Linguistic Theory

Lecture 1
Introduction:
Linguistic Theory and Theories

Course Outline
Concentrating mainly on syntax
But some of the discussion will be of
relevance to other areas of linguistics

We will look at phenomena and theories

which were designed to them

Course Outline
Concentrating mainly on syntax
But some of the discussion will be of
relevance to other areas of linguistics

We will look at phenomena and theories

which were designed to them

Course Outline
The order of presentation will be
historically oriented:
To understand current ideas, we need to know
where they came from

You will not end up an expert in any

particular theory but you will know
something about all of them

Why do we need theory?

Cant we just observe language and
describe it without bothering with difficult
things like theories?

 No matter what you do, there will always be

a theory behind it
The human mind always operates with some
notion of the way the universe works
this may not always be correct and it can be
modified

The human mind finds it easier to understand

things if we break it down into smaller pieces
But before we know something, how do we know
where to place the divisions?
We dont we just guess
Guess = theory

 We dont have direct access to what we

are studying
Most theories of linguistics take a cognitive
perspective:
Language exists in peoples heads
Language is rules that we know: competence
Linguistic knowledge is inaccessible to
introspection and unobservable directly in
others
So how do we study stuff that we cannot
observe?

 Language is a black box puzzle:

You can observe what goes in and out of the
box, but you cant observe what goes on
inside which changes the input to the output
By studying the input and output we can
imagine what must be going on inside
Imagined processes = theory

A selective History of Linguistic

Theory

American structuralism (C1900 1960)

Transformational Grammar (1957 1964)
Standard Generative Theory (1964 1980)
Government and Binding Theory
Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar
Lexical Functional Grammar (1980 present)
Minmalist Programme
Optimality Theory (1993 present)

American Structuralism
Two characteristics:
Very impressed by Behaviourism/Empiricism
Studied Native American Languages

Behaviourism
Strong empiricist view:

All knowledge comes from experience

Therefore:

Human behaviour is learned from the environment

We can only study what we can observe
We cannot observe the mind, so we must assume that it

does not exist

We can observe the environment and behaviour, so lets
assume this is all that exists

Behaviourism was the only school of psychology

to define away its subject matter

Structuralists and Empiricism

We can only study what we can observe
We can observe sound
So we can study phonetics

If we assume that phonology is based on

phonetics, we can study phonology too

If we assume that morphology is based on
phonology, we can study morphology
If we assume that syntax is based on morphology,
we can study syntax
We cant study semantics leave that to
philosophers

 Therefore:
The unit of phonology (phoneme) is a
collection of phones (observable) and
distinguished in terms of the distribution of
phones
The unit of morphology (morpheme) is a
combination of phonemes and distinguished
in terms of distribution
The unit of syntax (word) is a combination of
morphemes, distinguished by distribution

Strucuralists and Native

Americans
There were not many native Americans left

by 1900 and their languages were

disappearing fast
There was therefore and urgent need to
record their grammars
American languages were very different from
Indo-European languages and it was thought
that classical linguistic concepts did not apply

 So what was needed was a set of field

tools that could be applied to any
language which would accurately yield
grammars
As all linguistic units were identified by
distribution patterns, distribution was the
most important discovery procedures to
produce a grammar

Generative Linguistics
1952 Chomsky started to develop another

view of language
1957 published first book very influential
But didnt openly criticise Structuralism

1959 published a critical paper of

Behaviourism
Caused the collapse of Behaviourism
Structuralism soon followed

Basic Ideas
Rationalist approach
The mind exists and can be studied
Some knowledge comes from the mind itself

Discovery procedures are foolish and

limiting
You get your data from wherever you can find
it (not limited to observable data i.e. Intuition
also acceptable)

 The notion of structure stays

Words group into phrases
Phrases group into sentences

New type of rule for producing structure

S NP VP

A set of such rules makes a Phrase

Structure Grammar
Grammar is a set of rules that are part of the
mind

 But phrase structure rules are not enough

to describe human languages
Discontinuous constituents
[A man with blue eyes] walked into a shop
[A man] walked into a shop [with blue eyes]

To describe this phenomena we need

transformations
Rules which alter structures to form other
structures (e.g. By moving things about)

Generative grammar and

language acquisition
From a rationalist perspective, knowledge
of language could be innate
But clearly this is not totally true as there
is more than one language
Chomsky supposed that some aspects of
language are innate but some are learned

 Language learning must be easy

Children do it in about 5 years with no formal
instruction

But transformational grammars which are

capable of describing even basic linguistic
facts were very complicated
How can we square these facts?

Developments of the 1970s

The way to account for language
acquisition is to assume that grammars are
limited
You cant just suppose any kind of rule

Therefore the focus was not on what we

can do with transformation, but what we
cant
Constraints

Developments of the 1980s

Principles and Parameters
Principle
Universal
Invariant
Innate
Parameter
A limited number of choices
Needs linguistic data to set

 Modularity
Principles and parameters seemed to group
into a small number of components, each of
which addresses specific linguistic
phenomena
Thus the grammatical system was seen as
constructed from a set of simple modules
which interact in complex ways
Thus the grammar is simple, but capable of
providing complex analyses

Developments of the 1990s

Competition
non-absolute grammaticality
Grammaticality based on the best of several
options
E.g.
It is better to not move than to move
It is better to move short distances than long ones

 What does the grammar manipulate?

From structuralism we have always assumed
that words are the basis of syntax
But transformational analyses started to
discover that units smaller than words
undergo syntactic processes:
He is always sad
He always phones his mother
Some have suggested that this leads to a
theory where syntax always manipulates
items smaller than the word and that words
are constructed by syntax