4.3. Faculty of Language

[Full title: Language Faculty (3): Faculty of Language]

1. Terminological Clarification

As stated at the previous subsection §2.4.2., Chomsky strongly refuted Skinner’s behaviourist explanation of language development as overtly simplistic. He then affirmed that language is the result of innate cognitive structures in the mind, that children possess an innate ability to extract meaning from speech sounds. In other words, children have certain innate characteristics that incline them to learn any language (that is, not one particular language but any). And at some level, Chomsky claims, all languages share common elements; and these universalities of the languages can be well explained on the term of phonology, morphology, syntax as well as semantics. The inborn brain mechanism which ‘programmes’ a child to be able to learn language was named by Chomsky as ‘Language Acquisition Device’ (LAD), later commonly known as ‘Faculty of Language’ (FL). Having been viewed primarily as a genetic endowment and a component of human brain dedicated to language and its use, the innate language faculty determines the course of acquisition within the human brain and provides children with a genetically transmitted set of procedures for developing a grammar which makes it possible for them to produce and understand sentences in a language they acquire. The LAD or FL contains certain information about the structure of language which is progressively used as the child matures. The universalities which are common to all languages called ‘linguistic universals’ (Chomsky 1968). As pointed out by Chomsky, these ‘universals’ exist at the deep structural (D-structure) level in languages (such as the existence of nouns, adjectives, and verbs etc). And through the LAD, the child has an innate awareness of these universals. The differences that exist between the various languages, Chomsky proposes, exist at the surface structure (S-structure). Put at its simplest level, it is pointed out that the surface structure represents the actual words and phrases which make up a sentence, while the deep structure corresponds more or less to the meaning of the sentence. The understanding of how to transform this deep structure into the surface structure is what Chomsky terms ‘Transformational grammar’. When children are exposed to language through the institutionalized human legacy of providing language input, known as motherese, they are able to ‘scan’ what is heard, extract the underlying grammatical rules and apply them in new situations and in varying forms (transformations).

Overall, Chomsky theorized that humans have a unique and inborn capacity to extract word meanings, sentence structure, and grammatical rules from the complex stream of sounds they hear. This means that language faculty must incorporate a set of universal grammar principles which enable the human child to form and interpret sentences in any natural language. Chomsky postulated that the human brain is especially constructed to detect and reproduce language; the mental system does not require formal learning and will function perfectly when language is available to the child. Generally, the theory which describes FL is called by Chomsky as ‘Universal Grammar’ (UG).

2. Innateness and LAD

Chomsky with many statements strongly affirms the child’s innate ability to extract meaning from speech sounds he heard. He even determinedly stated that:

To say that ‘language is not innate’ is to say that there is no difference between my granddaughter, a rock and a rabbit. In other words, if you take a rock, a rabbit and my granddaughter and put them in a community where people are talking English, they’ll all learn English. If people believe that, then they believe that language is not innate. If they believe that there is a difference between my granddaughter, a rabbit and a rock, then they believe that language is innate... To say ‘language is innate’ is to express the belief that some crucial and relevant internal nature differentiates my granddaughter from rock, bees, cats, and chimpanzees... The informal statement that language is innate to humans means something like this. Similarly, we say that arms are innate to humans and wings to birds. (Chomsky 2000: 51)

The innateness hypothesis generally holds that “one of the faculties of the mind, common to the species, is a faculty of language that serves the two basic functions of rationalist theory: it provides a sensory system for the preliminary analysis of linguistic data, and a schematism that determines, quite narrowly, a certain class of grammars” (Chomsky 1975: 12).

The hypothesis then can be well formulated by the following diagram.

