My views on the NATURE-NURTURE debate – Part 4

THE CASE FOR NATIVISM

Chomsky’s key arguments are as follows:
Speed of acquisition
Critical period
Poverty of input
Convergence amongst grammars
Language universals

Pinker bolsters Chomsky’s paradigm in many of his works, but The Language Instinct and Words and Rules will be considered in more detail than others since this is where the former outlines his case and shows us where he stand on this debate.

I will now explain each of these in turn:

Speed of acquisition

The fact that children acquire language so effortlessly and so quickly, despite its obvious complexity, shows that they must be innately disposed to do so. Other forms of learning are slow and protracted (cf. the freshman’s struggle in learning things like physics).

Stages of acquisition

Children learn language in the same stages all over the world, starting with the babbling stage, moving on to the one-word stage, then the two-word stage, then the telegraphic stage, and finally culminating in fluent speech.

Why would a child belonging to some tribe in the Amazon acquire his language in the same stages as those of an Italian child in Milan? In fact, children all over the world seem to follow the same pattern when learning a language. These stages occur in this order not because they are required to by the laws of logic, but because it is a matter of the unfolding of a genetic blueprint. If we do not accept this as the only viable explanation of the facts, we would either be forced to concede that we do not know, or have to postulate a rather surprising coincidence. If we accept that language is no more ‘learnt’ in this order any more than we “learn to have two arms”, it at least provides us with an intellectually satisfying explanation of the facts.

Critical period

Then there is the critical period thesis, which claims that there is a period in one’s life when one is particularly disposed to learning a language, after which language learning becomes so much more difficult. Chomsky insists that the “functioning of the language capacity is […] optimal at a certain ‘critical period’ of intellectual development”; just think of the mother-tongue English speaker trying to learn French at, say, university. According to Susan Curtiss, “there are two versions of Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis”: the strong version and the weak version. The strong version says that it is not possible at all to acquire language naturally after puberty; the weak version says that one cannot acquire language with equal proficiency to that of a native speaker after puberty. As will be discussed in a subsequent section, the strong version is not testable in practice. Hence, the case of Genie is used to lend support to the viability of the weak version. (Nonetheless, I contend that both the strong and weak versions are flawed.)

Genie was the victim of an abusive father, who locked her up in a room upstairs. She was chained to a toilet seat, and not allowed to leave the room. They passed her food through a little flap at the bottom of the door. She literally had to live in a room for all her childhood. The neighbours reported something strange in the household, and after investigation, a social worker eventually discovered Genie.

Upon her discovery, the father shot himself dead, and her mother claimed that she was continually beaten into submission to follow his orders, and therefore could not do anything about her quandary.

Without going into the maudlin details, this story is relevant because when they discovered Genie she could do little more than feed herself. She walked in a very animal-like fashion, had no sense of decorum, often grunted as if it was normal, and she could not speak or understand language. After intensive therapy, she was able to control her outbursts, stopped grunting, learnt how to walk properly…etc. However, up till today, she has never learnt how to speak with the efficiency of a native speaker. Despite some of the world’s best psycholinguists and speech therapists working on her, she was only able to utter very basic, rudimentary sentences. The question is: why did she (inter alia) learn how to walk properly, but could not acquire language proficiently? The nativist’s answer: because she had passed her critical period for language acquisition.

Poverty of input

Chomsky claims that the input children get from their linguistic environment is far from ideal, and children are generally not corrected on grammatical issues - parents are more interested in things like ethics and truth-content. Even though overt correction is not necessary, it is still interesting that even young children never utter sentences which are syntactically deviant, even though they may over-generalise rules. Chomsky would say that this is because we have the syntax hard-wired into our minds.

The point is that children must infer general rules about language after hearing a few existential examples, despite not being told to do so, and despite the fact that even these examples are not ideal.

Aside from the anecdotal evidence that Chomsky presents, he always points out children’s knowledge of yes-no question formation in complex sentences. He explains that if we consider a sentence like

The boy who is at the shop is naughty

there are two ‘hypotheses’ a child could construct when trying to work out the rule, let us call these hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2:

Move the first verb of the sentence to the beginning when forming a yes-no question
Move the verb that occurs in the matrix sentence (as opposed to the embedded clause) to the beginning



Of course, the correct rule would be hypothesis number 2, which would produce the grammatical sentence:

Is the boy who is at the shop naughty?

However, the point Chomsky is trying to make is that no child would ever utter a question using hypothesis number 1:

*Is the boy who at the shop is naughty?

If the child was going on what he heard from people around him speaking, there is nothing in the speech input that prevents him from distinguishing between the two hypotheses. So, given that the application of hypothesis number 1 is a logical possibility, and given that number 2 is also a logical possibility, what precludes the child from forming questions at least some of the time in the manner above, using hypothesis 1?
If the child is using the “fragmentary input” from the environment as a basis for his hypothesis formation, there is absolutely nothing that stops him from doing so. Logically, then, Chomsky would have us conclude that the child is not using the environment, but comes with his own innate linguistic structure hard-wired into his mind. This might seem prima facie implausible for someone using his common-sense, but how would you otherwise explain the above-mentioned facts?

If one considers the structure of the affirmative sentence, it would look like this:








S


NP VP

S

NP VP

PP

NP

The boy who is at the shop is naughty

As this structure clearly indicates, there is a relative clause which is embedded in the matrix sentence. Now, when forming a question, the verb that needs to move to the beginning is the verb that occurs as part of the VP that is higher up in the tree structure, i.e., part of the main VP. For that reason, the only way to form a question from this statement would be to move the main verb to the beginning, not the one that happens to appear first in the linear order of words, because it is much lower down on the structure due to its being part of the subordinate clause.









Because the transformation can only occur in this way, it would result in a structure like:

S


NP VP

S

NP VP

PP

NP

Is The boy who is at the shop (trace) naughty



Without knowledge of the structure, there is no way a child could know this. Given that children are not taught about the structure of language, we would have to explain how it is that children seem to always make use of principles like this.

If we do not concede that we have this elaborate linguistic structure hard-wired from birth, then we would not be able to explain why many aspects of even very young children’s linguistic competence is “grossly underdetermined by the fragmentary input from the environment”.

Convergence amongst grammars

People in a community all speak their mother tongue with equal proficiency, regardless of educational background; a ten-year-old child speaks with the same grammatical complexity as an educated adult. Given all the logically possible ways a language could develop, it is rather surprising that linguistic competence would not be as disparate as one would expect if there were no innate mechanisms constraining the development of grammar.

Language universals

In this section I will be discussing universals insofar as they relate to structure-dependency in language. I have not included the other kinds of universals that Chomsky refers to because the evidence for them is so weak that they are not even worth considering seriously. To illustrate what I mean by this, I will provide just two examples:

Colour Terms - The claim that all languages segment the colour spectrum, such that we have different words referring to different colours, is something that needs to be explained, since that is not the way things are in nature; the various colours simply ‘blend’.

Hence, how does one account for the fact that some languages have “one word for both blue and yellow”?

Related to Chomsky’s point on colour terms, Berlin and Kay conducted a survey, published in 1969, of ninety-eight different languages, and noticed certain patterns regarding their use of basic colour terms. By basic, they mean terms that are morphologically simplex (which precludes terms like bluish), non-compound terms, and terms that are not ‘shades’ of another colour ( thereby precluding terms like scarlet, which can be considered a shade of red), and words with restricted applications (like blond, which only refers to a male’s hair-colour).

According to Berlin and Kay, languages differ in the number of terms they utilise, but not otherwise. They made the startling claim that languages follow a universal schema. This schema can be illustrated as follows:

black pink
red green blue brown purple
white yellow orange
grey

What Berlin and Kay claimed is that if a language has two colour terms, they would be black and white. If they had three terms, they would be black, white and red. If a language had four terms, they would be black, white, red, and either green or yellow, etc. In languages which have more than seven terms, the schema breaks down, but the interesting thing is that in languages with seven or less terms, the schema applies universally.

According to Geoffrey Sampson, these results are only impressive if taken at face-value. Firstly, the results were not gathered by Berlin and Kay themselves, but by their students at the University of California. Each student was to find a language, and find out as much as they could about its colour terminology as part of their course work. Perhaps it is for this reason that some of their findings were inaccurate. For example, there are four basic colour terms in Homeric Greek, one of which is glaukos, which is actually translated as ‘gleaming’, with no implications of colour. Later on it came to mean something like what the English derivate ‘glaucous’ means: bluish-greenish-grey. However, they needed a word for black and duly translated it as such, despite the fact that there was a standard word for black in ancient Greek, viz. melas, and in the Homeric texts, it is the most common colour term.

With regards to loan words, Berlin and Kay include them when it fits their schema, and exclude them when it does not. What ought to happen is that they should decide at the outset whether or not it is viable to accept loan words as part of their data, and stick to that. However, they exclude the Chinese loans from Korean, but include the same Chinese loans in Vietnamese. This is because the latter are more amenable to their theory; the former are not.

Nevertheless, these are just some of the problems with the treatment of Berlin and Kay’s theory of basic colour terms. Sampson’s critique is more comprehensive, but the point I am trying to make is that this theory is not at all as water-tight as commonly assumed.

Proper nouns –Chomsky claims that there is “no logical necessity” for names to meet any condition of spatio-temporal contiguity, but the fact that they do is most certainly “non-trivial”, and in need of explanation. For example, the fact that no language makes use of a word like LIMB to refer to a quadruped’s four legs as if they were a single object (as in “The cat’s LIMB is grey”, referring to its four legs) needs explanation, because there is no logical reason for this restraint.
Regarding spatio-temporal contiguity, consider a noun phrase like The Three Sisters, with reference to the constellation of three linear stars, which are actually millions of kilometres apart. Also, French has a word, rouage, which means a singular object comprising the wheels of a vehicle. These are counter-examples which clearly show that these restrictions are actually not restrictions at all.

Examples of this kind are numerous, but due to the fact that just about every alleged universal has been refuted, or as Jackendoff once euphemised it, is “in need of explanation”; hence, these concrete examples will not be dealt with any further. What are more interesting are the abstract properties that languages have in common, or more specifically the fact that languages make use of hierarchical organisation, i.e., structure-dependency. This is interesting because:
- It is quite possible, logically, for languages to be structure-independent, and one can easily imagine a possible world where this is indeed the case.
- It is a matter of fact that all human languages so far known to us use structure-dependency, and this needs to be explained.

