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Nativismus: Chomskys Ansatz
Grundlagen | LAD | Syntax-Basics | Parameter | Chomsky | Clahsen | Pienemann | L2-Aquisition | Literatur |
[ (1999) Linguistic & Brain Science | (1982) Government & Binding | (1965) Aspects | (1959) Review of Skinner ] |
(1999) Linguistic and Brain Science Rephrasing in terms I have sometimes used [14], the "learning mechanisms" are dedicated systems LT(O, D) ("learning theories" for organism O in domain D); among them is LT(Human, Language), the specialized "language organ", the faculty of language FL. Its initial state is an expression of the genes, comparable to the initial state of the human visual system, and appears to be a common human possession to close approximation. Accordingly, a typical child will acquire any language under appropriate conditions, even under severe deficit and in "hostile environments". The initial state changes under the triggering and shaping effect of experience, and internally-determined processes of maturation, yielding later states that seem to stabilize at several stages, finally at about puberty. We can think of the initial state of FL as a device that maps experience into state L attained, hence a "language acquisition device" (LAD). The existence of such a LAD is sometimes regarded as controversial, but it is no more so than the (equivalent) assumption that there is a dedicated "language module" that accounts for the linguistic development of an infant as distinct from that of her pet kitten (or chimpanzee, or whatever), given essentially the same experience. Even the most extreme "radical behaviorist" speculations presuppose (often tacitly) that a child can somehow distinguish linguistic materials from the rest of the confusion around it, hence postulating the existence of FL = LAD; and as discussion of language acquisition becomes more substantive, it moves to assumptions about FL that are more rich and domain specific, without exception to my knowledge. (p. 11) Thus we say that a child is learning English but hasn't yet reached the goal. What the child has acquired is not a language at all: we have no name for whatever it is that a 4 year-old has acquired. The child has "partial, and partially erroneous, grasp" of English. So does everyone, in fact. [14] N. Chomsky (1975) Reflections on Language (New York: Pantheon; New Press 1998) (p. 24) |
(1982) Lectures on Government and Binding. But it is hardly to be expected that what are called "languages" or "dialects" or even "idiolects" will conform precisely or perhaps even very closely to the systems determined by fixing the parameters of UG. This could only happen under idealized conditions that are never realized in fact in the real world of heterogenous speech communities. Furthermore, each actual "language" will incorporate a periphery of borrowings, historical residues, inventions, and so on, which we can hardly expect to – and indeed would not want to – incorporate within a principled theory of UG. For such reasons as these, it is reasonable to suppose that UG determines a set of core grammars and that what is acutally represented in the mind of an individual even under the idealization to a homogeneous speech community would be a core grammar with a periphery of marked elements and constructions. Viewed against the reality of what a particular person may have inside his head, core grammar is an idealization. From another point of view, what a particular person has inside his head is an artifact resulting from the interplay of many idiosyncratic factors, as contrasted with the more significant reality of UG (an element of shared biological endowment) and core grammar (one of the systems derived by fixing the parameters of UG in one of the permitted ways). We would expect the individually-represented artifact to depart from core grammar in two basic respects: (1) because of the heterogeneous character of actual experience in real speech communities; (2) because of the distinction between core and periphery. The two respects are related, but distinguishable. Putting aside the first factor – i.e., assuming the idealization to a homogeneous speech community – outside the domain of core grammar we do not expect to find chaos. Marked structures have to be learned on the basis of slender evidence too, so there should be further structure to the system outside of core grammar. We might expect that the structure of these further systems relates to the theory of core grammar by such devices as relaxing certain conditions of core grammar, processes of analogy in some sense to be made precise, and so on, though there will presumably be independent structure as well: hierarchies of accessability, etc. (…) These should be fruitful areas of research, increasingly so, as theories of core grammar are refined and elaborated. (p. 7f.) |
(1965) Aspects Insgesamt ist die Situation bei der Untersuchung der Spracherlernung etwa diese: Wir haben gewisse Einsichten in den Charakter der generativen Grammatiken, die die »Ausgabe« eines Sprachlernmodells bilden müssen. Diese Einsichten zeigen klar, daß taxonomische Auffassungen von der Sprachstruktur unangemessen sind und daß die Kenntnis der grammatischen Struktur nicht entstehen kann durch die Anwendung schrittweiser, induktiver Operationen (Segmentierung, Klassifizierung, Substitutsionsprozeduren, Ausfüllen vorgezeichneter Plätze in gegebenen Rahmen, Assoziationen usw.) - wie sie bisher in Linguistik, Psychologie oder Philosophie entwickelt worden sind. Andere empiristische Spekulationen ergeben nichts, was auch nur andeuten könnte, wie die innere Begrenztheit der bisher vorgeschlagenen Methoden zu überwinden wäre. Vor allem sind aus solchen Spekulationen keine Möglichkeiten erwachsen, mit denen man das Grundfaktum des normalen Gebrauchs der Sprache erklären oder wenigstens darstellen könnte, nämlich die Fähigkeit eines Sprechers, ganz spontan neue Sätze hervorzubringen und zu verstehen, die vorher gehörten weder in irgendeinem physikalisch definierten Sinn noch im Sinne irgendwelcher »Rahmen« und Klassen von Elementen ähnlich sind, noch mit früher gehörten durch Konditionierung assoziiert sind, noch aus ihnen ableitbar sind durch irgendeine Art von »Generalisierung«, die in der Psychologie oder Philospohie bekannt wäre. Die Spracherlernung beruht offenbar darauf, daß das Kind das erwirbt, was unter formalem Gesichtspunkt eine tiefe und abstrakte Theorie ist - eine generative Grammatik seiner Sprache - deren Begriffe und Prinzipien zum großen Teil nur