LOT Course Friday

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LOT Course Friday
Nativist arguments
How else but innate? (Pinker, Crain)
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LOT Course Friday
Invoking Biology
Birds do not learn to build nests, why should
humans learn to build grammar?
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LOT Course Friday
Evolutionary Perspective
Grammar may follow from an adaptation of the
human neural system for a wired in scheme of
grammar
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LOT Course Friday
My objections (within generative grammar)
Challenging the how else argument Acquisition
is slow and speed is no argument
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LOT Course Friday
PF systems and gesture language
Are all PF embodied principles learned rather
than being innate?
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LOT Course Friday
Language diversity
Are all morphology embodied principles or are
phrasal principles learned rather than being
innate?
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LOT Course Friday
The Mohawk/Chinese argument
Are all morphological principles a matter of
acquisitional learning or are all
syntactic-phrasal principles?
Options excluded by major parameters serve no
clear survival purpose. These are unlikely to be
wired in
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LOT Course Friday
Mohawk quantifiers
Are Do quantifiers learned rather than being
innate?
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LOT Course Friday
Language diversity
Parameters imply learnability given a frame
(principle)
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LOT Course Friday
Innate grammar as an easy way-out
UG properties may result from innate forms as
well as from learnability
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LOT Course Friday
Sensitive period
Are there highly learnable designs of grammar?
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LOT Course Friday
Ambitions for a theory of grammar
Theory of grammar is a frame for the acquisition
procedure
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LOT Course Friday
Acquisitionists parallels
Is it possible to construct an evidence frame?
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LOT Course Friday
Evidence frames
No poverty of the stimulus, but evidence frames
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LOT Course Friday
Reduction of the input to intake
Input reduction results in evidence
frames Evidence frames satisfy the Single Value
Constraint
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LOT Course Friday
Identify ltFi?gt before ltFi1?gt (Single Value
Constraint)
Gi-1 ltFi?gt ? Gi-1 ltFigt ? Gi
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LOT Course Friday
Against UG-controlled acquisition
Natural evidence frames contradict poverty of the
stimulus
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LOT Course Friday
I-marking precedes D-marking
Effect of Single Value Constraint Evidence
frames (intake) outweigh mere frequency
(input)
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LOT Course Friday
Lexical effects of Io and Do
Parts of speech (?V, ?N) follow from Io/Do
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LOT Course Friday
Syntactic effects of Io and Do
Acquisition follows a grammatical hierarchy
rather than frequency
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LOT Course Friday
Discourse effects of Io and Do
Acquisition of ltCgt (illocution marking)
coincides with acquisition of ltIgt (predicate
marking)
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LOT Course Friday
D-marking coincides with argument marking
D-marking arguments are realized by Dltprogt or
by Dlt?progt
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LOT Course Friday
Arguments establish UTAH
D-marking/UTAH evidence frame for arguments
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LOT Course Friday
Io and Do Local evidence frames for
?-features/Agr
step 1
step 2
step 3
step 4
Evidence frames (intake) outweigh mere frequency
(input)
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LOT Course Friday
?-features/Agr from 2 successive evidence frames
EPP sets a focus on ?-features
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LOT Course Friday
Further local effects of Io and Do
tense/modals aspectuals/Neg dummy subjects
Io
Do
empty place twh pronouns/clitics reflexives
Evidence frames build upon local sisterhood
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LOT Course Friday
Complex NP-constraint from Sisterhood

• no poverty of the stimulus (objection to Chomsky)
• no pressure from string frequency (objection to
  Pullum)
• but sisterhood as evidence frame

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LOT Course Friday
Islands and learnability
An (acquisition) rule cannot involve X and Y,
unless their feature contents reach adjacent
sisterhood positions
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LOT Course Friday
Sisterhood and learnability
I-marking EPP D-marking UTAH Agreement ltwhgt
ltreflexivegt ltcliticgt The relevant ltF?gt in Y
may project in YP
Local binary relation Sisterhood and mutual
c-command
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LOT Course Friday
Results of evidence frames
Evidence frames are a promise for further research
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LOT Course Friday
Research questions I
Language types are based on robust learnability
properties
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LOT Course Friday
Research questions II
The (un-)learnability of subject inversion is
established early
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LOT Course Friday
Research questions III
Learnability conditions will yield a better
insight in typological variation
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LOT Course Friday
Research program
Reconstruct the order of evidence frames and
prove that grammar is a cultural invention
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LOT Course Friday
References