Developmental mechanisms of language

Longuoge Sciences. Volume Printed in Great Britain

11, Number

0388~~1~89 $3.00 -t .OO Pergamon Press plc

1, pp. 105-l 18, 1989

REVIEWS

~EVE~OPM~~~A~ ME~HA~r~MS OF LANGUAGE. Edited by Charles-James N. Bailey and Roy Harris. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1985, xii i- 187~~.

Reviewed by Alan S. Kaye Cafijbrnia State University

These seven very rich, thought-provoking papers are revised versions of papers prepared for the “Developmental Linguistics” Working Group held at the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists in Tokyo in 1982, Bailey and Harris have written the Editorial foreword on their new paradigm, developmentalism (pp.vii-xii), dichotomizing linguistics into a static or a developmental science. They explain the difference as follows. In a static paradigm, they maintain that the units undergoing study, e.g. phonemes and morphemes, are static units with static relations. Even the transformationalists adopted this point of view; after ail, a natural language was merely an infinite set of sentences (the Editors (p. vii) say that “‘the set of sentences in question might be infinite”(emphasis added), however, I see no reason for their expressed reservation) generated by a finite set of rules. Concerning the opposing viewpoint, the Editors make their pitch and begin to talk of a new (major) trend in linguistics, deveiopmentalism, which does not accept the assumption that language can be studied as a static system. (Even de Saussure’s synchronic and diachronic arenas were equally static, according to them.) Indeed, they claim that static language models of real phenomena cannot account for different sociolects and, in general, the phenomenon of style in language. To put it bluntly, as Bailey (1980) did, “linguistics is not autonomous” (p. x}. Developmentalism is thus in opposition to any proposed model of language which freezes it and which does not accept the ability of the native speaker to readily flow with the times and the context of situation (to borrow a phrase from Malinowski and the Firthians). Bailey’s paper (“Toward Principles governing the Progress and Patterning of Phonetological Development,” pp. l-49) is more than a quarter of the entire volume and more than half of the extensive bibliography refers back to his previous publications beginning in the late 1960s. This article is really monographic in content as well as scope, a minibook, if you will. He takes the Chomskyan

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Paradigm to task by calling it minilectal, however, he does credit it (in contradistinction to what he refers to as the butterfly-collector or supply-side approach U to historical linguistics” (p. 1) and, correctly, in my estimation, for attemptingto ... not only understand

but also to formulate

“the principles

that structure

language”

(ibid.). In this zest for theory, Bailey castigates the “butterfly-collector” linguists for that type of linguistics “has little of the ‘scientific’, and nothing of the ‘theoretical’, about it” (p. I), but then he just finished saying a little earlier that the butterflycollecting approach is closer to the real world than that of the Erector-Set theoretician. Personally, I applaud the work of many linguistic theoreticians for these many different theoretical approaches have all greatly assisted in the phenomenal growth of linguistics, however, the fieldworking linguists out there in the Third World, with their descriptive grammars and dictionaries, are also doing valuable work, which oftentimes are too easily forgotten. For one thing, some of the languages which are nearing extinction have an intrinsic merit to their being studied before it is too late. The linguistic world would be so much poorer without Leslau’s work on Gafat or Haas’ work on Natchez. Besides, how can linguists be so sure their universals are truly universal’? To cite one recent interesting example, Maddieson (1987) has demonstrated that Postal (1968: 82) was erroneous in abscribing only one language (Bororo) as having linguo-labials and that they are not “easy” to make, contrary to Postal’s view. Maddieson has further shown that they are not quite so rare, and he has served as the iconoclast in destroying the myth of the so-called universal of linguo-labials. The framework Bailey uses is familiar Bailey territory, i.e. connatural vs abnatural developments going back to the implicational universals originally postulated by Greenberg, e.g. consider: (I) the more marked - less marked, and (2) the presence of the more marked > less marked. Although no linguist, I believe, has solved the entire that it is gradual

