Third Factors and the Performance Interface in Language Design

Abstract

This paper shows that systematic properties of performance systems can play an important role within the biolinguistic perspective on language by providing third-factor explanations for crucial design features of human language. In particular, it is demonstrated that the performance interface in language design contributes to the biolinguistic research program in three ways: (i) it can provide additional support for current views on UG, as shown in the context of complex center-embedding; (ii) it can revise current conceptions of UG by relegating widely assumed grammatical constraints to properties of the performance systems, as pointed out in the context of lin-ear ordering; (iii) it can contribute to explaining heretofore unexplained data that are disallowed by the grammar, but can be explained by systematic properties of the performance systems.

Conceptual and Methodological Problems with Comparative Work on Artificial Language Learning

“…Here, the finite/infinite distinction seems so clearly necessary that the cognitive science literature assumes without question that this competence is somehow internalized (perhaps not transparently) in the form of some finite set of rules; it further assumes that these rules, unmodified for any particular arithmetic task, determine an infinite-and non-arbitrary-range of outputs. Here, performance may be 'truncated' by working memory, among many other factors, in recognizable ways (e.g., Hitch 1978, Dehaene 1999, Trotzke et al 2013. Indeed, multiplication cannot even be carried out by a finite-state machine.…”

The Radical Unacceptability Hypothesis: Accounting for Unacceptability without Universal Constraints

“…A reviewer correctly points out that in principle failure of a particular example to observe a proposed syntactic constraint could be a 'grammatical illusion' (Christensen 2016;de Dios-Flores 2019;Engelmann and Vasishth 2009;Phillips et al 2011;Trotzke et al 2013). Clearly, such a possibility always exists where there are differences in judgments of acceptability.…”