Along with innateness theory, Chomsky also recommends the ‘Language Acquisition Device’ (LAD), an inborn brain mechanism which programmes a child to enable him to acquire language. The linguistic information in LAD will grow progressively along with child’s maturation. Such presence of LAD in the human mind is merely responsible for language development. A notable remark here is that language is innate but it also has an overlaid function at both the articulatory and the representational levels. Chomsky (2000) points out that there are properties of the language faculty, which are not found elsewhere, not only in the human mind, but in other biological organisms. The given example is of the property of discrete infinity of the language faculty which virtually unknown in the biological world. In short, language is an overlaid function on the biological structure; it is “not only innate but highly specific in rather crucial respects. It is an overlay to other things, it is something inserted into a system that has other properties” (Chomsky 2000: 51-2).

3. Human Language Faculty as an Organ

All theories raised by Chomsky of competence and performance, LAD or FL, or UG and so on, after all are to affirm his idea that language is a biological behaviour and unique to human beings. What he called language faculty is in fact “some part of the mind–brain which is dedicated to the knowledge and use of language. That is a particular function in the body; it is a kind of language organ, roughly analogous to the visual system which is also dedicated to a particular task” (Chomsky 2000: 3).

In order to prove for his assumption, Chomsky (2000) states:

There is good evidence that it is an actual species property in two senses. First of all, there appears to be very little variation across the species, apart from really serious pathology. Over quite a broad range, the basic properties of the faculty seem close to identical. In that respect it is not unlike the visual system. However, it is unlike the human visual system in another respect in which it is a species property: namely, it is apparently unique to the species. There does not seem to be anything homologous (that is, biologically related) or even analogous, which is a weaker property, in other related species. (p. 4)

Thus, the language faculty, as postulated by him, has properties typical of a bodily organ, a specialized structure which carries out a particular function. Chomsky has proposed thinking of FL as a ‘mental organ’ that analogous to a physical organ like the visual system in some respect and also unique to the species; that is, unlike other physical organs such as the human visual system in another respect. It has been pointed out that the domain-specificity of FL is not only supported by the dissociation between abilities of language and other cognitive functions, and further by the intrinsic properties in the FL itself (as language deficits due to epidemic or heritable traits, for instance), but also offers evidence for the species-specificity of the human language faculty. It is well established that every human child exposed even in limited ways to the triggering experience of language input provided by motherese develops into a full and rich capacity which is basically homogeneous with that of the surrounding community. That is why efforts to teach human languages to other species virtually have equally failed (see Anderson & Lightfoot 2000).

Generally, language is a special faculty apart from other higher faculties. The language faculty appears to be biologically isolated in a curious and unexpected sense (Chomsky 2000:4). In other words, as already pointed out in discussion, according to Chomsky, human knowledge of natural language results from a biologically determined capacity specific in both ways: to this domain and to our species. The functional properties of this faculty develop increasingly along with the child’s maturation. The growth of the mental organ of language is regarded as the biological development of any other organs. Thus, language exactly saying “grows in the mind,” and the child “learns language” similar to learning “to have arms rather than wings”; that is, his learning of language results from a specific innate ability rather than by general mechanisms of training (Chomsky 1980a, b). In this sense, a language is nothing more than a state of the language faculty. And so, to say that somebody knows a language, or has a language, is simply to say that his language faculty is in that state. The language, in that sense, provided instructions to the performance systems (Chomsky 2000: 8). In his The Minimalist Program, Chomsky (1995b) has explained clearly this point. According to him, when one is said to have the language L, it means his FL is in the state L, which is identified with a procedure; that language L is illustrated by Chomsky as I-language.^[1] This means from the initial state of the language faculty through the LAD, which is described as intermediary between the initial state of the FL and the states that it can attain, the person can get an I-language. The note here is that the cognitive system of the FL certainly changes; that is, the information that is stored in the FL changes through life. “Its common initial genetically determined state is not identical with the states it assumes under different conditions, either because of internal maturational processes or certainly because of external experience. That is what we call ‘language acquisition’” (Chomsky 2000: 6). However, these different states are only different in a superficial fashion and that each one is largely determined by the common language faculty. The evidence for this is obviously seen in the manual languages which develop in different deaf communities.

