Lectures” (1988) Chomsky says: “Take the human number faculty. Children have the capacity to acquire the number system. They can learn to count and somehow know that it is possible to add one indefinitely. They can also readily acquire the technique of arithmetical calculation. If a child did not already know that it is possible to add one indefinitely, it could never learn this fact… The most elementary property of the number system is that the series of numbers goes on indefinitely; you can always add one more. (Chomsky, 1988:167). Sampson mockingly asks “if we are to conclude from the above that those who speak languages that lack expressions for large numbers even our own ancestors until a few centuries ago, are or were less than fully human with respect to their cognitive equipment” (Sampson, 2005 : 53). In addition, maybe even unaware of what he has said, Sampson is insulting many people’s intelligence including all of his readers and myself by saying that he “seriously wonders whether most 21st-century English speakers understand the word ‘infinity’ in its mathematical sense, as distinct from the concept of a very large finite quantity”(Sampson, 2005 : 52). Sampson should know better than insult others to prove his standpoint and the empiricists’ right. Finally, let’s not forget about vision, which is also a non-linguistic analogy. Blindness, (whether it is a malfunction at birth or occurs early in life), i.e. inability to perceive environment visually leads to difficulties in the development of linguistic abilities in children Species specificity Many researches have been done in an attempt to prove whether animals in general have the faculty of language, but most of them have been directed towards apes. Chomsky claims that humans are the only ones among species who master faculty of language and regards the many experiments in teaching chimps the skills of language, most often sign language unsuccessful because language skills are beyond the capacities of apes. Sign language has been examined by Trask, Aichison, Savage-Rumbaugh, Bickerton and others. “We need to look for parallels between ape language and human language in the earliest stage of development and, having established these, see how far the apes can travel down the path toward human language” (Savage-Rumbaugh 1994:157). According to Savage-Rumbaugh apes don’t have language as we know it today but as we might have had. The structure apes use is best termed protogrammar and ape’s ability to learn a language is equalled to that of a human infant. On the other hand, Bickerton (1995) says that no matter how Savage-Rumbaugh’s theory of them having protogrammar seems veritable, the use of symbols taught to primates does not allow them to differentiate between the past and the future as human conversation can, and mentions that what Terrace has noted is that trained primates don’t introduce conversation like children do other than to make their wants and needs known (Bickerton 1995). Pinker (1994) agrees that animals indeed communicate with each other but this form of communication is not language, and states that non-human language communication of animals has a very different structure compared to human language that consists of a system called ‘grammar’. Pinker (1994) argues that animals don’t have language pointing out that the location of human language in the brain is at the cerebral cortex, whereas the calls made by the apes are based in the brain stem and the limbic system. The brain stem and the limbic system in apes are also entangled with their emotion, which is in complete contrast to humans as their vocal articulation other than language (e.g. weeping and giggling) is controlled sub-cortically. Not only animals have no language because they don’t have ‘grammar’ but also because their brain physiology doesn’t seem to allow it due to the fact that the language seat in the brain of humans is totally different from primates brains. Having examined all the arguments carefully, it seems that although animals communicate and have intricate non-human language, as the East African vervet monkeys with their three markedly different warning calls for different predators prove (Dobrovolsky 1997), they might not have language as we define it. Specialized Anatomy Sampson gives an account on Lieberman’s reconstruction of the Neanderthal vocal tract which has been said to be wrong. Lieberman is a defender of the empiricists, but he failed to give unbeatable proofs. In 2007, Oxford Journals, “Brain” volume 130, number 5 published an article about Lieberman’s “Towards and Evolutionary Biology of Language” where in short Lieberman’s arguments for an unorthodox view of the evolution of language are given. The journal says: “In a nutshell, his view is that what evolved to give human language its distinct properties are features of the vocal tract that permit humans to produce the variety of speech sounds we do, coupled with changes in cortical–basal ganglionic structures that permit humans to take advantage of this greater output capacity. In chapter 6, Lieberman argues that the critical evolutionary change consisted of the descent of the root of the tongue into the oropharynx. In Lieberman's view, this seemingly small change in peripheral anatomy has great consequences. It allows for the production of the full range of human speech sounds. A tongue anchored at the end of the horizontal portion of the oral cavity cannot create the range of supralaryngeal vocal tract configurations needed to produce the range of human speech sounds, which requires the descent of the tongue root into the vertical portion of the oropharynx. The effects of the descent of the tongue root are not limited to the ability to produce the inventory of speech sounds of a language, but extend to speech perception as well. The simple change of descent of the tongue root into the oropharynx thus both greatly increased the carrying capacity of