[lingtalks] Monday: Tom Bever (Linguistics Colloquium)

[Klinton Bicknell]

On Monday 20 April at 2pm, Tom Bever (University of Arizona; http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~psylin/bever.html 
  ) will give a colloquium in the UCSD Linguistics Department, in AP&M  
4301.

:: Abstract ::

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Language Universals

I will discuss three examples of universals of attested languages, all  
of which have been
treated as part of Universal Grammar, the essence of language  
structure. Two of the
universals may have a functional cause related to language  
acquisition: the EPP and the
mutual opacity of representational levels. A third may derive from  
long-evolved
neurological foundation of visual species recognition: the upward  
movement of
constituents.

The EPP isn't. EPP is a stipulated configurational filter on distant  
derivations, and
accordingly violates the general principle that all syntactic  
constraints are "local" (be it in
minimalist or connectionist frameworks). I show that EPP phenomena  
fall out of a
canonical form constraint on attested languages - every learnable  
language has a
canonical surface form and canonical mappings of that onto thematic  
relations, to
facilitate learning with a traditional hypothesis-and-test learning  
model.

The functional roles of opacity and recursive operations between  
linguistic levels –
making grammar learning a kind of problem-solving “fun”. The argument  
builds on the
above model of learning, as problem solving. Since problem solving  
elicits a general
human motivation, language has to have the form of a problem that  
stimulates that
motivation for the individual language learning child. This becomes a  
critical part of the
intrinsic motivation in individuals to learn language.

....The pied piper of vision.... It has been a long standing fact and  
puzzle why linguistic
movement has always been "upward", from more embedded parts of a  
linguistic structure
to less embedded parts. I propose an explanation based on "coaptation"  
of
representational principles of vision, relating to species specific  
recognition. In
particular, I show experimentally that perception of real "upward"  
movement (from a
more to less embedded portion of a scene) is easier than of "downward"  
movement. I
then argue that this upward hierarchical organization of vision is  
related to how species
recognize the motion of conspecifics.

I conclude with a brief discussion of “linguistic universals of the  
third kind”, so called
“laws of form”. Recent explorations of the ubiquity of the Fibonacci  
sequence in growth
patterns at various linguistic levels, have raised the possibility  
that language is
constrained by that mathematical “natural law”. I suggest that such  
numerological
phenomena are a result of conflicting representational constraints at  
each level, not a
cause.


-- 

For further information about the Linguistics department colloquia
series, including the schedule of future events, please visit http://ling.ucsd.edu/events/colloquia.html 
  .