Chomsky says that if a Martian scientist were to come to earth to study our language, he would conclude that Earthlings speak a single language. The point he is trying to make (Chomsky, not the Martian scientist) is that all the languages in the world have a similar underlying structure, despite superficial disparities. The languages of the world are not as diverse as they could be because they share properties which they are not logically required to share. The fact that these findings are empirical claims is what makes this strand of Chomsky’s argument so convincing.

Many contend that the argument from universals is one of the strongest supporting the nativist’s paradigm. In fact, Chomsky has often remarked that the goal of modern day linguistics is to find out what these principles are; sometimes this is referred to as “the initial state of the Language Acquisition Device” (which is what Universal Grammar is) by Chomsky, or more simply the “language instinct”. Chomsky’s argument is by and large syntactically motivated.

It may be worth noting that in his earlier works, Sampson was quite content to agree with Chomsky’s inference of innateness from the fact that languages make use of tree-structuring. In a book called LIBERTY AND LANGUAGE, Sampson he says that “until someone offers a concrete and demonstrably preferable alternative, we will do well to believe the standard explanation… [and] I believe that Chomsky has quite adequately made his case for genetic inheritance…” (p. 24 – my italics). Of course, Sampson has now rejected even that, but we will deal with Sampson’s critique in a subsequent section.

Chomsky’s universals are syntactically motivated. The syntactic universals that Chomsky has pointed out have to do with the hierarchical organisation of sentences. A sentence consists of a main clause within which will typically be included subordinate clauses of various types. A clause has a verb at its core. These clauses are made up of phrases, which have a head and optional modifiers. Hence, an NP has a noun as its head, which may be modified by an article and adjectives. In other words, any sentence includes a hierarchy of elements of different sizes, groups of which are nested within elements at the next higher level of the hierarchy, and each of which is decomposable into a group of elements at the next lower level.

Chomsky illustrates how this hierarchical property of language is not logical by contrasting it with fictitious languages that are structure-independent. So, let us consider question-transformations, for example. A question is formed from a statement by moving a certain word to the beginning, so The men John wanted to see are in the kitchen becomes Are the men John wanted to see in the kitchen? The word to be moved (are) is chosen by reference to its position in the hierarchical structure: it is always the main verb of the main clause of the sentence. (This is discussed in more detail below when I talk about Sampson’s response to the ‘poverty of input’ argument). The point is that it would be perfectly possible to imagine languages whose questions were formed according to some principle that does not incorporate structure-dependency. Such a language might have, for example, as a rule, something like “To turn a statement into a question, front the third word in the statement.” No language does this, even though it is a logical possibility. There are countless other hypothetical rules that can be constructed, like “to form a question, reverse the order of words”, but we will not state them all explicitly. The point is that all the (known) languages of the world make use of hierarchical inclusion relationships, and that needs to be explained. This is a contingent fact that does not follow as a logical necessity.

Ironically, Sampson himself, in his earlier days, once conceded that this discovery is tantamount to discovering something like: the number of thorns on a rose bush is always a multiple of seven. This is an empirical finding, and needs to be explained. Why would one not agree with someone who says: the fact that every rose bush all over the world, regardless of the environment in which it grew, always displays this property? Does it not surpass belief to think that it could be due to mere coincidence? Hence, he accepted Chomsky’s idea of innate linguistic knowledge on that basis.

Upon analysis, we do indeed find that the various languages display certain universal features which follow as a consequence of structure-dependency. In addition to that of the question-transformation rule, let us consider another example, given by Chomsky:

a) John said that he was sick
b) He said that John was sick

In a), there is an ambiguity; it is not clear whether ‘he’ refers to John, or somebody else. In b), by merely inter-changing ‘John’ with the pronoun ‘he’, we know that ‘he’ cannot refer to John, but has to refer to some outside entity instead. One gets a better idea of why this happens if we consider the structure of these sentences. a) would look like this:

[John] [said that he was sick]

whereas b) would look like this:

[John [said [that [he [was sick]]]]]

The reason is that in a) ‘he’ can refer to the NP John because ‘John’ is “higher up” in the phrase structure tree than ‘he’. In b), ‘He’ is part of the main NP, making ‘John’ part of the NP that is lower down (hierarchically) on the phrase structure tree; and anaphors cannot be bound to a referent that is lower down in the tree. (The whole point of phrase-structure trees, by the way, is to show hierarchical inclusion relationships. Given that even four-year-old children know these things, knowledge of this kind must be part of our genetic make-up, since children are clearly not taught things like this. It should come as no surprise then that every native speaker of English intuitively knows that b) is dis-ambiguated (though most would not know why), given that we have these phrase-structure rules pre-programmed into our minds. If we believe that language is only acquired from the environment in which the child is in, “it seems inevitable that major aspects of verbal behavior will remain a mystery”.

(Unfortunately I cannot illustrate the tree here, as this would have made the point more clear.)

Chomsky thinks there are many other principles which constrain the structure of language, and that the goal of contemporary linguistics is to discover exactly what the nature of these constraints are. Some tentative principles which he postulates are the Extended Projection Principle (EPP), and the principle of full interpretation. The above-mentioned example is an instance of the binding principle.

Chomsky says that it is not the case that structure-independent principles are too complex; in fact they are cognitively quite simple. “Rather, what seems to be going on is that the messages humans need to transmit to one another through the medium of language are messages that come in certain fixed forms, and these forms to a large extent dictate the syntactic patterning of human languages”. These invariant syntactic properties are determined by the mechanisms of genetic inheritance.

The obvious, common-sensical objection to the thesis that we have a Universal Grammar is: how do we explain the fact that not all languages are the same? Chomsky accommodates this disparity into his theory by explaining it in terms of “Principles and Parameters” (henceforth P&P).

This theory claims that the child is able to learn language so effortlessly because he is born with a set of principles, together with a “list” of (unset) language-specific parameters. When these parameters are set, these, together with the common principles that form part of our biological endowment, constitute what Chomsky calls “knowledge of language”. So we are born with rules governing sentence structure, like (to oversimplify) the following phrase-structure rule:

S -> {NP,VP}

The comma indicates variable order. When the child is about four years old, he realises that the language he is exposed to, language X, has the NP-first construction, and the genetically pre-programmed Language Acquisition Device crystallises this rule to read:

S -> NP VP

In language Y, however, the child realises that his language employs the VP-first construction, and now the genetically pre-programmed Language Acquisition Device crystallises this rule to read:

S -> VP NP

Hence, these two children may grow up speaking mutually unintelligible languages.

Obviously these are not the only rules that get crystallised during this process of so-called “parameter setting”, but we will leave it at that for the sake of simplicity.

This is the nativist’s explanation as to why language can be both innate, and variant across the human race. We will see below that this theory has problems which need to be addressed.

Nativists are wont to ask why we cannot form questions by interchanging the first and second words in a sentence, by reversing the order of words, or by picking out the middle word in a sentence.

What is wrong with turning the sentence

John ate an apple

into a question by saying

Apple an ate John?

Why does this feel so very unnatural? As pointed out, this is because language always makes use of structure-dependency. But if it is possible in principle for a language to have a rule like “Reverse the words in a sentence to form a question”, the fact that it never occurs needs explaining. This mystery can be explained if we assume that this restriction is hard-wired into our genes, and therefore restricted by our biology. If we do not accept this, then we cannot explain why the above-mentioned rule is so unnatural, and we would have to be at a loss in terms of being able to explain why rules of this type are so uncomfortable for us to utilise.

Descartes’ Problem

One can outline what Chomsky refers to as “Descartes’ problem” (cf. his book CARTESIAN LINGUISTICS) as follows:
How is it that we as native speakers are able to understand and produce a potentially infinite number of sentences, despite very often hearing/producing utterances that one has never before encountered in his life, or as Chomsky puts it, never before in the history of the universe. This Chomsky refers to as the creative aspect of language use (aka “Descartes’ problem” – so-called because it was Descartes, according to Chomsky, who alluded this problem).

In addition to this, Chomsky emphasises the fact that speakers are not able to express this variety of linguistic utterances due to being endowed with the relevant physiological apparatus (vocal tract, etc.), because a parrot is able to do the same, and he contends that the physiological mechanisms pertaining to the manifestation of sound are not necessarily in any way inferior to those of a human beings.

What, then, distinguishes a parrot’s ‘speech’ from human speech? Chomsky tells us that it is because there is something unique to the human mind which neither parrots nor any other (non-human) animal possesses. This ‘something’ is none other than our inborn Language Acquisition Device.

Aside from the fact that our innate rules give us the machinery to be ‘creative’, humans also have the ability to tell which sentences are grammatical, and which are not. How are children, faced with countless possibilities as to how to string sentences together, able to actually make sense of what they hear? If children were going on what they hear, they would need some way of knowing which sentences are acceptable, and which are not, and given that the possibilities are endless, how would children be able to cope with this mammoth task of learning the rules of language? Once again, Chomsky says that this would not be a mystery if we simply had a genetic predisposition to do so.

That pretty much sums up Chomsky’s case for his theory. His other writings serve only to supplement the points made above, with minor variations.

Let us now turn to the work of Steven Pinker, one of the leading exponents of neo-Chomskyan nativism. Pinker’s point of view will be taken primarily from his book THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT, and less so from a later book called WORDS AND RULES.

The Language Instinct

Here now are some of the key arguments found in Pinker, followed by my criticisms:
Phonotactic Constraints

Pinker claims that languages have rigid rules about how sounds are assembled into words. Many introductory texts call these “phonotactic constraints”. If you had to ask a native speaker of English about the grammaticality of certain words, he would somehow always know whether they are acceptable words or not. For example, words like “plaft” and “blick” are unequivocally judged as possible yet contingently non-existent words. Words like “sram” are unequivocally judged as impossible, and necessarily non-existent. This is because “plaft” and “blick” fit in with the existing sound system of English, whereas “sram” does not; it has an illicit onset sequence of “sr”. These constraints are part of our LAD, which allow us to set the parameters for our language at some relatively early stage of our linguistic development.
Infant Prodigies

Pinker says that children have to know what to expect when acquiring language, otherwise they would take forever to learn their mother-tongue. How would they know what to test for? How would they know what a verb’s inflexion depends on? Quoting Pinker, Sampson says that logically speaking, “an inflection could depend on whether the third word in the sentence referred to a reddish or a bluish object; whether the sentence was being uttered indoors or outdoors, and billions of other fruitless possibilities that a grammatically unfettered child would have to test for”.