range of problems and “the changed

connected with language range, Bailey affirms output of a few rules progressively increases

over instances of the unchanged input, which in complementary fashion progressively decreases, and initially restricted environments and inputs become increasingly general in a manner that is in principle predictable” (p. 3). One of the most interesting parts of Bailey’s presentation concerns palatalization and assibilation (pp. 18-22) with many examples from different sub-branches of the Indo-European family. A universal rule of palatalization is proposed which includes IPA /j/ - /j/, however, as Kaye (I 972) demonstrated, a Proto-Colloquial Kuwaiti Arabic /j/, Classical Arabic /j/, etc., Arabic (hereafter, PCA) *ii/ rather than the other way around. Although it must be admitted that the case of Cairene /g/ is truly puzzling, the situation in it resembles Proto-Semitic */g/, which shifted to PCA */i/ and then, for rather anomalous reasons, back to Cairene

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/g/

(there

might

have been conditioning

factors

which triggered

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this which are no

longer recoverable), however, other Egyptian dialects work differently, particularly Upper-Egyptian ones, which have shifted PCA */iI to /r/ (as many Sudanese dialects too). There are important principles formulated such as what Bailey (p. 6) calls quite ingeniously “the principle of the hare and the tortoise,” which states that the slower developing environment predictably overrules and defeats the faster moving one. Among other items tackled by Bailey are “ruki” phenomena in Sanskrit, Greek and Balto-Slavic, lenition and fortition, tautosyllabicity, an Auslautverhiirtung rule, detriphthongization and the very intriguing case of markedness-reversal in child language acquisition (in Appendix D, “A Remark on Development in Children’s Language,” p.40). Bailey’s article is, as one has come to expect from his other writings, remarkable both for its breadth as well as for its depth. The well-known expert in pidgin and creole studies, Peter Mtihlhausler of Oxford University, authors Chapter 2, “Patterns of Contact, Mixture, Creation and Nativization: Their Contribution to a General Theory of Language” (pp. 5 I87). He expands on the principal processes of language development proposed by Markey (1980): (1) diffusion, (2) fusion, and (3) pidgin and creole development (p.50) (see p.82 for his indebtedness to Markey). He reiterates the theme expounded numerous times by Bailey in the first chapter that the static language model, which regards languages as states rather than the more correct processes, has outlived its usefulness. His point is made crystal clear (p. 52). Consider: “Unless linguists are prepared to give up static models in favour of dynamic ones, language mixing will continue to be misrepresented and misunderstood when it comes to analysing real-life linguistic data.” Consider further (p. 82): those linguists subscribing to a static model of linguistic description cannot “do justice to the nature of human language, for they fail to consider essential properties. Languages develop, are variable, gradient, and open-ended and . . . are almost always in contact with other systems and subsystems.” One of the most significant conclusions of Mtihlhlusler’s arguments is in the insights that pidginization and creolization provide to general historical linguistics (p. 77). Although Kaye (1985) has discussed some of the relevant issues involved here, Mtihlhtiusler addresses four reasons why the family-tree theory from a ProtoPidgin English of the 17th century, as proposed by Hall (1966), must be rejected (p.79): (I) Hall ignores lexical mixing, (2) Hall’s theory does not take into consideration the many breaks necessarily present in the development of all pidgin languages, (3) the entire notion of the linguistic continuity of pidgin languages is and (4) Hall fails to consider the contact that the various pidgin “suspect”, languages themselves have had back and forth on each other. Mtihlhausler spells out his proposals for the developments of Chinese Pidgin