It can be concluded that a state attained by language faculty characterizes an infinite class of linguistic expressions, each a certain array of phonetic, structural and semantic properties. The study of language falls naturally within the domain of human biology. The human mind is modular in structure, a system of interacting subsystems that have their own special properties. The LAD is only one component of the total system of intellectual structures that can be applied to problem solving and concept formation; in other words, the FL is only one of the faculties of the mind. Whatever the FL is, it can assume many different states in parallel, and children seem to be able to acquire quite a number of radically different languages without effort and without even awareness (see Chomsky 1988: 167-8; 1991: 56).

4. Universal Grammar

The notion of Universal Grammar (UG) as introduced in the two previous sections is of the universal linguistic principles that are common to all human languages. All languages in the world are so said to be the part of UG. According Chomsky (1986), UG may be regarded as a characterization of the genetically determined language faculty. Specifically, whole assumption of the FL is focused on this theory.

The term Universal Grammar actually derives from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century by grammarians who urged that grammar be considered a part of logic -the key to analyzing thought. Universal grammarians like John Stuart Mill believed rules of grammar to be language forms that correspond to universal thought forms. UG in this sense is about the universality of logic and about the interdependence of language and thought. Chomsky’s version of UG in some measure is related to these ideas. However, Chomsky’s view which is the empirical study of language contributes to more the philosophy of mind than traditional logic, and for him, the philosophy of language has to contribute to linguistics. By language, Chomsky means the knowledge human beings have that allows them to acquire any language. He, therefore, sees grammar as a theory of language structure rather than a description of actual sentences: “the grammar is a system of rules and principles that determine the formal and semantic properties of sentences. The grammar is put to use, interacting with other mechanisms of mind, in speaking and understanding language” (Chomsky 1975: 28). A grammar, thus, is simpler a device for producing the structure, not of a particular language, but of competence -the ability to produce and understand sentences in any and all languages. Such a grammar is a kind of universal grammar, an analysis of the principles underlying all the various human grammars.

Universal Grammar, strongly propounded and advocated by Chomsky, is innate to human species, and is the basis for acquiring language. It, UG, is the theory of the initial state of the language faculty. It is strictly stressed that UG is not the grammar of any particular language but a set of absolute universals, rules and principles that are shared by all human languages. It is, so, a genetic endowment that is constant, lies beyond particular rules or conventions and must hold universally such that any person’s grammar can be attained on the basis of naturally available trigger experiences. The definition of UG is stated very clear by Chomsky (1975: 29): “Let us define “universal grammar” (UG) as the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages not merely by accident but by necessity -of course, I mean biological, not logical, necessity. Thus, UG can be taken as expressing “the essence of human language.” UG will be invariant among humans. UG will specify what language learning must achieve, if it takes place successfully.”

Thus, each human language will conform to UG; what is learned, the cognitive structure attained, must have the properties of UG though it will have other properties as well, accidental properties. The example given by Chomsky is about X-bar Theory (Chomsky 1972, Jackendoff 1977, Haegman 1995) in which phrase structure systems really do not have the variety and the complexity, it is because there is some general framework that they all fit into and one only has to change some features of that general system to get the particular ones. Such principles are generally acquired by children in accordance with the requirements of the genotype. Apart from the cases of serious pathology, all human beings possess the common endowment of UG; each child is capable of acquiring any language, his mind/brain is not specially designed for one or the other. Any child may grow up to be a speaker of Hindi or English, depending entirely on his circumstances and not at all on variation in his genetic make-up. So, for formal languages, there is no “right” grammar but “it’s arbitrary.” And there must be the basic structure of language, a UG, that is essentially uniform and is coming from inside, not from outside.^[2]

In sum, the theory of UG is an innate property of the human mind and as such it underlies all human languages. All and only human beings are equipped with UG and they are all able to learn languages. There is no structure similar to UG in nonhuman organisms as asserted by Chomsky (1975): “the capacity for free, appropriate, and creative use of language as an expression of thought, with the means provided by the language faculty, is also a distinctive feature of the human species, having no significant analogue elsewhere.” One can argue that the syntactic properties of human language, as they have evolved, are provided to our language organ as a consequence of our specific genotype, and as such fall outside the capacity of non-humans. The existence of the theory of UG is showed briefly by Dabrowska (2004) with the two striking premises. First, human languages have certain universal properties. Second, these properties cannot be learned because the relevant information is not available in the input.

