What an Innatist Argument Should Look Like
Scott DeLancey
University of Oregon
1. The Issue of Innateness
The so-called "innateness" issue has been a focus of controversy in
linguistics for over a generation, although the precise issues at
stake are not clearly delineated in much of the argument. The
basic innatist claim is that expressed by Chomsky:
... that certain aspects of our knowledge and
understanding are innate, part of our biological
endowment, genetically determined, on a par with the
elements of our common nature that cause us to grow arms
and legs rather than wings. This version of the
classical doctrine is, I think, essentially correct.
(Chomsky 1988:4)
In specifically linguistic terms, the claim is advanced in
connection with the rather ill-defined notion of a "human
linguistic endowment"; the assumption underlying much argumentation
and rhetoric in generative linguistics is that a great deal of
linguistic structure is to be accounted for in terms of an innate
"Universal Grammar".
Given the simple facts that language is unique to the human
species, and universal across it, the inference of a species-
specific linguistic endowment is inescapable. However, as it is
generally used, the concept of "innateness" in linguistics is quite
closely parallel to the concept of "vital essence" in biology.
Both are in effect simply face-saving admissions of defeat. The
Vitalist argues (or argued; this doctrine has few adherents
nowadays) thus: organisms are made up of the same elements as the
rest of the world, but they clearly share something that makes them
different. We can replicate the chemical compounds involved, but
we cannot make them live; again, living things clearly share
something besides their chemistry, something which we cannot
replicate. We cannot isolate that something in the chemical
laboratory, so it is not chemical. Thus it is some sort of thing
that we know nothing about, but the irrefutable phenomenon of life
assures us that it is real. Therefore we must posit a mysterious
new sort of entity, "vital essence", to explain what is otherwise
inexplicable.
In an exactly parallel way, the innatist argues: language
seems to be in some sense the same stuff as the rest of cognition,
but our understanding of cognition does not give us what we need to
explain its acquisition and systematicity. Thus there must be some
mysterious force underlying language, something which we cannot
model in terms of what we know about cognition. Thus it is some
sort of thing that we know nothing about, but the irrefutable
phenomenon of language assures us that it is real. Therefore we
must posit some mysterious "black box" structure in the brain, the
"language faculty", to explain what is otherwise inexplicable:
innateness lends itself quite naturally to being some
sort of deus ex machina: when you do not know what
to say about something, say that it is innate. (Itkonen
1996:494)
Our understanding of language has suffered greatly from the
structuralist pretense, born with Saussure and nurtured into
virulent growth in the age of Logical Positivism, that language has
nothing in particular to do with human beings. This pretense is
far from dead; we see it manifested, for example, in the bizarre
concept of objectivist semantics, and in the related conception
prevalent in much of "cognitive science" of human cognition as an
information-processing module mathematically equivalent to a Turing
machine. Many of our errors in thinking about language stem from
the fundamental error of conceiving it as essentially a
mathematical problem--of imagining language as a disembodied
system, something that could in principle be implemented in any
computing machine.
As with the rest of the overall structuralist program of which
this view is the foundation, generative linguistics claims--and
probably truly believes itself--to have abandoned this pretense,
but in fact has simply internalized it, building it into the
foundations of the discipline, out of sight where it can escape
direct challenge. The contradiction is most clearly seen in the
status of the "innateness" argument in contemporary linguistics,
where the leading advocates of an innatist conception of syntax are
arguing for innate structures which have no apparent connection to
the biological organisms in which they are supposed to be lodged.
Our conventional thinking about language entirely neglects the
human dimension. The fundamental fact is that language is a
behavior, clearly with some biological basis, characteristic of the
human species. Any explanatory framework for language must come to
terms with this fact. It is stunningly ironic that the
contemporary linguistic ideology which proclaims the biological
roots of language the loudest is the most oblivious to this
dimension. For, although the various constructs of generative
grammar are taken to be somehow innate, or perhaps mathematically
inherent in structures which are innate, they are also
"autonomous", i.e. independent of anything else in the human
organism, and no effort is ever made to connect them with any other
knowledge about human beings. Indeed, many generativists are as
adamantly opposed to any human-based line of explanation as the
most obsessively positivist neo-Bloomfieldian could ever be.