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What

strikes me as being of overwhelming

significance is a linguistic cycle the field finds itself in, i.e. the modern-day repetition of arguments held in the last century. Schmidt’s (1872) Wellentheorie and Schuchardt’s dismissal of the Stammbaumtheorie proposed by Schleicher go hand in hand with Mtihlhausler’s conclusion (p.81): “That the family-tree model continues to be widely used and accepted, even for languages with a long contact history, is a deplorable state of affairs, considering that the only legitimate case for its application - the development of two or more distinct systems out of a single system by the way of splitting up or diffusion has in all likelihood never occurred.” Mtihlhausler (1986), which has in many ways replaced Hall (1966) as the textbook in pidgin and creole linguistics, should be the field’s standard for the rest of the century. There can be no denying that Miihlhlusler’s theoretical insights are intertwined with the solid experience of pure, raw, unadulterated fieldwork. Theory and Developmental Kim Sterelny writes in Chapter 3 on “Semantic Linguistics” (pp. 89-107). Although she defends transformational-generative grammar (hereinafter TG) as being enormously advantageous “as a theory of the syntax of natural language” (p.89), TG is praised also even further for its explicitness and testability and for its being able to postulate the doctrines of a Universal Grammar, which are, in essence, grammatical constraints which a firstlanguage learner would consider as s/he begins the task of language acquisition. Sterelny maintains that the drawback to TG, however, is that it does not account for language variation and language change because it is static. (Chafe (1968,197O) attacked TG using these two concrete areas as well.) She wants to describe language-using ability as consisting of internalized rules that are formal and mechanically recognizable. The formal semantic theories

considered

are all “truth”

five of them which are in the style characteristic developed by the author are that the treatment

theories.

She describes

of Fregl. Some inherent problems of the lexicon in terms of truth

theories is in some ways a mirror of the inadequacies of TG as a whole and some approaches, e.g. those of Montague and Davidson, have no lexical theory embedded in them at all. The highlights of Sterelny’s approach is an outline of the semantics of naturalkind terms (hereafter, NKT’s), which are based upon clusters of belief and stereotyping (cf. her forthcoming book, A Causal Theory of Natural Kind Terms). She explains that a term likegoldis introduced into English“by causal contact with local samples of the stuff’ and then people use the NKT “gold” because it has the relation “same metal as” the previously-learned sample (p. 102) and therefore concludes that causal theories, as part of a truth-theory approach to semantics, should be retained (p. 105). One possible shortcoming I see is that this approach to semantic theory is limited by the Chomskyan notion “linguistic competence”,

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whereas the major goal of linguistic theory should be to try to capture the broader notion of “communicative competence”, as has been pointed out by Hymes (1972). Chapter 4 (pp. 109-130) is entitled “Biological Foundations of Language Universals,” by Jerold A. Edmondson. The author assembles the evidence, primarily from phonology, for his interpretation that biology plays a critical role in the structure and development of linguistic behavior. As is well known, Chomskyanism preaches that language ability is innate and genetically transmitted and the fact that a child can master the rudiments of a language so quickly is based on Universal Grammar and its constraints. Indeed Chomskyan dogma teaches that human beings are pre-programmed to accept certain well-defined inputs into what we can call the language faculty. However, Edmondson follows the lead taken by Bailey that this pre-programming relationship is really one of pre-wiring. (This computer hardware, i.e. the brain/mind, is, in essence, the same throughout the human species.) The author believes that biology has a stronger relationship to implicational universals than to any absolute ones and leans toward the important work of the language typologists (Greenberg, Keenan and Comrie), who have, without exception, rejected Chomsky’s deep absolute universals (p. 110). Edmondson cites the 14 universals of markedness (which he endorses) proposed in Mayerthaler (I 98 1). which dichotomized into system-internal and systemexternal areas. One discussed (p. 124) has to do with the first element in a conventionally-ordered pair, which he states as a near-universal tends towards the unmarked. He illustrates the point by citing English day and night, however, I wish to point out the reverse word order in the famous lyrics night andday, which I don’t believe fits into the posited exception (ibid.) of underlining “in a marked way the continual striving or persisting of something.” Edmondson’s research into cognitive linguistics continues the zest inherent in this relatively new trend into a rapidly-growing sub-specialization of the field. It is interesting to point out that the idea of “categorization” on language is important for lexemic universals. Organisms form categories for two basic reasons: (I) cognitive economy, and (2) interrelated structures of the real world. The miracle and ease, in many ways, of child language acquisition is explained by predictive power, which must reduce learning time. This capacity to infer the existence of one thesis from another is at the heart of implicational semantics. The presence of “smoke” implies the existence of “fire” (we even have a saying in English: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire”; not having researched this, I wish to stick my neck out and guess that this or something similar to it must.exist in other languages too). The word “feather” implies the existence of a “wing”. As Edmondson strongly emphasizes (p. 125), the perceived world is geared to constancy in order to avoid overdifferentiation. This has been deemed the “law of iconicity” or “Humboldt’s Universal”. Although the author maintains (ibid.) that “languages prefer to use