A remarkable property of language acquisition, therefore, is that UG yields finite grammars (because they are represented in the finite space of the brain) but that they range over infinity of possible sentences. Finite grammars consist of a set of operations which allow for infinite variation in the expressions which are generated: “language involves infinite use of finite means; that is, the mind is obviously finite but there is an infinite number of expressions that every person can master and use” (Chomsky 2000: 11). That is why children can attain knowledge which quite factually much surpasses their actual experience. Just the basis of quite limited set of rules garnered from primary linguistic data (PLD), the child can master the production and comprehension of an unlimited range of novel utterances in his language without any effort. Another notable feature is that although UG mentions the basic rules for language acquisition, the innate UG is not sufficient to enable one to speak a language because while grammatical principles are universal, there are many variations between different languages. Hence, although the child has represented in his brain a grammar that tends to equip with an ideal account of the structure of the sentences of his language, when actually faced with the task of production or comprehension, many other factors influence the underlying linguistic competence to produce actual performance. This means that there is an autonomous system of formal grammar, determined in principle by the language faculty and its component UG; and that an actual language may result only from the interaction of several mental faculties, one being the faculty of language (Chomsky 1975: 43). In other words, there exists a parameter along with language vary. A parameter may be understood as a restricted set of options associated with a given principle, (the non-inflection feature in Vietnamese, for example, is a parameter). Such principles of parameters can be learned by a child. There are some main parameters that can be distinguished in languages such as head parameter, pro-drop parameter, and adjacency parameter. It is for the existence of such parameters that a child though has been in the position to articulate all the languages with equal efficiency, the native speaker of Vietnamese is not supposed for speak Hindi or other languages with equal proficiency. These parameters, however, are seen as accidental properties that are only superficial and must be limited and adhered to UG. Thus, the product of the language faculty varies depending on triggering experience; that is, the child has to develop a grammar by setting the open parameters of UG in the light of his particular experience.

A grammar, after all, is a psychological entity, part of the psychological state of the person who knows a language. The full account of that psychological state includes five intimately related items. First, there is a UG that contains a set of absolute universal, notions, and principles common to all human languages always is represented in the mind/brain of a mature speaker (except the serious pathological cases). The UG yields finite grammars but allows an infinite number of expressions. Second, there are language-specific properties which are not fully determined by UG but which vary cross linguistically; that is, parameteric variations. These principles and parameters frame part of the theory of grammar or UG, and they belong to the genotype. Third, UG consists of various sub-systems of principles. Fourth, UG is taken to be a characterization of the child pre-linguistic initial state. Triggering experiences serve to fix the parameters of UG, providing a core grammar. And fifth, the statements of a grammar are statements of the theory of mind about the I-language.

On the whole, Chomsky’s ‘principles-and-parameters’ model of language acquisition represents the first steps towards an account of the genetic basis of grammar that constitutes the initial state of the language faculty. It is the principles and parameters framework brought the principles of UG and language faculty to the centre stage of linguistic research (Chomsky 1975, 1981).