Now, it is abundantly clear that there are some aspects of
language which reflect some innate structure. As the most obvious
example, it has always been clear (and lately, with the advent of
Optimality Theory, is at last again widely acknowledged) that much
that is fundamental to phonology reflects facts of phonetics, which
is ultimately a science of the physical endowment of the human
species. The resistance to this obvious truth which was
characteristic of much mainstream phonology during the 1970's is a
reflection of the fundamental emptiness of the notion of innateness
used in the Chomskyan tradition.
To take a simple example of what I mean by human-based
explanation, consider the recent work in phonology on "coronal
exceptionality". It turns out that for a number of otherwise
impressively robust generalizations about syllable structure, etc.,
to hold at a theoretical level, we need to attach a proviso along
the lines of "except for coronals, at least sometimes" (see Paradis
and Prunet 1991). Now, it hardly seems that it can be
coincidental, mysterious though it may seem, that [+cor] seems to
be the maximally unmarked POA feature. And the briefest of
reflection on this phenomenon as an aspect of human language
makes it about as mysterious as the fact that languages have more
words for colors and other aspects of visual experience than for
smells. Quite obviously to anyone who has ever spoken--or played
various childish or adult games, or even chewed and swallowed food-
-the front end of the tongue is far more agile than anything else
in the oral tract, definitely including the lips. This is, in
fact, an evolutionary feature of the primates, probably dating back
to some pre-lemurian ancestor that used its tongue to dig insects
out of tree bark or some such. This being the case, it is
virtually inconceivable that human vocal language would not
show a tendency to take special advantage of this agility.
2. Modes of Explanation
I have no intention of making the argument (a parody of
functionalist argumentation which is not common even among avowed
functionalists) that we should abandon the research program of
structural analysis which leads us to notions like coronal
exceptionality. (See GivĒn 1995 for a recent discussion of this
issue). I do, however, want to suggest that it is a dangerously
bad idea to assume a priori that any universal or widely-attested
set of facts about linguistic structure must automatically be
attributed to some innate, specifically linguistic neural
structure. (For specific criticisms of particular arguments for
innateness in generative grammar, see e.g. GivĒn 1979, Itkonen
1994, 1996). There are obviously motivations for universal
patterns for which we do not need to seek innatist explanations,
autonomously linguistic or otherwise. That every language has some
way of expressing concepts like 'water' or 'sleep' clearly does not
need to be written into linguistic, or to more general cognitive,
theory. The salience of these notions is a matter of human
biology, the universality of their linguistic expression a matter
of simple pragmatics--all humans will devise ways to talk about
things that all humans need to talk about. It's worth thinking
about notions like Agent and Recipient here. Bickerton (1990)
suggests on the basis of its universality that the Agent case role
is innately defined (though he is wisely equivocal as to whether it
should be ascribed to the human linguistic capacity or to pre-
linguistic cognitive structure). But it is hardly necessary to
appeal to innateness here--agency, on the part of both the self and
others, is a phenomenon of human behavior that a growing child can
hardly miss noticing and wanting to talk about. Likewise, as
anyone who has had dealings with a child in its first two years
will understand viscerally, the concept of "Recipient" is built
into the pattern of human parenting. And a child with siblings
will very quickly find a need for rather complex disquisitions on
the subject.
Certainly few universal or widespread patterns of
morphosyntactic structure are going to be amenable to the sort of
simple-minded explanation that applies to a phenomenon like the
universality of words for water. But it does not automatically
follow that they must necessarily be explained in terms of an
innate linguistic endowment. Some, such as well-known universals
of constituent order, turn out to have their explanation in general
principles of linguistic diachrony which do not need to be located
within the human nervous system (GivĒn 1979, Aristar 1991, DeLancey
1994). Others may be explicable in terms of more general, not
specifically linguistic, principles of cognition (Deane 1991,
1992). The assumption of the autonomy of syntax corrupts the
innateness argument by making the chimerical "Universal Grammar"
the default explanation for linguistic phenomena, rather than an
alternative which must be weighed against others and assessed in
terms of its intrinsic plausibility. If we are prohibited at the
outset from seeking general cognitive explanations, we won't find
them; we are then left with no choice but to claim that because a
phenomenon like "subjacency", "agentivity", or "complementation" is
universal, it must in some way be "innate". Then, of course, there
is no need to argue for the innatist hypothesis; it is simply
asserted:
Turning to still more general principles, it is
reasonable to speculate that the possibility of forming
complex constructions with an embedded clausal complement
involves no learning at all. Rather, this possibility is
simply available as a principle of the language faculty.