Pinker then goes on to say that children never make the mistakes we would expect them to make if they learnt language from scratch. Pinker also refers to one of Stromswold’s Stromswold’s studies, based on the speech of pre-schoolers. She found out that even though there were false but logical analogies that could have been made by the children, they were never tempted to give in to these mistakes. Why does the child not commit a false analogy like He cans go based on I like going → He likes going; I can go → ???

Stromswold reported that the pre-schoolers never made a single false analogy. It is not the case that children never make mistakes when acquiring language. Pinker himself quotes the example of a father trying to correct his daughter from saying other one spoon to saying the other spoon, but to no avail. So what does Pinker want us to conclude from Stromswold’s work? It seems as if he is saying that the rule placeholders, such as ‘one’, can be followed by the noun for which it stands is a rule found in some languages, and since the child has not quite set her parameters to English yet, she utters possible, but (contingently) non-occurring utterances. However, no child will try out the idea that “can” will inflect to agree with its subject if it is in the third person; our innate knowledge precludes this kind of option, therefore children never commit this error.

Second Language Learning and the Critical Period

Pinker mentions Johnson and Newport’s research on Korean and Chinese immigrants to the USA. They found that the later the immigrants arrived, the less proficient they were at detecting grammatical errors. They also found that the poor immigrants’ attitude towards the language, and their motivation, had nothing to do with it; their age when they arrived had everything to do with it.

Pinker also mentions that despite the fact that Meryl Streep is renowned in the US for her accents, her English accent is “considered rather awful” in England, and that her Australian accent does not “go down too well in Australia either”. This is the case because she is trying to speak like a native speaker when the rules for her L1 have already crystallised, and she will therefore never be able to speak as proficiently as a native speaker.

The Language Mutants from Essex

One seemingly compelling case is that of one family who exhibited an anomaly known as SLI (Specific Language Impairment), whereby certain linguistic faculties are impaired, and their cognitive functioning in other areas were normal; the fact that it was carried over within the family shows that there certainly is a genetic element involved. Despite the fact that many of the ones who had SLI grew up in a “linguistically normal” environment, they still exhibited the anomalies that SLI sufferers have. Pinker also reminds us that they are cognitively normal in other domains.

The Structure of Words

Pinker claims that the structure of words also lends evidence to nativism in the sense that children’s minds seem to be designed with the logic of word-structure built in.

His first example is that of a pattern whereby the derivational affix can attach only to roots, not to stems (i.e. roots with at least one affix attached). When we try to attach a derivational affix to a stem, we get something like Darwinsian, which could refer to the works of Charles Darwin and his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, whose work Charles drew profound inspiration from. However, this would sound ridiculous, not because it is illogical, but because there seems to be some sort of innate restriction on what affix can go where in a word. Later Pinker says that the restriction is that derivational suffixes cannot attach themselves to inflected roots.

Pinker also discusses headless compound words, and draws conclusions which provide further evidence for his case. An example of a headed compound would be barman, with the –man part constituting the head. Hence, a “barman” is a kind of man, viz. one that works in bars. Headless compounds are words like “walkman”. Here, -man cannot be the head because a “walkman” is not a kind of man. (Nor is it a kind of walk, but the rightmost morpheme is usually defined as the head of a compound).

Pinker’s explanation is that when a compound has a head, all the information regarding the head gets percolated up to the top-most node of the (morphological) tree, including the rules. When there is a headless compound, it is not clear where the information must come from, so the “percolation conduits” get blocked, and the default rule applies. That is the reason why we say “sabre-tooths” and “still-lifes”.

Other research cited by Pinker includes Peter Gordon’s experiment with 3-year-olds, commonly referred to as the “Jabba experiment” (Gordon, 1986). He showed them a puppet and said: this is Jabba. Jabba eats mice. Jabba is a ___? And the children reply: Mice-eater. Thereafter, he asks: Jabba also eats rats. Jabba is also a ___? And the children reply: Rat-eater.

Now, Gordon asks, why do they use the plural “mice”, but not the plural “rats”? Given that not a single child ever used the inflected plural as the initial constituent of the compound, this could indicate that there is some sort of rule that they are applying. It is unlikely that they were told that this is so, as Motherese contains few or no compounds, especially of that kind; and it would be preposterous to assume that someone told them not to include inflected words in their compounds. Why do they not generalise the rule: “create a compound by putting two words together”? Why should there be a restriction of this sort? The nativist would explain it as follows: if there were an innate rule of this kind to facilitate language acquisition, the child would already “know” some of the things that cannot be said, like including an inflected word in the first part of a compound word, which is obviously why they avoid constructions of this sort.

The results were interesting because there seemed to be a consistent restriction in terms of what kind of word was allowed to be in the first part of a compound word. “Mice-eater”, for example, was an acceptable form to them; their answer to the first question would be just that. However, they never answered “rats-eater” to the second question; they always answered “rat-eater”. This is interesting because if one goes solely on logic, then “rats-eater” ought not to be precluded, since “mice” and “rats” are both plural forms, and both (equally) morphologically complex.

The question, then, that Gordon posed is: what exactly makes forms like “rats-eater” ungrammatical? The reason he postulated was that the form “rats” is clearly derived from a rule: rat + -s. The word “mice”, however, is not; despite its morphological complexity, the word is learnt as a listeme, and therefore treated as such by the lexicon. Hence, “mice” in “mice-eater” is treated by the phonology as a simplex word.

This, Gordon claims, is an innate constraint placed on us by UG, and we have fairly good reason to assume this, given that children as young as three consistently do it.

There are problems with this claim, however, since there are languages which do exactly that which is claimed by Gordon to be universally excluded by an innate constraint. German, for example, makes use of regular plural forms in compounds. Consider the following set of data in the tables below:

English compound
German translation
1) Mice-eater
Mäusefresser
2) Rat-eater
Rattenfresser
3) Butterfly-eater
Schmetterling(s)fresserª
4) Insect-eater
Insektenfresser
5) Cat-eater
Katzenfresser
6) Flower-eater
Blumenfresser
7) People-eater
Menschenfresser
8) Tree-eater
Bäumefresser
9) Sheep-eater
Schaf(s)fresser
10) Fish-eater
Fischfresser

In German, -e(n) represents the plural suffix. To clarify, let us look at the singular/plural forms of the (German) words used in the data above:

Singular
Plural
1) Maus
Mäuse
2) Ratte
Ratten
3) Schmetterling
Schmetterlinge
4) Insekt
Insekten
5) Katte
Katzen
6) Blume
Blumen
7) Mensch
Menschen
8) Baum
Bäume
9) Schaf
Schafe
10) Fisch
Fische

In examples 9) and 10) [schaf(s)fresser and fischfresser], the singular form was preferred by my German informant; in examples 1) and 4) [mäusefresser and insektenfresser], both the singular and plural were judged to be acceptable forms, such that both mausfresser and insektfresser would not count as ungrammatical, though mäusefresser and insektenfresser are the more preferred of the two.

What is interesting about this is that examples 4-8 make use of the plural form in exactly the way Gordon would predict to be impossible, since here we have rule-derived words found in the position they should not be found in.

These alleged counter-examples can be dealt with if it can be shown that the phonology treats these morphologically complex words as simplex; in other words, the phonology is blind to the morphological complexity of these forms. Now we know that irregular plurals are certainly treated by the phonology in the same way as simplex listemes, but if we can show that this is true of not only irregulars, but other complex forms as well, maybe we can save Gordon’s thesis from these alleged counter-examples.

Jonathan Kaye, a phonologist from SOAS, has given us some novel insight into this issue of word structure. In discussing Kaye’s views, we will see why words cannot always be classified as either simplex or complex a binary fashion. Hence, let us now turn to Kaye's discussion of this issue (his theory is based on Government Phonology), so as to gain a better understanding of the matter at hand. (Note: the data here is once again based on English):

We cannot assume that the phonology is per se blind to morphological complexity, since the [mz] (from "dreams") is clearly a pseudo-cluster, and deemed both morphologically and phonologically complex.

It is clear, then, that at least some morphological structure is visible to the phonology. Kaye draws a distinction between what he calls analytic morphology and non-analytic morphology. Analytic morphology is morphology wherein the phonology is able to recognise a complex domain structure; non-analytic morphology is not able to. Let us first consider analytic morphology (which is visible to the phonology).

Analytic Morphology

As mentioned, the [mz] cluster from “dreams” is invariably complex. What does this tell us about morphological penetration into phonology?

Let us firstly assume that only morphological domains can be represented in the phonology. A compound like “black-board”, then, will have the following structure:

a) [[black] [board]]

Since there are three pairs of brackets, it reflects three phonological domains. These brackets represent how the phonological string is to be processed. To give an exact definition, we can use the CONCAT and φ (apply phonology) functions, so “blackboard” can be shown as

b) φ (CONCAT (φ(black) φ(board)))

To translate this pseudo-formula into plain language: apply phonology to “black”, then to “board”, concatenate the result, and then apply phonology to that string. So the brackets we see in example a) are actually not part of the phonological representation, but actually outline domains which are arguments to functions.

So this illustrates one type of structure that involves morphologically complex forms. It has the schema [[A][B]]. This is the case for most English compounds.

There is a second structure, involving two morphemes, but only two domains. The structure is [[A] B], and is interpreted as follows:

φ (CONCAT (φ(A), B))

To translate, we do phonology on A, and concatenate the result with B; then do phonology on the result. This is the case with English (regular) inflexional morphology. For example, consider the past tense of the word “seep”. Its structure is [[seep] ed]. With regards to Government Phonology, we could also illustrate this structure in more detail:

[[O N O N] O N]

x x x x x x x


s i: p d

Note that empty nuclei are to be found at the end of each domain, and are licensed to be silent by virtue of their domain-final position. Also, the licensing principle states that all positions in a phonological domain need to be licensed, unless that position is the head of that particular expression. This is actually why the suffix does not form a domain by itself. We see here that the suffix consists of two positions: an onset position and a nuclear position, both being licensed. If “-ed” were a domain, it is obvious that it would violate the licensing principle, which states that a phonological domain must have at least one unlicensed position – its head. The onset is licensed because, like all onsets, it is licensed by the nucleus to its right, which is itself p-licensed, i.e., licensed to be silent .