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only one encoding strategy for one semantic category”, i.e. plurality, languages do not work this way and he attributes the cause for this fact to what he calls the “ceteris paribus” condition (p. 126), e.g. linguistic borrowing. I should like to briefly explore this notion directly alluded to above.

Consider

the

Arabic notion of plurality. The statistically-normal way to pluralize a noun in Arabic is via the basic process of vocalic change, e.g. kitiib ‘book’, kutub ‘books’. However, there are some three or four dozen extremely productive patterns (some involve affixation as well) and, often, given a singular, it is impossible to predict the correct plural. This feature is probably inherited from *Proto-Semitic and is thus not borrowed. Many of the other Semitic languages also show traces of this type of apophony. There is no reason to consider Arabic an “abnormal” taxonomic category of “normalcy”. Arabic just works differently, say, from English and IndoEuropean languages. (There is also in Arabic the so-called masculine and feminine “sound” plurals, inflected for case and number, which tend to involve more predictive encoding rules.) Indeed the author’s ideas of the “fuzzy” boundaries of morphological forms (p. 126) can be applied to the occasional multiple (free variant) plurals which occur for some Arabic nouns (five or six is sometimes not rare), all based on different patterns. As an overall reaction to Edmondson’s paper, it is gratifying to report that the combination of biology, cognitive psychology and linguistic typology and language universals can lead to very fruitful results, which will certainly multiply in the future. Chapter 5, “Time, Space and Actors: The Pragmatics of Development”, by Herman Parret (pp. 131-148), is geared much more for the professional philosopher than the linguist. The author develops the thesis (p. 131) that all of the social sciences since approximately 1900 have overlooked the features of time and development. All of these disciplines have methodologically removed the studies of human behavior from temporality and examined it and, for that matter, its most characteristic

attribute

(i.e. language)

as fixed in both time and space.

(This is, of

course, the common theme running through all the papers in the volume.) The paper is a contribution to what the author has elegantly referred to as the “quasiresurrection” (ibid.) of the concepts of development and temporality. One of the most interesting parts of Parret’s essay has to do with the notion of time as employed in social science dogma and rhetoric. Since Husserl and Frege, any explanation of human culture and society employing the interrelated domains of historicism, subjectivism and psychologism (the three aspects of reality) have been generally distrusted. This point is well illustrated by a consideration of four examples of the philosophical bracketing of time: theoretical objectivism, formal semantics, structural linguistics and synchronicity in the social sciences. It is crucial to keep in mind (pp. 133-134) that dichotomizing became the

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hermeneutic

perspective

diachrony), semantic petence/ performance;

in the structuralist theory (sense/reference; deep structure/surface

model

(langue/parole;