(Chomsky 1988:17)
I have already suggested problems with this in the case of
agentivity, and here is part of the reason why generative grammar
over its history has been more interested in purely structural
phenomena ("formal", as opposed to "substantive", universals)--
because for these the path to a non-autonomous explanation is much
less obvious, making it easier to assume without argument that
there is and can be none.
But, whether or not there is a competing explanation
immediately available, any innateness claim must be subject to
scrutiny with regard to its biological plausibility. To claim that
a structure is innate is to claim that it evolved, which is in turn
to claim that it developed by adaptation from some previously
existing structure. This entails that there must be a plausible
evolutionary/biological interpretation of any innateness claim in
terms of other plausible or demonstrated cognitive structures. In
the present state of our knowledge of human cognition and the
evolution of behavior, we certainly cannot say that no innatist
claim can be entertained unless it comes fully-equipped with an
evolutionary scenario. We can, however, evaluate such claims with
regard to the plausibility of such a scenario being
reconstructible.
We have already mentioned a good example, that of coronal
exceptionality. The cross-linguistic evidence for this is
adequately robust to justify positing some innate basis for it,
and we have a straightforward, biologically and
evolutionarily impeccable explanation for what that basis is and
why it is innate. However, it seems improbable, to say the least,
that a similarly limpid case could be made for many of the
constructs which mainstream syntactic theory currently holds to be
part of the "innate linguistic endowment" of the species--leaving
the question of cross-linguistic attestation as moot, what
plausible biological story is anyone going to be able to tell about
the evolution of subjacency, or "bar level", or [ņN]? (There
appears to be a dim awareness of this point--though not necessarily
recognized as a problem--within the generative camp; Itkonen
(1996:494) cites Matthews (1989:69) as acknowledging that the kinds
of universals often adduced in the generative literature, such as
the subjacency condition, "are certainly unexpected and
nonintuitive").
Perhaps the best way to pursue this argument is to discuss an
example of an innatist claim which does have this kind of
biological plausibility. As an example of how an innatist argument
properly must proceed, I will in the remainder of this paper
outline an argument for a localist hypothesis of case roles and
clause structure as part of the genetic endowment of the human
species.
3. Localist Case Theory
It has long been noted (see e.g. Marty 1910, Hjelmslev 1935) that
there is much in the formal and semantic behavior of case systems
to suggest that they are organized in terms of the conceptual and
grammatical categories used to express spatial relations. I will
not take the space here to present the full evidence and argument
for localist case (see e.g. Anderson 1971, 1976, Gruber 1976, Diehl
1975, Jackendoff 1990), or for the particular, highly restricted
version of it which I will assert here (see Diehl 1975, DeLancey
1991), but the sorts of evidence which can be adduced should be
evident from the examples which I will discuss.
The most direct argument is based on the use of forms which
primarily encode local cases for certain more "grammatical"
functions. Roughly speaking, we can say that languages will mark
the arguments of a particular construction either in terms of their
underlying case roles or in terms of syntactic grammatical
relations. When marking is in terms of underlying case roles, it
is extremely common that the marking used will be that associated
with a local case. We can consider here several cross-
linguistically robust patterns.
Probably the clearest, and most widely attested, pattern is
the marking of the "Patient" and "Recipient" of a trivalent
predicate as THEME and LOCATION (these notions will be defined
below). Note that this is literally true for many ditransitive
clauses:
1) She handed me the book.
For this sentence to be true the book must literally change its
location, coming to rest at a location defined by the recipient.