Analytic morphology also has a rather interesting property in that the distribution of empty nuclei is very restricted; in English, it is almost always found at the end of domains. Hence, this provides us with a fairly reliable parsing cue, since a p-licensed empty nucleus signals the end of a domain, so if it occurs within a word it shows that it is not a morphologically simplex one. So the pseudo-cluster [mz], from “dreams” is so-called because:

The vowel length is maintained (which would not be possible had it been an authentic cluster), and [m] and [z] are not homorganic, which again is not possible for true clusters. It is for this reason that much of analytic morphology is phonologically parsable.

So hitherto, we have considered two structures:

[[A][B]]
[[A] B],

and we have seen how morphology impacts on phonology in the form of these two domains.

Let us now turn to non-analytic morphology (which is invisible to the phonology).

Non-analytic Morphology

If morphological structure was present in the form of domains, then to that extent morphology can have an impact on phonology. These domains have the effect of respecting the integrity of the internal domains. By this, Kaye means that when you append an affix, for example, the actual pronunciation of the root/stem does not change. Consider the “-ing” suffix, whose form can be shown as [[V]-ing]. To pronounce this, you just pronounce the verb on its own and attach the suffix. This procedure does not apply to all forms of morphology. For example, take the words “parenthood” and “parental”; the respective suffixes interact with the phonology in different ways, as is evident from the variable pronunciation of the aforementioned words. In fact, the “-al” type of morphology is invisible to the phonology. In other words, the phonology reacts as if there were no morphology at all. Hence, the phonology would treat a word like “parental” in the same way it would treat a mono-morphemic word like “agenda”. So we can characterise the internal structure of a form like “parental” as:

[AB]

It is this kind of morphology that is referred to as non-analytic. And since the only effect morphology can have on phonology is the presence of internal domains, it follows that this kind of morphology can have no effect on phonology, since there are no internal domains. To further accentuate the disparity between analytic and non-analytic morphology, let us look at the morpheme “un-” (which is analytic), and the morpheme “in-” (which is non-analytic).

“un-” does not change its form, regardless of what consonant follows it. This property follows from its analytic morphology. Since the prefix “n” is not adjacent to the following onset, there is no restriction in terms of phonotactics. A word like “unreal”, then, can be represented as

[[un Ø] [ri:l Ø]],

where Ø represents the empty nucleus, whereby the first of which separates the two domains. The first empty nucleus provides us with a parsing cue, along with the nucleus in the following syllable, such that we are able to perceive the prefix as a separate structure. So a string segment like “nØr” is phonologically parsable, and one can analyse the form as “un-real”.

With the prefix “in-”, the situation is different. Appending “in-” to a stem must yield a well-formed phonological domain on its own; this is because non-analytical morphology, by definition, has no internal domains. A non-analytic combination of morphemes is interpreted as follows:

φ (concat (A,B))

You concatenate the two strings and then apply phonology to the result. So a form like “in-rational” is not well-formed because “nr” is not a possible sequence. That is why the “n” has to be dropped, resulting in the form “irrational”.

So non-analytic morphology is invisible to the phonology. There are no internal domains, or any other phonological indication of morphological complexity. Non-analytic forms have the same phonological properties as any simplex form. It is reasonable to assume, then, that any form manifesting non-analytic morphology is listed in the lexicon.

Irregular forms that exhibit morphological complexity are not phonologically parsable. This is because there are no phonological hints of their complex morphological structure. It is for this reason that irregular morphology is always non-analytic.

So with regards to the kind of compounds we are looking at, compounds can be classified into four groups, viz.:

Group 1 – Analytic, singular (example, tree-eater)
Group 2 – Analytic, plural (example, rats-eater)
Group 3 – Non-analytic, singular (example, linguistics-programme)
Group 4 – Non-analytic, plural (example, mice-eater)

In the groups above, ‘analytic’ refers to the compound itself, and ‘singular/plural’ refers to the modifying noun.

The relevance of his thesis is quite evident in that it may explain why the counter-examples to Gordon’s experiment are only pseudo-counter-examples. German, for example, does make use of compound words that contain a plural form. This seems, prima facie, a blatant refutation of Gordon’s claim. However, Kaye offers us some novel way to save the Gordon-hypothesis from refutation. My point here, however, is that Gordon’s argument as it stands is untenable, but can be saved in light of Kaye’s explanation, as the plural compound words have been shown to belong to our “Group 4” type words. However, German is peculiar in that the language has more irregular forms than regular ones, which leads one to the rather quaint conclusion that the ‘irregular’ plural seems to be more regular than the ‘regular’ plural inflexional suffix. Hence, the explanation for this phenomenon has nothing to do with genetic inheritance, but can be explained by appealing to the logic of word structure. Whether that is innate is a separate question, and Gordon would have to explain why languages do it differently. One could easily do so with a parameters-like explanation, but as I will explain later, this kind of approach is unscientific, and therefore vacuous. If there are other explanations that explain the same data more consistently and more logically, why should we accept the claim that this is unequivocally a result of innate constraints? For the Nativists, they insist that innateness is the only logical explanation for the phenomenon Gordon refers to; Kaye has shown otherwise. This concludes my discussion of Kaye.

A form like “mice-eater” is acceptable because the phonology is blind to its morphological complexity. A form may also not be irregular, and still be an acceptable part of the compound, as in the plural German compound words found in the data above. As Kaye has established, complex forms with no internal domains are treated by the phonology as if they were simplex. If German can be shown to exhibit non-analytic morphology with regards to using plural modifying nouns, they do not constitute true counter-examples; or rather, Gordon’s original hypothesis can be easily adapted to accommodate these facts without actually compromising the crux of his original thesis, which could now state that the restriction applies only to constituents that exhibit analytic morphology. For example, in a compound like rattenfresser, even though ratten is the (regular) plural of ratte, it actually is non-analytic, which means that the phonology is blind to the morphological complexity of the modifying noun.

On the Origin of Language

Chomsky is of the opinion that we would have to remain agnostic as to how language came in to being. In fact, Chomsky goes so far as to insist that we can “tell the story as we like”, and that Darwinian natural selection will not suffice as an explanation since there are no precedents anywhere in the natural world for language. Language, according to Chomsky, lacks the messiness we would expect of an accumulation of accidents made good by evolutionary ‘tinkering’. Characterised by beauty bordering on perfection, it cannot have evolved in the normal biological way. Pinker disagrees with this claim. In paper with Bloom (published in 1990) as well as in The Language Instinct, it is argued that natural selection is the only viable explanation for the origin of language. Pinker draws the analogy between language and spider webs; Pinker & Bloom say that language “is a topic like echolocation in bats or stereopsis in monkeys”.

Pinker hypothesises that there must have been a mutation of some kind in our genetic make-up, which happened to be useful to that particular individual. This trait would have been passed on, as natural selection retains traits which maximise the chances of survival, therefore the grammar gene would have been spread to become what it is today. Pinker is scanty on the details, and he himself concedes that this is speculative, but goes on say that the survival benefits are very obvious, and therefore it is quite plausible for a scenario of this kind to take place. How else would humans have worked together in groups to hunt wild-life far more powerful than themselves?

The hypothesis that grammar is historically the exclusive product of a special-purpose genetically provided mental organ for grammar rests upon a negative argument: we have not managed to explain how grammar arises through general processes. Hence, we must postulate the existence of a special genetic code that is entirely responsible for building in the brain a UG organ, which will someday be located and understood in the way the retina or the heart has been located and understood.

Linguistic Relativity

We are introduced on p. 57 of the THE LANGUAGE INSTINCT to "the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic determinism", named after Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. According to Pinker, this is the notion that language determines the way we think, and the way in which we perceive the world. He illustrates this notion with the misunderstood statement that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow, and therefore they somehow perceive snow differently to how English speakers would. This does not make sense, since it is actually not true that Eskimos have so many words for snow, and this does not take into consideration the fact that English has over a dozen words for snow. Clearly, it does not make sense to stipulate that Eskimos have different perceptual mechanisms just because they have a different language. He also mentions that just because some languages have less colour terms than, say, English, it does not follow that speakers of these languages do not perceive colour in the same way we do. The point Pinker is making here is simply that all human beings have the same cognitive faculties, and that we would all perceive the world in the same way, even though our linguistic conventions in naming that world may differ. In fact, Pinker notes, no matter how influential language may be, the idea that language can “reach down into the retina and rewire the ganglion cells” is preposterous.

ª The bracketed “s” is referred to as a “fugen-s ” [gapping/bridging s], so-called because it is there to serve as a bridge between the two constituents, and does not in itself carry any semantic significance.

My views on the NATURE-NURTURE debate - Part 3

WHAT DO BOTH CAMPS AGREE ON, AND WHERE DOES THE DISAGREEMENT COME FROM?

It is evident, then, that both camps agree that knowledge of language has to be a matter of degree. To quote Chomsky:
A preliminary observation is that the term “innateness hypothesis”
is generally used by critics rather than advocates of the position to
which it refers. I have never used the term, because it can only mislead.
Every “theory of learning” that is even worth considering incorporates
an innateness hypothesis. Thus, Hume’s theory proposes specific innate
structures of mind and seeks to account for all human knowledge on the
basis of these structures, even postulating unconscious and innate knowledge.
The question is not whether learning presupposes innate structure – of course
it does; that has never been in doubt – but rather what these innate structures
are in particular domains.

Elsewhere Chomsky says that
Any non-vacuous theory of language, whether rationalist, empiricist,
behaviorist, or whatever, must put forth an innateness hypothesis. The
interesting questions have to do with the precise character of this hypothesis,
not its existence as a necessary component of any non-vacuous theory.

What transpires from an exchange of this kind is that there are theorists who consider themselves either empiricists (like Sampson) or rationalists (like Chomsky and Pinker), and that it not a matter of contention whether there are any innate mechanisms, but rather what these innate mechanisms constitute.

