The Science of Language (40 page)

Chomsky has for decades adopted a methodology for the study of mind and other mental systems that can be called “internalist.” In effect: if you want to construct a science of the mind, look for (innate) mental systems that seem to operate autonomously, and ignore any supposed relations between states of the system and things ‘out there,’ focusing instead on relations to other systems, where applicable. Internalism is related to a modular view of
the mind and its systems. The basic idea traces back to Descartes, not to Descartes's view (if he actually held it) that one can directly inspect the contents of one's own mind, but to his views of innateness, skepticism, and what Chomsky calls the “creative aspect of language use.” Details are beyond the scope of this glossary.

A technical term in grammar. Consider an external Merge of the LI
clothes
and the LI
wash
. The result is {wash, clothes}. Then the issue arises: what does further narrow syntactic computation need in the form of ‘information’ about this pair in order to carry out further Merges – to join this syntactic object to another LI, for example? The answer we got in the days of X-bar theory is that further computation is needed to ‘know’ that this is a verb phrase with
wash
as ‘head.’ One aim of grammars developed within the minimalist project is to eliminate extraneous and otherwise unexplained structure, such as that introduced automatically by X-bar theory – in effect, to eliminate what X-bar theory called “bar levels.” To accomplish this, minimalist accounts – following the idea that phrase structure should be “bare” – assigns one member of a merged pair as label of the pair. For {wash, clothes}, the label is “wash.” One gets the effect of the label “XP” (here, VP) that X-bar theory introduced as a matter of course for all categories of lexical item; but we get this without the need for introducing X-bar theory. It comes ‘for free.’And the bar level V′ between V and VP, which was introduced in X-bar theory to allow for adjunction, is eliminated; it is dealt with by the sequence of merges.

For naturalistic study, a language is an “I-language” – essentially, any of the biologically, computationally, and physically possible states that a mature language faculty can assume. The goal of the science of language is to provide in a natural science the descriptive and explanatory tools that allow for the definition of “possible human language.” See Appendices I and III.

Chomsky has used the term “language faculty” for decades to speak of the language system, including (often) both the core computational system (linguistic competence) as well as performance systems such as those involved in interpretation – whether articulatory-perceptual or conceptual-intentional. In Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (
2002
), the language faculty is said to consist
in the narrow computational system (FLN or “faculty of language, narrow”) and the broad system that includes FLN and performance systems (FLB, or “faculty of language, broad”). See also:
Narrow syntax
,
Third factor
.

As used in the text, “Machian” describes Ernst Mach's view that only “phenomena” (what one directly experiences) are real, and his rejection of the existence of the atom. Mach was also a physicist, physiologist, and psychologist.

According to current minimalist forms of grammar, the basic combinatory mechanism of the language faculty and possibly the sole component of UG. Merge comes in at least two forms, external and internal. For explanation and discussion, see the text, pp. 13–18.

Methodologically, a view of mental systems that maintains that they and their operation can fruitfully for the purposes of scientific inquiry be divorced from consideration of other systems, with the possible exception of loci where systems ‘communicate’ or interact. See also:
Internalism
.

Narrow syntax is the study of the core computational system of the language faculty – in current terminology, of the operations between a numeration of LIs and the semantic (SEM) and phonetic (PHON) interfaces. It contrasts with broad syntax, which in the study of language is usually taken to include study of what ‘happens’ in relations between language and other systems in the head, and in those systems themselves. In its broadest form syntax is the study of the cognitive operations of the mind/brain, excluding relations between any cognitive/mental states/events and ‘things in the world.’ Whether broad or narrow, syntax is the study of the intrinsic, internal properties of mental states/events.

There are several varieties of nominalism, but all more or less agree that whatever exists must be concrete and ‘individual.’ The form of nominalism
most relevant for the discussion in the main text is one due to Goodman and Quine (
1947
). Among other things, they attempted to eliminate dependence on sets, taking them to be equivalent to their members, so that {a, b} is the same as {b, a} and also {b, {a, b}}, etc. Respecting this principle is respecting the “principle of extensionality.”

The name “nominalism” derives from the Latin word for name. Intuitively, the nominalist is happy enough to say that predicates and abstract
terms
(terms that might appear to denote abstract entities) exist, but refuses to say that abstract entities and universals exist (although some might insist on a distinction between abstract entities and universals). Could a ‘projectivist’ view such as that adumbrated in
Appendix XII
count as nominalist in this sense, at least if one assumed that mental entities are in fact singular mental events? Possibly aspects of it could, although it refuses to adopt an assumption of nominalist and realist alike. There is no reason to suppose a genuine referential relationship between a mental entity such as a specific SEM and anything, whether universal or particular. Reference/denotation is something that people do. Realizing that demands that the metaphysical issues at stake between nominalist and realists need to be rethought along with many discussions of ‘realism’ of various flavors. This point is independent of Chomsky's suggestion in the text that getting rid of the sets to which the current version of Merge is committed is a “project for the future.”