When recipients have surface marking which reflects case role,
they are typically marked locative, as in modern Romance and Indic
languages, or Tibetan:
Tibetan 2) blo=bzang-la deb de sprad
Lobsang-LOC book that give
'give that book to Lobsang'
(If the language distinguishes locative from allative, this is
likely to be allative, as in English; note however that this
distinction is very far from being universal). Otherwise, if they
are marked in terms of grammatical relations, they are treated as
objects.
"Dative subjects", i.e. the subjects of verbs or emotion,
cognition, or perception (the case role sometimes referred to as
"Experiencer"), when they receive semantic case marking, are
typically marked the same as datives, that is, as locative:
Tibetan 3) khyed=rang-la sbrul rmi=lam btang-yong
you-LOC snake dream EMIT-PRED.FUT
'You will dream about snakes.'
In many languages, the lexical encoding of situations of this type
may be even more explicitly localist, as in Newari (a Tibeto-Burman
language of Nepal):
Newari 4) j swþ-ya-gu bas khaya
I.ERG flower-GEN-CLS smell(N) took
'I smelled the flower.' (Agentive)
5) ji-ta swþ-ya-gu bas wala
I-DAT flower-GEN-CLS smell(N) came
'I smelled the flower.' (non-agentive)
(lit. 'The smell of the flower came to me.')
And parallel evidence can sometimes be found even in languages with
no distinct "dative subject" construction; cf. English sentences
like:
6) A while ago a crazy dream came to me.
When they are marked for their semantic role, possessors in
the possessive clause construction are also treated as locatives:
Russian 7) u menja kniga
at me(DAT) book
'I have a book.'
Tibetan 8) khyed=rang-la ngul-tsam yod-pas
you-LOC money-some COP-INTERROGATIVE
'Do you have any money?'
(lit. 'Is there money at you?')
Again, peripheral evidence for this equation can be found even in
languages which treat the possessor in a possessive construction as
an ordinary subject; cf. English:
9) You got any money on you?
Otherwise, if they are marked in terms of grammatical relations,
they are treated as subjects.
4. The Correct Theory
Several lines of argument point to a maximally constrained localist
theory of case, in which core clausal arguments, at least
("Instrument" and such like are something different; see DeLancey
1991), are accounted for with an inventory of only three underlying
cases: Agent, Theme, and Loc(ation). I have dealt with problems
of Agentivity elsewhere (DeLancey 1984, 1985a, b, 1990a, b); my
concern here is with the Theme/Loc system (see also DeLancey 1991).
These categories are mutually defining--essentially, a clause
represents a proposition, and a proposition must express a Theme-
Loc relation, i.e. a Theme located at or coming to be located at a
Location. (Located vs. coming to be located is, of course, the
basis of the stative/eventive distinction). Clearly this works
only if "location" can be taken in several rather abstract senses.
For example, possessors and "experiencers" must be considered
abstract Locations, with possessed and thoughts, sensations, etc.,
Themes. This makes a certain intuitive sense, but the primary
arguments in its favor are empirical, in particular the patterns of
case "syncretism" that I have discussed above. The analysis of
ordinary transitive clauses in terms of this scheme will require
the interpretation of states as abstract locations (see below).
Arguments for this have been made for years (e.g. Anderson 1971,
Diehl 1975, Jackendoff 1990); for the present I will point out only
that, as we will see directly, it makes for a neat as well as
intuitively plausible system.
This approach requires a rather more drastic innovation from
standard approaches to case theory, though one which is anticipated
in the work of Gruber (1976). The definition of Theme and Loc in
terms of one another entails the claim that every proposition, and
thus every clause, contains both a Theme and a Loc argument. But,
of course, there are clause types in every language which have only
one NP argument. The theory can be reconciled with the data only
if we can allow one of the two to be lexicalized in the verb,
rather than represented as a NP. E.g:
10a) The door is open.
THEME LOC
b) The door opened.
THEME LOC
c) She opened the door
AG LOC THEME
But there is abundant evidence for this move. Consider Fillmore's
(1970) analysis of hit and break verbs. Fillmore
shows that the object of a change-of-state verb like break
has some sort of patient or undergoer type role (Fillmore
provisionally uses "object"; I'll call this role Theme, following
Gruber), but the object of what he calls "surface contact" verbs--
generally, verbs of affectionate or hostile physical contact like
hit, hug, kick, kiss--is some sort of
locative. Fillmore notes, for example, a peculiar use in English
of a locative prepositional phrase which is unique to this class of
verbs. With any other kind of clause an oblique locative can only
denote the place where the overall event occurred:
1) I broke the glass in the sink.