It seems to be quite impossible to define rationalism and empiricism in a testable way, and that categorically distinguishes them. Due to these problems, the historical difference between the nativist and the empiricist will be ignored. When these terms are used here, “nativist” will be used to refer to Chomsky’s (and Pinker’s) view, whereas “empiricist” will be used to refer to Sampson’s.

My views on the NATURE-NATURE debate - part 2

Part 2 – PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND

Concerning the theory of knowledge, there are two prominent schools of thought which go by the names of rationalism and empiricism. Empiricism can be described as a meta-theoretical school which illustrates how knowledge is acquired (from sensory experience) via inductive reasoning. Innate mental mechanisms are not denied, but restricted to domains for inductive generalization, and hence contribute nothing to knowledge content per se. Rationalism is the name of the opposing meta-theoretical paradigm. The actual schema of our knowledge is dictated by our innate cognitive structures; the content of our knowledge is to be found in the mind prior to sensory experience. The rationalist, then, defends nativism: the view that certain perceptual and conceptual capacities are innate. Chomskyan linguistic theory cannot be empiricist because it allows for unobservable grammatical properties to be stated as part of the speaker’s internalized linguistic competence. Also, empiricism cannot be equated with rationalism simply because they postulate innate mechanisms that enable the subject to apply procedures of hypothesis formation and inductive generalization.

These capacities may, however, lie dormant until the appropriate conditions for their manifestation arise; and the innate principles which determine the nature of thought and experience may be applied at an unconscious level of mind. Even the principles “of language and natural logic” are said to be known unconsciously at birth, and are “in large measure a precondition for language acquisition”, to quote Chomsky.

One of my freshman philosophy lecturers, Darrel Moellendorf, once told me that Chomsky sees himself as the heir to the rationalist’s throne. Indeed, he [Chomsky, not Darrel!] explicitly accepts their doctrine of innate ideas. Despite the great many languages spoken in the world, Chomsky says that they sufficiently resemble each other syntactically to suggest that there must be a universal schema, which he refers to as Universal Grammar (or UG). These are determined by the genetic constraints in the human mind. These innate constraints set the pattern for all experience, and fix the rules for the formation of meaningful sentences, and also explain why languages are readily translatable into one another. But I will return to Chomsky’s theory in more detail later.

The issue of innate knowledge vs empirical knowledge (with regards to language learning) is clearly a matter of degree. If all knowledge was derived from sensory experience, then a parrot that grew up in the same environment as a human child (and, ideally, went through the same experiences) should eventually acquire a level of language proficiency tantamount to that of the child. This clearly does not happen, even though the parrot is physiologically able to produce sounds, as Chomsky (quoting Descartes) points out in his famous book, Cartesian Linguistics, published in 1966. On the other hand, if all the details of our linguistic knowledge were hard-wired into our genes, then all humans would speak one language throughout the world. Chomsky believes that the environment does play a role in language acquisition, but it is only there to manifest the dormant linguistic principles that are latent in the acquiring child’s mind, and to set the language specific parameters. On the other hand, the empiricist holds that there are no domain specific structures extant at birth: their innate machinery is restricted to hypothesis formation and inductive reasoning, and this may well be a faculty unique to human beings.

Both Pinker and Chomsky are guilty of arguing against straw-man versions of empiricism, based on the long out-dated school of behaviourism. B. F. Skinner, for example, was of the opinion that we did not even have to postulate innate mechanisms of any kind. A living organism is a living organism. We do not have any reason to believe that there is something other than environmental conditioning that distinguishes them. If a pigeon is able to play ping-pong, he reasoned, why must we believe that there is something about the organism (other than the obvious phenotype) which categorically distinguishes it from a human being? I do not think any theorist, who also calls himself an empiricist, would agree that Skinner accurately represents what empiricism purports. Linguists tend to think so because in Chomsky wrote a scathing and influential review in 1959, where Skinner, who happens to be the leading exponent of classical Behaviourism, was the victim of Chomsky's venom; the review was of Skinner’s book entitled Verbal Behavior, published in 1957. He had been wise enough not to take issue with, say, the school of child psychology pioneered in the Soviet Union by Lev Vygotsky, or the subtle and fruitful approach adopted by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. I contend that Chomsky chose his target deliberately here, as he characteristically does – this is why you never find Chomsky making any references to those who oppose his theories. He is well aware of Popper, for example, but does not apply his standards of testability; when I asked him what he thought of the nascent field of Cognitive Linguistics, he curtly said that he didn’t “know much” about it! Does he really, or is it the case that if Cognitive Linguistics were to take off, that would be the end of Generative Grammar as we know it? In acknowledging this, Chomsky would have to either concede that his empire is crumbling, or he would have to radically review his theory, neither of which are viable alternatives for him. I also think this is the reason why he is writing less and less about linguistics, and more about politics of late. And this is also why I think Steven Pinker has suddenly hit the brakes and made a hundred and eighty degree turn in his latest book, THE STUFF OF THOUGHT. However, that’s a topic for another discussion, so let me stop digressing now and get back to the topic at hand...

My point here is simply that despite major differences with psychoanalysis, these psychologists like Vygotsky and Piaget had echoed Freud in taking as read that humans, like other animals, must have deep-rooted instincts of some relevance to a study of the mind. Chomsky, however, refrained from acknowledging the existence of such scientists. By singling out behaviourism for attack and ignoring everything else, he succeeded in arranging the battleground to suit his own needs.

One gets the impression that Chomsky always conceives of behaviourism in the image of Skinner. In fact, Quine’s behaviourism, for example, only remotely resembles what is usually referred to as behaviourism. Quine did not advocate the view that things can or should be explained in terms of correlations between stimuli and subsequent responses to these stimuli. Quine is even quoted as saying, in his contribution to the symposium on linguistic rationalism and innateness: “It may well turn out that processes are involved that are very unlike the classical processes of reinforcement and extinction of responses. This would be no refutation of behaviourism, in a philosophically significant sense of the term; for I see no interest in restricting the term ‘behaviourism’ to a specific psychological schematism of conditioned response”.

Not only are Chomsky and Pinker wont to capitalize on the fact that most academics are reluctant to peruse in great detail the relevant source texts, but pro-Chomskyans also cover up for untenable statements make by Chomsky in his earlier writings. In an understandably irritated tone, Peter Carr writes in his 2003 paper on Chomskyan rationalism and its problems, where he refers to Smith, who claims that we are all mistaken in attributing the notion that language is a set of well-formed sentences to Chomsky, since that was apparently put forth by Chomsky as a view that he was attacking. Carr then asks us to consider what Chomsky could have meant when he said that “From now on, I will consider language to be a set of (finite or infinite) sentences”, and furthermore when Chomsky said in a later work that “A fully adequate grammar must assign to each of an infinite range of sentences a structural description indicating how this sentence is understood by the ideal speaker-hearer”. Carr then sarcastically concludes that “If this amounts to outlining a position to be attacked, it certainly does not read that way”!

Sampson is not guilty of the rhetoric that is so rife in many of the nativist's manifestos. He says that he has tried to represent the nativist’s case fairly and without distortion, and I think he has indeed succeeded. Sampson concedes that Chomsky was quite justified in his criticism of Skinner. However, to quote Sampson: “to treat Skinner’s unreasonable theories as representative of the centuries-old tradition of empiricist thought is a travesty”, and to expect the world to believe in innate knowledge because “some half forgotten psychology professor did not believe in minds is a bit rich”.

My views on the NATURE-NATURE debate - part 1

Part 1 - INTRODUCTION

I have decided to post my views on this rather contentious topic as there are some interesting developments in the field. I will have to deal with this in parts because the topic is so very vast that there is just too much to write, summarise and post in one go.

The aim of this is to investigate the viability of the Chomskyan paradigm in light of Geoffrey Sampson’s account, as outlined in his Educating Eve. After looking at both arguments, I will conclude that Sampson does rightly criticise the nativists, whose complacency can indeed impede scientific progress. I will do this by critically evaluating some evidence proposed to bolster the Chomskyan account, in addition to that which Sampson offers.

The method here is essentially a negative one. The nativists claim that there is evidence that language acquisition occurs in a special way, which distinguishes it from other kinds of learning. However, this evidence will be shown to be flawed in some way or the other.

Sampson’s paradigm is indeed very useful in that it precludes the kind of complacency that is so dominant in the intellectual climes of today. Nativism needs to be looked at with a more critical eye; we should not take their purports as axiomatic truths. The flaws to be found in Chomsky’s theory are a problem regarding the modus operandi of research done; for example, question begging and looking for confirming evidence are meta-theoretical flaws which permeate much of the research done in the nativist framework, and need to be remedied if scientific progress is to be made. I will illustrate these meta-theoretical short-comings with specific examples from Chomsky and Pinker, and I will provide suggestions as to how the status quo can be improved.

Sampson’s representation of Popper can also be called into question, as Popper did indeed believe in innate linguistic mechanisms. This fact does not damage Sampson’s thesis though, so I will deal with this disparity only at the end.

A Comparative Analysis of Generative and Cognitive Grammar in light of Popper’s meta-theory

Introduction
This proposal aims to compare two opposing accounts of how language and the brain interact; these go by the names of generative linguistics and cognitive linguistics. I will outline the basic assumptions common to most mainstream adherents of these fields, together with the conclusions they are obliged to accept in light of their respective theoretical commitments. After assessing various aspects of these theories, they will be compared using the standard criteria of what ought to constitute a scientific theory, and thereby conclude that the cognitive approach seems to be more empirically and logically plausible for various reasons.

Generative Linguistics
The school of linguistics known as Generative Linguistics (henceforth GL) was started by numerous collaboraters, many of whom have since either abandoned the enterprise as initially outlined, or gone on to expand the theory in novel ways. Those who have abandoned the ship include thinkers like George Lakoff and Haj Ross, whereas those who expanded the theory in ways not originally envisioned include Ray Jackendoff, Steven Pinker and Jerry Fodor.

The central figure since the inception of the GL enterprise in the late 1950’s has been Noam Chomsky, and his position regarding the nature of language, how it ought to be studied, and its relation to human nature, has remained fundamentally unchanged over the years.

The main arguments within the GL framework have come from Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, and therefore their work will be drawn upon more heavily than others in outlining the said theory. Others, who have accepted the core assumptions and methodologies, will be alluded to as well, but will not constitute the core of this thesis.