the efferent communication channel in humans and led to an associated, dependent, increase in the afferent channel.” (Oxford Journals, Brain 2007 130(5):1442-1446; doi:10.1093/brain/awm060, from http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/130/5/1442 ). Creolization To speak about creolization one has to describe the discontinuity between protolanguage and true language. In order to do this, one must turn to Derek Bickerton’s explanation of “protolanguage”. He argues that there is a sharp discontinuity where continuous linking of the complex languages adult humans use should be. This discontinuity is actually a gap between special linguistics inherited only by humans (our species) and the “protolanguage” which is actually a sum of communicative abilities shared with other species and with no critical age (Bickerton, 1981 : 118, 122, 165 & 190) The crude communicative system which is used between speakers of different languages for limited purposes like barter, is called a pidgin. Referring to pidgins, Pinker says: ”When speakers of different languages have to communicate to carry out practical tasks but do not have the opportunity to learn one another’s languages, they develop a makeshift jargon called a pidgin. Pidgins are choppy strings of words borrowed from the language of the colonizers or plantation owners, highly variable in order and with little in the way of grammar” (Pinker, 1994 : 20). The pidgin that children use (when isolated from their parents and taken care of by workers who speak to them in pidgin) as a first language while growing up can “become a lingua franca and gradually increase in complexity over decades” is called creole…, creoles are bona fide languages, with standardized word orders and grammatical markers that were lacking in the pidgin of the immigrants and, aside from the sounds of words, not taken from the language of the colonizers” (Pinker, 1994 : 20, 21 & 23). SLA The question of the best time to start learning second language has been present among linguists for a long time. Lenneberg (1967) claims that the critical period starting when the child is over two until puberty. Here we certainly must turn back to the best known case of the wild child, the girl Genie. Genie was discovered by society at the age of 13 years and 7 months. Until then, she has been kept in isolation from the outside world, in one word, a typical case of child molestation. Her treatment has been recorded by Suzan Curtiss who has refuted Lenneberg’s claim that natural language acquisition can not occur after puberty. Genie did acquire some language abilities. (Sampson, 2005 : 41). Pinker (1994) on the other hand, remarks: “Acquisition of a normal language (phonology) is guaranteed for children up to the age of six, is steadily compromised from then until shortly after puberty, and is rare thereafter. Maturational changes in the brain, such as the decline in metabolic rate and the number of neurons during early school-age years, and the bottoming out of the number of synapses and metabolic rate around puberty, are plausible causes (Pinker,1994 : 293). As for me, any period is good to start learning some second or third language. Age sometimes may slow individuals down, but there is a saying:”Better ever than never”. Conclusion All the facts given, there is only one thing to be said. Language as a complex linguistic capacity that no other living species have is far from being researched fully. Thus, language acquisition needs more facts for any adequate theory to become crucial. There are still many things to be explored and proven true, although in both nativists’ and empiricists’ claims some theories seem acceptable. In regards to language acquisition Chomskyan program seems to have come closer than anyone else’s before and afterwards. Criticizing as a method of proving something is not worth anything. Anyone who criticizes a theory should try to give hard evidence of the opposite in undeniable facts. As far as I and many others like me (I am sure) are concerned, Sampson and his like-minded colleagues need not only criticize but do something more as well to give us firm basis to believe in and to convince us of some other theory that could prove more acceptable than that of Chomsky, Pinker and other nativists. Bibliography Aitchison, Jean. 1996. The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution. Cambridge: CUP Bickerton, Derek. 1995. Language and Human Behaviour. London: UCL Press Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of Language. Karoma, (Ann Arbor, Michigan) Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of Theory of Syntax. MIT Press Chomsky, Noam 1988. Language and Problems of Language: “The Managua Lectures” Dobrovolsky, Michael. 1997. “Animal Communication” in Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Ed. O’Grady, William, Dobrovolsky, Michael and Katamba, Francis. 3rd edn. London: Longman Gockova, Tatjana. 2005. Psycholinguistics. Prosvetno Delo Skopje Lenneberg, H. Eric. 1967. Biological Foundations of Language. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York London Sydney Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language of Instinct: The new Science of Language and the Mind. London: Penguin Pinker, Steven. 1994. The Language of Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York, NY: harper Collins Sampson, Geoffrey. 2005. ‘The Language Instinct’ Debate Savage-Rumbaugh, Sue and Lewin, Roger. 1994. Kanzi: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind. London: Transworld Tomic, M. Olga. 1987. Syntax and Syntaxes. Savremena Administracija Beograd Trask, R>L> 2003. Language: The Basics.1999. 2nd edn. London: Routledge Oxford Journals, Brain 2007 130(5):1442-1446; doi:10.1093/brain/awm060, from http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/130/5/1442 Geoffrey Sampson, Empiricism v. Nativism:Nature or Nurture? from http://www.grsampson.net/REmpNat.html ) Read More