5. Arguments in Support and Criticism of Chomsky’s Theory

The Chomsky’s theory of the language faculty with universal grammar is supported by most other specialists. Arguments in support of Chomsky’s theory first come from Lenneberg in his Biological Foundations of Language (1967) in which he has expressed firmly that language is an innate capacity of the human being and that all human beings possess common physiological features related to language, such as finely tuned vocal chords, and language areas in the cortex of the brain. Furthermore, virtually all children, regardless of their intellectual ability, acquire language at approximately the same age and in the same sequence. Moreover, supports also are found in studies by Brown and Bellugi (1964), Herriot (1970) and McNeill (1966) in which they suggest that children appear to have an inborn capacity to use rules of language. This is showed in their language through speech errors. Some psychologists, however, have suggested that the use of rules by children in their early speech is the result not so much of an inborn LAD, but of the child’s pre-linguistic knowledge. By this is meant that, before children are capable of using language, they are able to communicate and understand the communications of others through gestures, facial expressions and actions.

Apart from these arguments, Chomsky’s theory is also criticized for some other grounds. Scholars suggest that Chomsky’s theory tends to overemphasize the structure of sentences, while neglecting their meaning. For example, the theory cannot explain single or two-word utterances since they contain no (or very little) grammatical structure. Bloom (1970), who has done considerable amount of research on childhood utterances, maintained that the meaning of the utterance must be taken into account. One of the children she studied produced the utterance ‘mummy sock’ in two different contexts, one where her mother was putting a sock on the child’s foot, the other while picking up her mother’s sock. The intended meanings are very different. Other arguments are found in theory of the Baby Talk Register (BTR) by Gelman and Shatz (1977) in which they find that Chomsky’s theory that is suggesting that the environment is inadequate for language learning tends to ignore the fact that parents modify and simplify their language to help their child’s understanding. Moreover, some other scholars like Bruner (1983), Butterworth (1987) believed that language acquisition is not only about knowing the structures or the rules, but also about learning the social functions of language and that language as a byproduct (and a vehicle) of culture transmission which Bruner called the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) (see Malim & Birch 1998).

In short, language is after all a species-specific behaviour and is speciesuniform possession of human beings, is our unique genetic endowment. Chomsky and linguists in transformational-generative school firmly believed that language is a special faculty, a kind of biological instinct that begins to unfold the minute one is born. The human brain, these generativists state, is especially constructed to detect and to reproduce language and that the ability to communicate and to understand language is a major achievement of human beings. Children are capable of acquiring and applying grammatical rules and vocabulary of any language as they are exposed to them without any training. This ability will be increased amazingly along with their maturation. This extraordinary phenomenon cannot be found in any other species. It is purely species capacity, even the most rudimentary properties of language lie well beyond the capacities of the wisest intelligent ape.

UG contains the set of properties present in all languages and hence comprises of unrestricted or absolute universals and refers solely to the unmarked properties of language. Thus, UG defines the limits of human language and the extent to which languages can vary though it minimally provides the children unmarked properties of settings for language. In general, the theory of language, according to these generativists, is simply that part of human psychology that is concerned with one particular ‘mental organ’, human language. Stimulated by appropriate and continuing experience, the language faculty creates a grammar that generates sentences with formal and semantic properties (Chomsky 1975: 36). The UG underlies the particular grammars of all languages and is part of man’s intrinsic biological inheritance; that is, these rules and principles are in large measure unconscious and beyond the reach of potential consciousness. That is whole content of Chomsky’s language faculty theory.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

By ‘I’, Chomsky suggests “internal,” “individual” and “intensional.” The concept of language is internal as it deals with an inner state of one’s mind/brain. It is individual as it deals with a given subject, and with language communities only derivatively, as groups of people with similar I-languages. And finally, it is intensional in the technical sense that the I-language is a function specified in intension, not extension (its extension is the set of structural descriptions (SDs). The ‘I-language’ is assumed to have two components: a computational system, and a lexicon. The first generates the form of SDs; the second characterizes the lexical items that appear in them. For more details, see Chomsky (1995b).

[2]:

Following Chomsky’s “An interview on Minimalism” by Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi, University of Siena, Nov 8-9, 1999 (Rev: March 16, 2000).