The key assumptions that pervade this approach are as follows:

Language is innate, in the sense that it is part of an autonomous module (a mental organ) in the mind that grows in the child the same way your limbs grow.
Language learning or acquisition are therefore misnomers; language growth is a more appropriate term.
The physical manifestation of language (our linguistic performance) is only to be studied insofar as it provides clues to the language in our minds (our linguistic competence). We should therefore assume that a speech community is homogenous, and language should be studied as if it were part of such an idealized community.
For this reason, we are to draw a distinction between surface structure and deep structure linguistic forms.
Language is a discrete combinatorial system, and this fact allows us to use language in novel ways, which they refer to as creativity.
Language is at the core a syntactic phenomenon, which employs various finite rules which enable the user to produce a potentially infinite number of utterances. This process works like an abstract algorithm, and therefore functions independent of context and meaning. Hence, semantics should not only be seen as secondary, but as epiphenomenal.
As a genetically based module in the mind, language must have evolved at a single point in our history, either by Darwinian natural selection (Pinker) or by some kind of small genetic mutation, which somehow interacted with the mind’s computational principles (Chomsky), which gave rise to language.
Language has no direct influence on our thoughts, as thought and language are two separate processes which function separately in the mind.
Since language is part of our biological endowment, there must be a Universal Grammar (UG) present in all languages, which manifests as a result of being part of our minds at birth, providing the scaffolding that enables language to grow in the mind.
Just as our physical organs interact on some level with other organs, they are nonetheless structurally and functionally independent of them. Language, being a mental organ, should also be expected to be understood independently; language should not be intertwined with other aspects of our mental life, any more than the heart is intertwined with the functioning of the liver.
Language is understood in light of Rationalism, whereby thought is believed to be conscious and literal.
Generative Linguists are vehemently opposed to Empiricism and behaviourism.
The human mind is a uniform, modular organ.

These principles are certainly not exhaustive, but I have selected those which I seem to be the most definitive.

There are certain things that follow from this approach to the study of language and mind. Generally, accepting these premises obliges one to accept the conclusions which follow. Regarding the study of language, this includes:
Having to concede that second language learning is not at all related to the growth (sic) of your first language.
Language teaching is not related to the primary goal of linguistics.
Socio-linguistics, prescriptive grammar, speech therapy, etc. are not of primary concern to the linguist.
Reading and writing not part of language; they are cultural artefacts just like painting and dancing.
Documenting corpora is a pointless exercise, since the range of potential utterances are infinite. The goal should be to try and discover what the universal, finite rules are which all languages employ. The goal of linguistics as a whole has to be redefined, and those who pursue corpus linguistics are wasting their time.
Language is not for communication. Language appeared in the mind somehow, and we discovered that it could also be used for communication. Where it came from, and the real reason it manifested, are unknown.
Language is to be seen as part of the physical world, and needs to be studied as such.

In addition, GL uses some words in deviant ways. For example:
- creative refers to the simple act of speaking
- language is no longer seen as something spoken by a community; it is more accurately seen as an underlying mental competence, which grows in the mind and is the same in every human being. Recently Chomsky has taken to distinguishing between i-language, e-language, and Language, which adds to the confusion
- mind is merely a synonym for brain, but seen more as aspects of the brain which we know must be there
- the use of the word grow to refer to the development of a first language in the child; if the child is exposed to three languages as a young child, then three languages will “grow” in him. Generative linguists do not see this as odd, and they would be quite comfortable with an analogy along the following lines: if a child grows up gathering rocks and hunting, his hands will be stronger and more versatile; likewise, if a child grows up hearing different languages, his innate language faculty grows to be more versatile.

Also, it is not a coincidence that people like Pinker tend more towards a conservative outlook, whereas people like Lakoff tend more towards a progressive outlook. The idea that we are all the same at the core, that our linguistic and cultural disparities are just superficial, that our minds come fully equipped with genetic information, etc. means we do not need a government to see to our individual needs, since we are capable of using our innate potential to make a success of our lives. It is this mind-set that justifies the right-wing extremist view that the world should be run under one government, and any country or nation which questions it simply does not realize that we are all the same. This is the reason why democracy needs to be superimposed on Middle Eastern countries, whether they like it or not. Saudi Arabians, who are perfectly happy with their king, simply do not realize that American democracy is the best way of running a country.
Why democracy? Or why America’s brand of democracy? Well that is just a coincidence arising from the fact that they happen to be the first country to realize this. Countries like Dubai and Saudi Arabia just do not know what is good for them. One may wonder why, if “self-evident” civil liberties are innate, do they not know this; the answer: if a child is raised with his hands tied behind his back, and that is all he knows, he will not realize that they were meant to be free until some benevolent person (or institution) unties his hands, and forces the society to ban such practices. One of the conservative arguments justifying the war in Iraq goes along these lines.

This mind-set is the very same one which insists that some of the rules which pertain to American English must be part and parcel of human nature. Not only should this apply too every other dialect of English, and to the some six thousand other languages in the world, but every human being is born with this UG. If it does not appear that way, it is only because that principle must not have a surface manifestation – or maybe that principle is actually a parameter. In fact, at one point, if you did not accept this, you could hardly expect to find a job or get a research grant in the USA.

I am certainly not insinuating that the conservatives in Washington read The Blank Slate, got over excited, and invaded Iraq in an attempt to spread democracy and freedom in the Middle East, knowing now that the notion of universal liberty can be justified. I am merely drawing a parallel between these ways of thinking, and the methodologies they employ in reasoning. Just as you get different forms of democracy in the world, the principles underlying a democratic government are the same, just as with language.

Pinker refutes this by saying that political equity simply means being treated equally, not being literally equal in the biological sense. In fact, Pinker does not believe that we are all equal. In addition to his conviction that men and women have different skills and abilities (though he is careful not to hierarchialise this), Pinker also believes that there could be a racial correlate regarding our skills and abilities. During an interview with John Brockman, he said that science may one day discover that certain race groups are better at certain things than other things, which may be something we are not ready for (interview available at http://www.edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html). The interview was based on the theme Dangerous Ideas, and Pinker based his statement on a book by Daniel Dennett called Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. After pointing out how Darwin was ostracized, and how the theory shook the very foundations of the church, he says that the next shock to us will be the said discovery. He was very careful not to spell out the details, but I doubt he was implying that we may discover that Black Africans are more intellectual, and that White American males are better at manual labour.

As an aside, it is a well-known fact that the HSRC used to publish very convincing statistics during the apartheid days ‘proving’, for example, that Black people are biologically designed for intellectually inferior tasks.

The various forms of evidence cited to support these views will be discussed and criticized scientifically. I contend that the ideas on which GL is based are methodologically and empirically flawed. The same criticism applies to other paradigms which utilize the same lines of reasoning, like the conservative politicians.

These upshots and underlying assumptions are not accepted universally by linguistics scholars for various reasons. Scholars like Geoffrey Sampson rejects every argument and every logical implication of this approach; he has argued very effectively against GL in his various works over the years, like in his book Educating Eve, and various papers like Popperian Language Acquisition Undefeated, Minds in Uniform, Revisiting the ‘poverty of stimulus’ argument, etc.

His approach is a negative one, where the nativists say they have evidence and arguments for an innate language module in the brain, and Sampson points out that their evidence and arguments are flawed. These will be outlined here, but the problems with Sampson’s own account will be highlighted. His representation of Popper is not accurate, his alternative account of language acquisition and human nature is simplistic and reductionistic, and there seems to be a disparity between his academic work and his political views. For example, he got into trouble whilst an MP for saying that Asians are better at Maths because of their genes; in Minds in Uniform he takes issue with forcing a little country to abolish advocating the death sentence for speaking out against their country’s leader (cultural relativism).

Sampson is however a liberal, and his alternative theory can be supplemented by what has come to be known as Cognitive Linguistics (henceforth CL). As an aside, Sampson, like Chomsky, admits that he does not know anything about CL.

CL as a whole was born as a reaction to what is still referred to as “mainstream linguistics”, ie. Generative Linguistics. The question I will ask here is whether this reaction was justified, as is entailed rejecting all the key assumptions upon which GL rests, and in fact virtually all of Western philosophy as well, if you accept the import of George Lakoff’s and Mark Johnson’s Philosophy in the Flesh. For such a paradigm shift to be justified, the following has to be clearly demonstrated:
Each theory will have to be independently evaluated in light of evidence; refuting evidence should be taken seriously
Each theory will also need to be assessed in terms of other methods of argumentation employed to justify their stance
Where there is a deviation from the norm, either by way of reinventing terminology, postulating counter-intuitive hypotheses, or postulating more hypotheses than necessary, it needs to be adequately justified
The implications of each theory, both within its own field and in cognate disciplines, need to be assessed as well
Aspects of each theory which may be metaphysical in nature, need to be assessed in terms of its relative explanatory power
Are there aspects outside of the theory and evidence which influences the theory, like ad homonim considerations, socio-political factors, etc.?

These are the standard criteria used when deciding which theory is a better one. It is only a coincidence that I will use the works of Karl Popper in doing so, as he is one of the few philosophers of science to systematically outline what the logic of scientific inquiry entails, though few would disagree with his approach. Had I used Einstein, Newton, Feynman, Penrose, Putnam, or any other serious scientific thinker, the criteria would be the same.

The evidence and methodology used by the GL school specifically will be assessed. If their hypotheses make predictions, I will test these predictions, and see how the theory handles counter-evidence. If the theory can be always adapted to assimilate counter-evidence, then it is problematic. If the theory can construct ad hoc hypotheses without compromising testability, it would be better. If new concepts and terms are invented to account for this, then these new concepts have to be justified in light of the evidence, not just to protect the theory. If counter-evidence is ignored all together, then the theory is not an empirically responsible one, and therefore not scientific.

Before doing this, we need to understand a little about the alternative theory, which we will turn to now:

Cognitive Linguistics
CL was born as a reaction to GL, after exponents like Lakoff initially tried to expand Chomsky’s theory to include semantics, which at the time went by the name Generative Semantics. As more things came to be known, the idea of trying to incorporate all evidence within a GL paradigm became more and more difficult, and a ‘breakaway faction’ ensued, resulting in what was documented by Harris as The Linguistics Wars. Lakoff was a student of Chomsky’s, and the latter seemed to take this as a betrayal. After Lakoff’s criticisms, Chomsky is on record as saying that Lakoff does not understand linguistics very well. Today, Chomsky claims that he knows nothing about Cognitive Linguistics!