(The reading in which the PP belongs to the object NP is irrelevant
here). With hit-class verbs, however, an oblique locative
can be added which specifies more precisely the part of the object
toward which the action is directed:
2) I kissed her on the lips.
Another piece of evidence which Fillmore does not mention is that
this class of verbs in English is uniquely eligible for a
productive light verb construction with the verb stem used as a
noun and give used as the verb:
3) I gave her a kiss.
As we have already seen, the recipient argument of a trivalent verb
is underlyingly a Locative. Thus her in (3) is
transparently a Locative argument, lending further credence to
Fillmore's suggestion that it is likewise in (2).
Again, of course, we have the problem of the missing argument-
-if the glass in (1) is a Theme argument, where is the Loc?
And if her in (2) is Loc, where is the Theme? Break,
of course, is the same kind of verb as open, and like
open it names the change of state which the Theme undergoes,
and can thus be interpreted as providing the Loc argument. For
"surface-contact" verbs like kiss, the give
construction furnishes direct evidence that the verb incorporates
a Theme argument, with the object as its Loc.
Additional evidence for this interpretation is found in
Tibetan. Tibetan overtly reflects the change-of-state vs. surface
contact distinction which is covert in English: both classes of
verbs take an Agent argument marked with ergative case; the other
argument of a change-of-state verb is zero-marked, like other
Themes, while the second argument of a surface-contact verb is
marked as locative:
4) shing-la sta=re gzhus-pa
tree-LOC axe hit
hit the tree with an axe
5) sta=re-s shing 'chad-pa
axe-INSTR tree cut
cut down the tree with an axe
In modern Tibetan, the vast majority of surface-contact verbs are
light verb constructions:
6) thub=bstan-gyis blo=bzang-la kha bskyal-song
Thubten-ERG Lobsang-LOC mouth delivered-PERF
'Thubten kissed Lobsang.'
7) thub=bstan-gyis blo=bzang-la mur=rdzog gzhus-song
Thubten-ERG Lobsang-LOC fist hit-PERF
'Thubten punched Lobsang.'
These thus transparently treat the Theme which is part of the
meaning of the English verb stem as a distinct argument (zero-
marked, as befits a Theme).
5. How to Argue for Innateness
I have not, of course, provided sufficient syntactic and
typological evidence here to establish the superiority of this
account of case marking in core argument positions over other
possibilities. But, assuming for the sake of argument that this
superiority can be established (note, among other things, that many
of the most useful insights and analyses of Relational Grammar fall
out fairly directly from the scheme presented here), how should we
explain the universality of this model of clause structure? If it
is true that every clause, in every language, can be analyzed as
representing a Theme-Loc configuration, why should this be? If it
is truly universal, there is good warrant to consider the
possibility that it reflects innate structure, but, given the
warnings expressed at the beginning of this paper, how should such
a hypothesis be pursued?
It turns out that this theory looks very much like the
fundamental structural construct of perception--Figure and Ground:
One of the simplest and most basic of the
perceptual processes involves what the Gestalt
psychologists call figure-ground
segregation. Every meaningful perceptual
experience seems to require in its description
the property of "figuredness." That is,
phenomenally, perception is more than a
collection of unrelated, unintegrated, sensory
elements. The units of perception are,
rather, figures, or things, segregated from
their backgrounds. (Dember 1963:145-6)
In their concrete spatial use, Theme and Loc correspond directly to
Figure and Ground. Nothing is intrinsically Theme or Loc; these
are relational notions. A speaker presents one referent in
relation to another; the first we call Theme, and the second Loc.
Thus, despite some argument to the contrary in early literature on
Case Grammar (see Huddleston 1970), (8) and (9) are by no means
synonymous:
8) The bank is next to the Post Office.
9) The Post Office is next to the bank.
