Subtle Implicit Language Facts Emerge from the Functions of Constructions

Abstract

Much has been written about the unlikelihood of innate, syntax-specific, universal knowledge of language (Universal Grammar) on the grounds that it is biologically implausible, unresponsive to cross-linguistic facts, theoretically inelegant, and implausible and unnecessary from the perspective of language acquisition. While relevant, much of this discussion fails to address the sorts of facts that generative linguists often take as evidence in favor of the Universal Grammar Hypothesis: subtle, intricate, knowledge about language that speakers implicitly know without being taught. This paper revisits a few often-cited such cases and argues that, although the facts are sometimes even more complex and subtle than is generally appreciated, appeals to Universal Grammar fail to explain the phenomena. Instead, such facts are strongly motivated by the functions of the constructions involved. The following specific cases are discussed: (a) the distribution and interpretation of anaphoric one, (b) constraints on long-distance dependencies, (c) subject-auxiliary inversion, and (d) cross-linguistic linking generalizations between semantics and syntax.

A verb-frame frequency account of constraints on long-distance dependencies in English

“…?Whoi did [that she hit __i ] was horrible? (Examples from Goldberg, 2016) A&G ( 2008) provided supportive evidence for the BCI account. They found a strong negative correlation between the negation test scores and difference rating scores between wh-questions and their corresponding declarative clauses (r=-0.83, p= 0.001).…”

“…Information structure refers to how information is packaged for the listener (e.g., Ambridge & Goldberg, 2008;Deane, 1991;Erteschik-Shir, 1973, 1979Goldberg, 2006;Goldberg, 2016;Van Valin, 1998;Van Valin & LaPolla, 1997). Grammatical constructions specify certain parts of a sentence as 'focused' or 'backgrounded': Focused constituents are the main assertion of the sentence, while other parts of the sentence convey less salient information, and are therefore 'backgrounded'.…”

“…According to this kind of proposal, wh-questions can't ask about backgrounded constituents, because that would lead to a clash of the function of wh-questions and backgrounded constructions: the wh-word is a classic focus, while constituents in backgrounded constructions cannot be focused. A constituent cannot felicitously be both discourse-prominent and backgrounded at the same time (Goldberg, 2016).…”

“…Subject is the default topic of a clause, and what a sentence is 'about'(Chafe, 1987;Goldberg, 2016;Lambrecht, 1994;MacWhinney, 1977). That is, a clausal topic is a "matter of [already established] current interest which a statement is about and with respect to which a proposition is to be interpreted as relevant"(Michaelis & Francis, 2007).…”

One model for the learning of language

“…This work leaves open the question of how more-detailed kinds of phenomena may be acquired-for instance, long-distance dependencies in syntactic islands (180,181). We note, however, that many such phenomena have been hypothesized to result from UG, but may, in fact, be better explained as properties of constructions and pragmatics (182)(183)(184). Either way, the learning of such aspects of grammar have simply not yet been explored using powerful domain-general learning tools.…”