Anyway, while Lakoff is one of the exponents, CL cannot be attributed to a single ‘founding father’. It is a collaborative movement which is always evolving, though there are theorists who are prominent within the field. As a result, there are various branches of CL, and not every linguist who calls himself a CL has to accept all the assumptions that others espouse. Hence, delineating criteria which distinguish the field can lead to some fuzziness.

Regardless, these are some of the key assumptions shared by CL as I understand it:

Language may or may not be innate. It remains to be seen how much is innate if so. Regardless, evidence thus far shows that language is part and parcel of other higher cognitive functions, and is neither an autonomous mental organ, nor does it grow – it is learnt via interaction with the environment and the mind, using all its capacities.
Language as expressed and transcribed is one our most important sources of data, and should be studied as such without assuming that each speaker is homogenous, and that his language does not change in any way.
The idea of every sentence having a deep structure is thereby also rejected, since the reasons for postulating it in the first place are not clear.
Language is at the core a semantic phenomenon which cannot be divorced from context. It makes evolutionary sense that parable and narrative evolved first, followed by other aspects of language. Otherwise, nothing precludes a computer from simulating human language.
Language could not have evolved the same way our physical organs evolved, since that assumes that natural selection has a vision to the future; if it evolved with other cognitive faculties and manifested initially as parable, it would have immediate survival value.
Language and thought are inextricably linked, so much so that without language our level of consciousness would be reduced.
Though there is an innate basis for language, it has to be learnt via hypothesis formation. Hence, the will be commonalities constrained in trivial ways by our biology, but nothing to suggest that there is a UG hard-wired into our brains.
Language is an abstract cognitive faculty, which is neither functionally nor cognitively separate from the rest of our other cognitive faculties. This predicts that damage to our language centres in the brain would affect other things as well, and that language proficiency is conducive to clear thought (and of course, that linguistic proficiency varies from individual to individual)
Language is by and large figurative (or metaphorical, in the larger sense of the word), and thought is mostly unconscious.
Empiricism and behaviourism are not rejected by fiat, but aspects of either are assessed on their merit.
Language and mind are not necessarily part of the material world. While not saying so explicitly saying so, they leave a gap in their paradigm to cater for the possibility that they might be good candidates as possible denizens of Popper’s World 3.

Once again, these assumptions are not exhaustive, and the evidence will be duly scrutinized, as with GL. As mentioned, this school was born as a reaction to mainstream linguistics, and as such will be expected to handle the evidence more responsibly, as they claim, should be commensurable with common sense, and the rejection of things like the primacy of syntax will be looked at.

Stylistic issues like the novel use terminology will be assessed as either bad style or bad science, since CL scholars do not do this. The question will be asked: are there any theoretical implications leading to pseudo-problems[1] as a result of this? If so, would the problem still be there if these additional assumptions were not made? (For example, the concept of creativity in the conventional sense does not exist anymore, for generativists – though this is more of a semantic reductionism, which is the converse…)

To avoid redundancy, the entailments of these assumptions will not be reiterated as they are pretty much the converse of the opposing paradigm, as expected.

Regarding politics, CL seem to have a less euro-centric view of the world, and are progressive in their thinking. They do not feel the need to create a hierarchy, either in the academic world or the political world. This is not only because of George Lakoff’s now defunct progressive think tank, The Rockridge Institute, but because there are explicit links between the two (unlike GL, where the links are implied and never stated explicitly; in Chomsky’s case, he explicitly denies the link).

As mentioned, there are parallels between conservative political arguments and the way GL argue. The correlation does not entail causation, as any statistician would confirm. This merely shows a parallel in thinking, with possible causation. For example, the reason gay marriage is opposed is argued for as follows:
If they allow this, then what is next? What’s to stop from condoning bestiality, and then allowing them to get married!
Or their argument against raising the minimum wage:
If you give them a two dollar raise, what is to stop the unions from demanding a hundred dollar raise the next time round!
For some reason, it has to be one extreme or the other. Gay marriage not creating a terrible problem in South Africa is not considered as counter-evidence. A colleague told me: Wait and see what happens in five years time! When I pointed out that this has been happening for five years, he did not feel the need to reevaluate his position, but without reason. Likewise, Pinker would tell you that you either accept that there is a UG, with built in x-bars and island constraints, hard-wired into our minds (and in fact many other alleged things not related to language, as he explains in The Blank Slate, How the Mind Works, and The Stuff of Thought), or that we believe that the mind is a blank slate no different from a rock – he says we must either believe there is a human nature (and therefore accept his argument in its entirety), or totally reject the idea of the existence of human nature. He is careful to quote John Locke as advocating the “blank slate” idea, knowing that few people have read his works[2], but then adds that Locke does not deserve the blame for the idea that most intellectuals today believe that our minds are empty buckets and that people are hapless victims of their environment. As with the “gay marriage” argument, the alternative does not follow; likewise, you can reject GL and still believe that there is such a thing as human nature. Likewise, Chomsky has stated that the existence of UG is unquestionable, unless you believe in magic; clearly, it is quite tenable to reject both given the evidence.

Also, as with conservative politics, there always seem to be hidden, ulterior motives. For example, in Thinking Points[3], the authors quote various right-wing journals and magazines as stating before the “war” in Iraq that:
- Iraq’s oil reserves are open for the taking, and that profits should go to American companies since Iraqis are unable to handle it
- A puppet government is what is required to make this possible
- Iraq is an ideal military base for an attack on Iran
- An invasion can be justified by villainising Saddam Hussein, and using 9/11 as an excuse
- The move is justified since the Iraqi people have nothing anyway, and a semblance of democracy would make them happy; however, Americans should do what maximizes profit for themselves…

Despite being published in dozens of dated pre-war sources, they would all deny such an agenda. They pretend it was to find WMD’s, and then to remove a brutal dictator. Only in light of the above would we understand why America never invaded to remove Robert Mugabe from power, also a brutal dictator, and certainly worse in many ways. Likewise, Chomsky was out to make a name for himself. His ulterior motive was exactly that. His representation of Empiricism is very inaccurate, as is his representation of behaviourism. When I took Verbal Behavior out of the Wits Library in 2002, it had NEVER been taken out before, despite being a very old book. The spine was not even cracked. What I found was a very sophisticated and well-written account of language learning, not very different from Piaget’s account. Skinner never believed that a parrot could learn language, because of syntactic and contextual nuances. One of the reasons he proposed was a lack of attention span. The point is, though Skinner’s assumptions may be questioned, Chomsky’s famous review was not accurate, and most people do not know this because they trust his authority and veracity. In the past, Chomsky used give many lectures on his ideas on language, preceded by polemical remonstrations against the Vietnam war; many contend that the latter drew the crowds, not the former. When I wrote to Chomsky, asking some rather sycophantic questions, he replied in the form of two hand-written letters, signed. He also used to reply to every email I sent. When I raised some critical questions, his replies got more terse. My last question was regarding CL, and his one line reply was: I don’t know much about it.

Pinker also feigns ignorance about Sampson’s Educating Eve, which demolishes his (and Chomsky’s) arguments very systematically and logically. Strangely, he uses some of the very arguments used in that book in his subsequent book. He claims that he was too busy with his subsequent projects to “dwell on critiques of old ones” (personal communication). He also uses Lakoff’s theory of metaphor in How the Mind Works, saying that many researchers, including himself, have discovered it; this was not long after pointing out in very vicious and inaccurate review that the very idea is wrong.

I cannot help but draw parallels between Bush’s rejection of Scott McCelland, former White House spokesperson, after he wrote a critical book on the Bush administration, and Chomky’s rejection of his disciples in the early 1970’s when all they did was try and improve the theory. Lakoff also alleges that many of his ideas were adopted by Chomsky, without credit.

These parallels may or may not be coincidental, but this idea will be explored in more detail to ascertain its viability. At the moment I conjecture that the methodology used by CL drives one to a progressive mode of thought, and GL drives one towards doing what the conservatives do.

Conclusion
It is thereby clear that GL and CL are mutually exclusive, and the conventional hybrid solution would therefore not be a viable cop-out. Both theories aim to provide a comprehensive and holistic analysis of language and mind, together with implications of how to go about doing it.

Hitherto, it seems like CL has the upper hand; its alleged empirical accountability together with the relevant political and intellectual implications seems more palatable. GL needs to adopt a less dogmatic approach, as the assumptions guiding it mostly precede the research and therefore the evidence, which is not the way it is meant to be.

It remains to be seen whether this remains true in light of a more in-depth analysis or not.

____________________________________________________________________

[1] This is a problem which follows only as a result of the assumptions inherent in your particular theory.
[2] And in fact Locke did indeed believe in innateness, which Pinker very well knows.
[3] A progressive handbook, available from the Rockridge Institute’s web-site: www.rockridge.com.

Language, framing, and its relation to religion and politics

Language, as commonly understood, is a primarily communicative device, despite views to the contrary in mainstream linguistics, where language is said to be an abstract manifestation of symbolic notation. This fact, coupled with its ubiquity, makes its study indispensable when attempting to understand almost any aspect of human nature.

It is through language that we are able to express intent, share what we feel, communicate facts and create art in various forms; this of course does not imply that language is the only means of doing so, but I give it precedence here because it is indeed the most widely used in the aforementioned arenas. Without language, our ability to conceptualise and categorise is severely compromised.

When we wish to convince someone of our viewpoint, we use language to do so. In so doing, we may choose to manipulate, lie, use words with specific connotations, designed to evoke a particular mind-set in the listener, etc. Win trying to win someone over to your side, so to speak (whether it’s a child trying to get his parents to buy toy for him, or a political party trying to convince you to vote for them), you may share certain selected facts with them, appeal to their emotions in various ways, and so on. These are some of the techniques used in spin and propaganda.

On this point, people like Steven Pinker try to minimize the influence language has on us because he is of the opinion that language is almost an epiphenomenon resulting from universal substratum, which is genetically based. In addition to this, he follows Jerry Fodor in postulating a “language of thought”, saying that language and thought are two separate things; an upshot of this position, as I said – and Pinker certainly agrees – is that language cannot influence thought in any substantial sense. He agrees that language can influence the way we think about certain things, but does not think that language can determine our thought patterns to the point that it frames an entire paradigm. I will not elaborate on his views here, but I would like to make it clear that I disagree with Pinker’s ideas almost in their entirety. His theory of language is seriously flawed, as is his conception of the human mind, and human nature.