As originally conceived at the advent of the “Principles and Parameters” research program early in the 1980s, a parameter was an option provided for in a universal principle (q.v.) that explained structural differences between languages (in syntax, phonology, and perhaps semantics). Parameters are set in language growth/development, leading to a child developing (say) Miskito as opposed to French. In more recent work, the original conception of a parameter has come into question and many “microparameters” have been introduced. Moreover, these now are traced not to options on principles, but to the contributions of “third factor” considerations. See
Appendix VIII
and the main text, especially pp. 45–46; 82–83.

PAX-6 is a ‘control’ gene that has been demonstrated to play a crucial role in the development/growth of visual systems in a variety of organisms in various clades. It has other roles too, and there is clear evidence that other genes also participate in vision growth, such as the NOTCH gene. See also
FOXP2
.

Along with SEM, one of the two kinds of interfaces between the language system's (faculty of language's) core computational system and other systems in the head. PHON is the phonetic interface: it provides information (in the form of phonetic features) to articulatory and perceptual systems. Chomsky sometimes speaks of PHON (and SEM) as “instructing” or “providing instructions to” the relevant systems with which it communicates or interacts.

Until the 1980s, a popular and generally used term for a principle (law) of the language system was “rule.” Rule proved problematic, however, for – among other things – several philosophers (John Searle is an example) insisted, despite being told otherwise, on taking rules as Chomsky understood the term to be rules for behavior or action, giving them a normative cast. Having begun down this path, it also became very tempting for philosophers and others to believe that the rules of language are learned somehow by some kind of habituation procedure. See the discussion of Sellars and Lewis in
Appendix VI
. Speaking of principles rather than rules helped undercut this error. Chomsky's principles (and what were often called “rules” before the 1980s) do not govern action or behavior, nor are they in any way normative. They are instead the (natural) laws of linguistic computation.

Chomsky (2008: 134) says: “We can regard an explanation of some property of language as
principled
, to the extent that current understanding now reaches, insofar as it can be reduced to the third factor and to conditions that language must meet to be usable at all – specifically, conditions coded in UG that are imposed by organism-internal systems with which FL interacts. Insofar as properties of I-languages can be given a principled explanation, in this sense, we move to a deeper level of explanation, beyond explanatory adequacy.”

Nelson Goodman in his
Fact, Fiction, and Forecast
(a draft of which was developed in some of the classes that Chomsky took with him) not only set up his famous “grue” argument concerning the projectibility (successful application or use) of predicates such as
green
as opposed to
grue
(“green until time t and blue thereafter”), but offered what he thought was a solution: that the projectible predicates are those that are projected (in/by a community of
language users). Chomsky in that class and later objected that this is no answer, and that one would have to assume that
green
(or rather, GREEN) is somehow innate and influences (not controls) language use in order to get a reasonable answer to the skeptic's question: why green and not grue? Goodman rejected innateness out of hand, adopting a strong version of behaviorism instead.

The issue of why we employ the words (or rather the concepts) we do in order to speak of and classify things in ways that we hope will be reliable. The projection problem is a version of the traditional “problem of induction.” Efforts to solve it are related to various efforts to undercut skepticism, or “answer the skeptic.” See
Projectibility
.

One of the core language computational system's two ‘interfaces’ with other systems in the human head. The general term for the systems with which language communicates at the SEM interface is “conceptual and intentional” systems. SEM is short for “semantic interface,” although one should not suppose that ‘semantic’ here has its usual use, where that amounts to “word–world” relationships.

In recent work, Chomsky has distinguished three factors involved in the ways in which a child's language faculty develops. One is a biological contribution, often called “UG” and traced to the genome. A second is ‘experience,’ or what might better be called the language-relevant ‘data’ that a child receives. The third, the “third factor,” Chomsky (
2005a
: 6) describes in this way:

3. Principles not specific to the faculty of language.

The third factor falls into several subtypes: (a) principles of data analysis that might be used in language acquisition and other domains; (b) principles of structural architecture and developmental constraints that enter into canalization, organic form, and action over a wide range, including principles of efficient computation, which would be expected to be of particular significance for computational systems such as language. It is the second of these subcategories that should be of particular significance in determining the nature of attainable languages.

The second factor is relatively unimportant. Note, for example, that the first factor must provide a means for the human mind during language growth to select only linguistically relevant data and make it, and not a virtually infinite set of extraneous considerations, relevant to the ways in which language can develop.

A term introduced by Jerry Fodor to speak of the automatic (in his terminology, “causal”) means by which a concept or other mental entity comes to be activated or perhaps shaped. Triggering is assumed to be due to some kind of mental machinery that is stimulated by some kind of input. Fodor assumed that the input must be some source outside the head, and he tries in his work (
1998
and others) to base an account of denotation of things outside the head on an ‘informational’ account of causal input. A more general view of triggering would allow that the source need not be outside the head, nor need the activation result from a single stimulation. Further, the ‘control’ of what comes about need not be due primarily to the stimulation, proximal or distal, but due instead to the nature of the mental machinery. Internal ‘control’ seems to be part of Chomsky's internalism: he notes that if you want to understand what persons ‘are,’ you should look to the concept PERSON that appears to be innate. See the main text, pp. 30–33 and the discussion of growth or development. Fodor considered the possible disconnect between stimulus and concept produced a problem (his “doorknob/DOORKNOB” problem), but so far as I can tell, it is a problem only if you insist on his versions of informational semantics and realism.