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synchrony/

signifik/signzj?ant) and TG (comstructure). I believe it is legitimate to

ask whether this dualism is not characteristic of all metalanguages, cf. Bailey (1982). The purpose of Chapter 6 (“The Cognitivist Conjuring Trick or How Development Vanished”, by Beatrice De Gelder, pp. 149-I 66) is to offer an explanation of how the developmental concepts of language and mind “find no established place in the current cognitivist framework in psychology” (p. 149). The author uses the term “development” in the same senses as a layman would, i.e. as a gradual process of maturation over time (ibid.). However, a cognitivist, she states (ibid.), believes in the following proposition: “For each behavioral predicate that can be employed in a psychological explanation, there must be at least one description of knowledge to which it bears a logical relation.” Her basic question, therefore, reduces to the following: How can a cognitivist, believing in the aforementioned proposition, fail to consider that “the linguistic component of thinking (whatever that may turn out to be) - essentially involves development”? (ibid.). De Gelder provides a most revealing history of this dilemma (pp. 149-151), stressing that Wundtian psychology stressed language as a central ingredient into the nature of cognitions, however, it was not until behavioristic psychology fell under attack by Chomsky that psychology was assigned the task of discovering how rules were represented in the mind of the speaker and used by him. She further postulates the “cognitivist conjuring trick”, which derives developmental factors inherent in the running of the cognitive machinery. In the seven moves which make up the trick, it is most difficult to detect any magic individually present, but as De Gelder demonstrates, when “taken together they become [an] intellectual slight of hand” (p. 154). I believe the analogy to the magician’s realm is quite useful. The last chapter is by Roy Harris (“Saussure and the Dynamic Paradigm*‘, pp. 167- 183). He begins by informing us that almost any modern definition of the term “language” describes it as a system and describes human language behavior as systematic. Many of the controversies in linguistics have to do with the precise nature of this system. Then he, quite uniquely, in my opinion, cites an analogy operative between linguistics and economics. Both deal crucially with the notion “value” (p. 168) and both have corresponding requirements that distinguish between (1) what people do, (2) what they should do, and (3) what it would be best for them to do. Accordingly, linguistics has been divided into descriptive, prescriptive and language planning paralleling positive economics, normative economics and the “art” of economics. To quote from Harris directly (pp. 168-l 69): “It thus emerges as a central issue for both economics and linguistics to propose

a concept

of ‘value’ which will provide

a basis for objective

investiga-

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prediction,

the investigator’s

and

which own

is not

participatory

blessed

by -

experience

but

nonetheless

of the world

in

which he lives.” However, there is an even more important analogy at work. Words are to language as money is to the economic transaction, i.e. they are both convenient abstractions. The word “coffee” in a restaurant will net the utterer of it a cup of coffee just like a dollar (approximately) will net one a gallon of gasoline at a filling station. Harris is right to remark that linguists commonly misinterpret de Saussure’s position in the Cours de lingui.stiquegPnPrale in the sense that coins as well as words are types and not tokens (p. 169). De Sussure argues (p. 170) that language should not be confused with its nomenclature. Harris (1980) calls this very confusion “surrogationalism,” which is an “attempt to explain in terms of relationships between language and what exists independently outside language” (ibid.). According to de Saussure and Wittgenstein, the author further notes, this method of explaining language is erroneous. For de Saussure, there are no entities independent of the world with which units of exchange correspond. De Saussure’s system has been criticized as being “statiCand, as such, not meant to reconcile the evolving nature of language. Like the waves of the ocean, language is continually moving, changing - always in flux, but the descriptive linguist is like a photographer. He must distort reality, albeit for a brief moment, to have a closer look at that entity he is photographing for close scrutiny. Harris denies that de Saussure held the “static” viewpoint for he quotes directly from him (p. 171): “At no time does a language possess an entirely fixed system of units.” Linguists, such as Ullmann, who have attempted to neutralize the problem by saying that it is not language which is synchronistic or diachronistic but only the linguist’s approach to it, have, as Harris maintains, missed the boat (p. 172). De Saussure did not work under the assumption that the differences between synchronic and diachronic were only in the mind of the analyst. Although there are some dynamic aspects to the Saussurean Paradigm, Harris concludes that it was not developed (“not a matter of [his] oversight or lack of interest in language variation” (p. 182)). Why? As Harris requirement of the particular model of continues (ibid.): “It is an inescapable speech communication to which Saussure was committed.” All of the papers in this volume have tried to show that a developmental approach to language offers more insights into its nature and structure than does a static paradigm. All the authors, taken together, have convinced me that this is so for how else can one explain the intuitive knowledge that *native speakers have concerning their conceptualization, e.g. that there is a certain relationship between such words as joint-juncture and point-puncture, two-dual, shirt-skirt, etc., both in terms of language acquisition and language usage. The bottom line here is that the best linguistic theory will capture as many patterns and generalizations as is

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possible.