(8) describes the location of the bank, using the Post Office as a
reference point; (9) describes the location of the Post Office,
using the bank as a reference point. Thus the subject of each
sentence denotes the referent to which the speaker wishes to draw
the addressee's attention, and the oblique NP denotes a referent
used as a background against which the subject can be identified.
Now, figure-ground organization is, self-evidently, not a
feature of the physical universe; rather, it is a pattern imposed
on a stimulus by the process of perception. Much work in
perception has been concerned with what we might think of as
prewired determinants of figure-ground identification. All other
things being equal (e.g. in a properly designed experimental
context), humans will make a moving stimulus a figure, and the
stable environment against which it moves the ground. Other
factors which increase the eligibility of some part of the visual
percept for figure status include defined boundaries, brightness,
color, centrality in the visual field, and, of course, lack of
competition from other areas of the perceptual field sharing these
characteristics.
But in ordinary life other things are not often equal; any
perceiver in any real-life circumstance is predisposed by her
existing cognitive structures, and long-term and transient
"interests", to focus on certain types of structure as opposed to
others. A universal pattern, which is probably innate, is that a
percept interpretable as a human figure has a higher eligibility
for figurehood than anything else, and a human face the highest of
all. There is abundant evidence for what is sometimes called a
motivation effect in perception, i.e. the fact that a perceiver,
being more interested in some types of information than others,
will tend to organize the perceptual field so that relevant
information counts as figure.
As any introduction to perceptual psychology will point out,
beyond the simple neurophysiology of edge detection, color
perception, etc., perception is a cognitive process. In fact, it
is common in perceptual psychology to distinguish between
sensation and perception--the former applying to the
simple physiological response of the perceptual organs, and the
latter to the cognitively-constructed interpretation of those data.
Thus perception cannot be considered in isolation from
cognition. But the reverse is also true; cognition at the most
basic level involves mental manipulation of representations of
objects (or, at the next higher level, categories of objects), and
the discrimination of objects is the basic task of perception.
Indeed, the figure-ground opposition is fundamental to--we could
even say, is--object discrimination. The process of discerning an
object is the process of perceiving it as figure.
It thus makes eminent sense that the evolution of cognition
should work from preadapted perceptual structure, and that the
opposition of figure and ground should be carried over from its
origins in the perceptual system to higher-order cognitive
structures which evolved to process, store, and manipulate
information obtained from the perceptual system. If these higher-
order structures then were the preadaptative ground on which grew
the language faculty, there would be no surprise in seeing the same
basic structural principle retained.
Indeed, if we think of language functionally, in the most
basic sense, it is almost inevitable that fundamental aspects of
its structure should mirror the structure of perception. The same
philosophical tradition which gives us the peculiar conception of
intelligence as information-processing, inclines us to imagine that
what is passed from one mind to another in the course of
communication is some sort of pure information. It is, of course,
no such thing. In its communicative function, language is a set of
tools with which we attempt to guide another mind to create within
itself a mental representation which approximates one which we
have. In the simplest case, where we are attempting to communicate
some perceived reality, the goal is to help the addressee to
construct a representation of the same sort that s/he would have if
s/he had directly perceived what we are trying to describe (cf.
DeLancey 1987). Clearly all of the necessary circuits and
connections will be much simpler if that input, which is thus in a
very real sense an artificial percept, is organized in the same way
as an actual percept. This involves many other aspects which are
also conspicuous in linguistic structure--deixis, to take one
striking example--but must, fundamentally, involve figure-ground
organization, since that is fundamental to perception.
Thus the hypothesis that Figure-Ground structure might inform
the basic structure of syntax has exactly the sort of
biological plausibility that any innatist hypothesis must
have. We can identify the preexisting structure from which it
might have evolved, and construct a scenario by which it might have
evolved from that preexisting structure. The availability of such
a story does not, of course, by itself establish the correctness of
either the evolutionary scenario or the linguistic hypothesis
itself. This or any other account of case roles and clause
structure must established on the basis of valid induction from
linguistic facts. But the fact that there is a readily-available,
biologically plausible account of how such an innate linguistic
structure might come to be gives this hypothesis a kind of
legitimacy lacking in many contemporary proposals about the nature
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