entfernt und über lange und komplizierte Ketten unbewußter, quasi schlußfolgender Schritte mit der Erfahrung verbunden sind. Betrachtet man den Charakter der zu erlernenden Grammatik, den geringen Umfang und die schlechte Beschaffenheit der zugänglichen Erfahrungsdaten, die überraschende Gleichförmigkeit der resultierenden Grammatiken und ihre Unabhängigkeit von Intelligenz, Motivation und emotionaler Verfassung in einem sehr breiten Variationsbereich, so bleibt wenig Hoffnung, daß von der Struktur der Sprache viel erlernt werden könnte durch einen Organismus, der keine Anfangsinformation über ihren allgemeinen Charakter besitzt. Es ist im Augenblick unmöglich, über die vorgegebene, angeborene Struktur eine Annahme zu formulieren, die reichhaltig genug wäre, um die Tatsache zu erklären, daß Kenntnis der Grammatik aufgrund der Evidenz erlangt werden kann, die dem Lernenden zugänglich ist. Deshalb ist der empiristische Versuch zu zeigen, wie die Annahmen über ein Sprachlernmodell auf ein begriffliches Minimum zu reduzieren sind, völlig verfehlt. Das tatsächliche Problem ist die Entwicklung einer Hypothese über die Anfangsstruktur, die spezifisch genug ist, um der Spracherlernung Rechnung zu tragen, aber nicht so speziell, daß sie mit der bekannten Verschiedenartigkeit der Sprachen nicht vereinbar ist. (…) Kurzum: Die Struktur der einzelnen Sprachen kann weitghend bestimmt sein durch Faktoren, die sich bewußter Kontrolle durch das Individuum entziehen und für die die Gesellschaft wenig Wahlfreiheit hat. Auf Grund der besten zur Zeit erreichbaren Information muß man annehmen, daß ein Kind ebensowenig umhin kann, eine bestimmte Art von Transformationsgrammatik zu konstruieren, um mit den Daten, auf die es stößt, fertig zu werden, wie es die Art und Weise dirigieren kann, in der es Festkörper wahrnimmt oder Linien und Winkel erfaßt. Es ist demnach sehr wohl möglich, daß die generellen Merkmale der Sprachstruktur nicht so sehr den Verlauf individueller Erfahrung, sondern vielmehr den allgemeinen Charakter der Fähigkeit, Kenntnisse zu erwerben, spiegeln - also im traditionellen Verständnis die angeborenen Ideen und Prinzipien. (S. 80-83) |
(1959) Review of Skinners Verbal Behavior (1957) Chomsky kritisiert zunächst Skinners behavioristisches Reinforcment-Konzept und skizziert später aus der Kritik heraus Züge einer anderen Spracherwerbstheorie. Dabei macht er u.a. folgende Aussagen: Chomsky verweist u.a. auf Konrad Lorenz Beobachtung der Prägung (imprinting) im Zusammenhang mit dem Spracherwerb. Er konzediert aber auch, daß Imitation eine Rolle spielen könne: Similarly, it seems quite bexond question that children acquire a good deal of their verbal and nonverbal behavior by casual observation and imitation of adults and other children. It is simply not true that children can learn language only through 'meticolous care' on the part of adults who shape their verbal repertoire through careful differential reinforcement, though it may be that such care is often the custom in academic families. It is a common observation that a young child of immigrant parents may learn a second language in the streets, from other children, with amazing rapidity, and that his speech may be completely fluent and correct to the last allophone, while the subtleties that become second nature to the child may elude his parents despite high motivation and continued practice. A child may pick up a large part of his vocabulary and 'feel' for sentences structure from television, from reading, from listening to adults, etc. Even a very young child who has not yet acquired a minimal repertoire from which to form new utterances may imitate a word quite well on an early try, with no attempt on the part of his parents to teach it to him. (…) As far as acquisition of language is concerned, it seems clear that reinforcement, casual observation, and natural inquisitiseness (coupled with a strong tendency to imitate) are important factors, as is the remarkable capacity of the child to generalize, hypothesize, and 'process information' in a variety of very special and apparently high complex ways which we cannot yet describe or begin to understand, and which may be largely innate, or may develop through some sort of learning or through maturation of the nervous system. The manner in which such factors operate and interact in language acquisition is completely unknown. It is clear that what is necessary in such a case is research, not dogmatic and perfectly arbitrary claims, based on analogies to that small part of the experimental literature in which one happens to be interested. (…) It is often argued that experience, rather than innate capacity to handle information in certain specific ways, must be the factor of overwhelming dominance in determining the specific character of language acquisition, since a child speaks the language of the group in which he lives. But this is a supeficial argument. As long as we are speculating, we may consider the possibility that the brain has evolved to the point where, given an input of observed Chinese sentences, it produces (by an 'induction' of apparently fantastic complexity and suddenness) the 'rules' of Chinese grammar, and given an input of observed English sentences, it produces (by, perhaps, exactly the same process of induction) the rules of English grammar; or that given an observed application of a term to certain instances it automatically predicts the extension to a class of complexly related instances. (…) Summarizing this brief discussion, it seems that there is neither empirical evidence nor any known argument to support any specific claim about the relative importance of 'feedback' from the environment and the 'independent contribution of the organisms' in the process of language acquisition. (…) The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with data-handling or 'hypothesis-formulating' ability of unknown character and complexity. The study of linguistic structure may ultimately lead to some significant insights into this matter. At the moment the questions cannot be seriously posed, but in principle it may be possible to study the problem of determining what the built-in structure of an information-processing (hypothesis-forming) system must be to enable it to arrive at the grammar of a language from the available data in the available time. |
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Chomsky, Noam (1959) Review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. In: Language 35,1/59, 26-58 |
W. Grießhaber 2002-2008 |