This is the essence

for it will make linguists re-evaluation

of their

One serious

of the book.

of all theoretical

It can, therefore, persuasions

be highly

recommended

do some serious

thinking

and

has been

men-

positions.

drawback

to the papers

presented

here, however,

tioned by the Editors themselves (p. xi), viz., that “there is a tendency for developmentalists to be sceptical of the notion that all languages are equally “healthy”and well adapted to the communicative needs of their users”. Unfortunately, they then remark that these traits concerning their point of view are not discussed in the volume. Hopefully, one of the writers for this volume will take this up in the near future for it is axiomatic in modern linguistics that every language works perfectly for its native speakers (in terms of their culture). I am now wondering: How could it be otherwise? REFERENCES Bailey, C. 1980 I982

“Developmental 91-98. The Nature Ann Arbor:

Linguistics,”

TUB-Arbeitspapiere

zur Linguistik

of Language: On the Yin-and- Yan Nature Karoma Press.

7,

of Language,

Chafe, W. “Idiomaticity as an Anomaly in the Chomskyan Paradigm,” Founda1968 tions of Language 4, 109-l 27. 1970 Meaning and the Structure of Language, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hall, R., Jr 1966 Pidgin and Creole Languages, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Harris, R. 1980 The Language-Makers, London: Duckworth. Hymes, D. 1972 Toward Communicative Competence, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Kaye,

A. 1972 1985

Maddieson, 1987

Press.

“Arabic liiiml: A Synchronic 31-72. “On the Importance of Pidgins Diachronica 2, 20 l-230. I. “Linguo-Labials: logy,” Linguistics

and

Diachronic

and Creoles

Study,”

for Historical

Exotic Segments and Their Implications Colloquium, UCLA, November 12.

Linguistics

79,

Linguistics,”

for Phono-

Language

114

Markey, 1980

Sciences,

Volume

11,

Number 1 (1989)

T. “Diffusion,

Fusion

and Creolization:

A Field Guide to Developmental

Linguistics,” MS, 49pp., University of Michigan and Technische versitat, Berlin. Mayerthaler, W. 198 1 Morphologische Natiirlichkeit, Wiesbaden: Athenaion Verlag. Miihlhlusler, P. 1986 Postal, P. 1968

Pidgin Aspects

and Creole

Linguistics,

of Phonological

Oxford:

l%eory,

Basil Blackwell.

New York:

WOLFGANG U. DRESSLER. MORPHONOLOGY: DERIVA TZON Edited by Kenneth C. Hill. Ann Arbor: Karoma, 1985, ix + 439 pp.

Uni-

Harper

and

Row.

THE DYNAMICS

Reviewed California

OF

by Alan S. Kaye State University

One of the most impressive things about this book is its 57-page bibliography, which by my rough estimate, consists of over 1000 items including some 2 solid pages of the author’s own writings. It is thus much more comprehensive in scope and in actual coverage than the work with which it will be immediately compared, viz., J. Kilbury’s The Development of Morphophonemic Theory (1976), Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co. Dressler is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Vienna (from which he also graduated with his Ph.D. in Linguistics) and a follower of the schools of Natural Phonology and Natural Morphology or Natural Generative Grammar. (This linguistic persuasion is also popular in other German-speaking countries; cf. the writings of the University of Munich’s Theo Vennemann, a Ph.D. from and former professor at U.C.L.A. as well as U.C., Irvine (U.S.A.), who has 9 items in the bibliography (p. 435).) There is no question that he has provided exactly that which is promised on the book cover’s back jacket, i.e. a depiction of the history and critique of various development of morphophonemic theory and a “reasoned