The traditional approach to language use is based on ideas made popular during the Enlightenment period, otherwise known as The Age of Reason. This is a time which marks a dramatic shift in the Western philosophical tradition from fideism and mythology to the triumph of reason. The movement’s exponents, past and present, opine that logical thought should be the basis of all inquiry, ranging from academia to politics and everything in between. If something could not be justified rationally, then it is assumed that there is no rational or logical basis for it, and therefore no one is compelled to give it any serious thought. This modus operandi rests on the following assumptions:

- That all people think on a literally, such that there is a one-to-one correspondence between what we think and the thing we are thinking about,
- That thinking is a conscious process,
- That common sense is a particular way of thinking which is common (hence the name) to all members of the species, and following from this…
- That if the relevant facts are presented to a given number of people, they would all come to the same conclusions, because they are all assumed to be rational beings.

Whilst this may seem prima facie plausible, a closer look at each of these will show them to be problematic.

Firstly, the claim that we think ‘literally’ is actually meaningless, since most people cannot even tell us what is actually means to think literally; what I mean by this is simply that if we talk about this matter to a group of intelligent people, chances are that there would be variable understandings of what exactly ‘literal’ entails. The word is commonly used to imply the opposite of ‘symbolic’ or ‘figurative’, and this works fine when referring to sensory perception, as in I saw the car or I heard the music. But when we extend this notion to more abstract modes of thought, it gets tricky. For example, anything we say that has a spatial or temporal characteristic takes on a metaphorical raiment. In their book, Metaphors We Live by, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson go into detail on this matter, providing various examples of how we use metaphor in everyday speech to conceptualise the world. For example, when we say Time is running out, we somehow conceive of ‘time’ as an expendable entity, even though that is meaningless if we really think about it. We liken ‘warmth’ to ‘care’, when we speak of someone being a warm person, and the opposite when we say that someone is cold. We liken morality to direction, such that a low person is understood to be immoral. The examples are endless as we use hundreds upon hundreds of such metaphors on a daily basis.

Before I go on, I would just like to add here that even the idea that direct sensory perception, without any language intervening, is not ‘literal’, if by that word we mean a one-to-one correspondence between the subject and object. Ancient scriptures from the East, like the Vedas and the Upanishads tell us that the world is not really what it appears to be; the objects of perception are as unreal the ephemeral objects of the dream-state, if you assume the WYSIWYG principle. A snake sees the world as ultra-violet rays; a shark sees the world as a series of electrical impulses; a honey-bee sees the world as vertical and horizontal lines, which decussate. Humans see the world as such as a contingent upshot of their perceptual mechanisms. Modern quantum mechanics has us believe that the fundamental building blocks of nature are mass-less, sub-atomic particles, leaving a puzzle as to how the world as a solid body even exists. Physicists even contend that by merely looking at a particle we change its behaviour and possibly its structure. There are volumes of work on this topic, so I will not go into detail here.

Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, argues that we perceive and subsequently understand things in a way that is unique to humans by superimposing a spatio-temporal quality to it, and then conceptualizing the said percept according to the twelve categories, which he claims to have deduced in what he refers to as the “transcendental deduction of the categories”. The fact that we perceive everything in a unified manner is surprising, given the complexity of the task of perceiving, and is given the rather euphuistic label of “the transcendental unity of apperception”. Kant therefore concluded that the world consists of things-as-we-perceive-them and things-in-themselves, the latter being what the world really is. [Kant used the words phenomena and noumena (respectively) to describe these.] Schopenhauer pointed out that it is incorrect to refer to things-in-themselves as plural, since the underlying reality of the world needs necessarily to be a single, unified whole. This is in keeping with the Vedantic world-view alluded to earlier, which Schopenhauer was an avid advocate of, despite being both a pessimist and an atheist.

My point in referring to these philosophers is to emphasise the fact that even something as fundamental as basic perception is not to be taken for granted. When we give these matters serious thought, we notice that they are not only complex processes, but also largely unconscious.

This gets us back to the topic at hand. As mentioned, our predilection for metaphorical thought is something that is not only natural, but unconscious as well. A very young child who has only just acquired his language is said to have hundreds of metaphors available as part of his knowledge base. He does this by mapping source and target domains in various ways. For example, when a child’s mother holds him to her, he feels the sensation of warmth, and associates the feelings of love/protection/care with the sensation of warmth. Metaphors formed in this fashion are expected to be reflected universally in language. However, it would be equally plausible that some metaphors are unique in some way, perhaps to a particular culture, a given society, or may even be the idiosyncrasy of a family. Being clean may be deemed a good thing, and being dirty may be deemed a bad thing. Hence, by association of having a dirty mind would refer to the metaphor DIRTY IS BAD, and as such would refer to thinking something that is morally wrong. However, this is something that would have to be instilled in children by the parents; if not, the concomitant associations would be different. Even though metaphors of the latter kind are a result of conditioning, the conceptual metaphor itself is acquired unconsciously. We know this because children use and understand various metaphors without any problem, yet would not be able to explain it meta-linguistically.

So far we have seen that perception and conceptual metaphor are not conscious processes. Once we appreciate the ubiquity of metaphor, it follows that the majority of our thinking is unconscious. The idea that unconscious wills and desires affect us was made popular by Sigmund Freud, but he was certainly not the first one to speak of the unconscious. Schopenhauer wrote about that very topic long before Freud, which the latter actually acknowledges; and once again various Eastern traditions have spoken about such things as well before anyone else.

Now, conceptual metaphors form the basis of the way in which we think. Once we understand this, many things which would otherwise not make sense now do. The metaphors that we acquire slot in to various cognitive schemas, which are continually evolving, though we may assume that there is a saturation point. We have what we can call deeply ingrained schemas, and superficial schemas. The latter evokes the former. George Lakoff uses the terms deep-framing and surface-framing to describe this. For example, when someone says You are such a pig, one would have to have some knowledge of the negative connotations associated with pig: they are unhygienic, seen as potential disease-carriers, pork is forbidden in many cultures for various reasons, including its association with lack magic and evil, etc. The frame that this word evokes would depend on your understanding of it, but generally such a statement would be meant as an insult. This statement is a surface frame, but depends on a deep frame, which requires you to understand that DIRT IS BAD/IMMORAL, and that things associated with the dirt must also be bad in some way; pigs like to roll in dirt, and would eat anything, even rubbish, and therefore they are dirty...

Now imagine someone who grew up on a farm in Bloemfontein. Imagine that the farmer was a maize farmer, who kept sheep and pigs as well. The sheep are shorn twice a year, and the wool is used for various things. The pigs are kept more as pets, and not slaughtered for meat. The child grows up watching his father care of the sheep and pigs very lovingly, and watches him playing with the little piglets like you would little puppies. Imagine also that this child attends a local school which caters for the children of farmers from the surrounding farms. If this child goes to Johannesburg on holiday for the first time at the age of six, decides to eat the food at the restaurant with his hands, making a bit of a mess, and he overhears the child at the next table saying Look, he’s such a pig. Because pig would evoke a different frame (cute little animals whom he probably has names for), he would not understand what the statement means, insofar as its intention is concerned. Our farm child may not even have the deep frame DIRT IS BAD on which to hang the surface frame, because working in the mud and dirtying himself by helping his father may be associated with a virtue. This child would understand that being dirty is not always bad, whereas a suburban child would, who was continually chided for playing in the mud, would associate it as such.

Note that this is just an example, and possibly not a very good one. The point is simply that we all have frames, which are represented in our minds. We have deep frames which surface frames draw upon. Due to the way we go about acquiring conceptual metaphors, the resultant frames are generally the same within a particular speech community, but there are important differences and these differences (or more importantly, the consequences of these differences) are what I would like the reader to take cognizance of.

John Gray’s bestseller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, spoke of the different ways men and women speak, and the miscommunication that ensues when they speak to each other. He refers to a myth at the outset of the book, where men once inhabited Mars, and women inhabited Venus, and upon learning of each other’s existence, agreed to tryst upon earth. However, they had difficulty communicating with each other, and despite improvements over the years, there is still much to be desired. The book aims to bridge this gap. He points out various instances whereby both parties need to understand what is actually meant when something is said, instead of just taking what is said at face value. For example, when the wife says We never go anywhere anymore, she is usually confronted with the retort But we went out last week for dinner! Then the wife gets angry, and the husband gets confused.

Why does this happen? This seems to happen because women in general have the frame LANGUAGE AS EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION, whereas men have the frame LANGUAGE AS CONVEYING ESSENTIAL INFORMATION. In the former frame, expressing your emotions to the people you love is seen as a good thing, and in the context of a relationship, is the primary aim of communication; in the latter frame, emotional expression is seen as effeminate, a sign of weakness. In this context, what is expressed should not be counter-factual, and should be preceded by a kind of brain-storming session where you think about what you’re going to say before saying it. Once this is understood, many things make sense that otherwise just seem unintelligible. Instead of conceding that there’s something at play that we don’t understand, we villainize the other party, and attribute our lack of understanding to stupidity, callousness, etc.

We understand religion in metaphorical terms as well. If you ever hear a strict Hindu having a debate with a strict Christian, what would strike you is not so much the differences in particular beliefs, but the fundamental ideological disparity. The particular beliefs pertain to surface frames, but what really distinguishes these two religions is the deep frame, which links religion to family. We superimpose the metaphor of family to any other institution which resembles it, being our first experience of governance, with our parents the ultimate authority from whom to get authorization, and whose approval meant everything.

George Lakoff speaks of two kinds of families: the strict father family and the nurturant parent family. With the former, what the father says goes without any question, just because he says so, leaving no room for negotiation. If you violate these rules, you will be punished. The circumstances which preclude you from following these rules are generally deemed irrelevant, and often ignorance of the rules do not suffice as an excuse to evade punishment. This is tough love, so that you will soon grow to be a responsible, independent person. If they do not learn within the required time-frame, they are forced to go out and learn on their own. With the latter, rules are not rigid and may not even apply in some cases; punishment is tailored to suit the wrong-doing, and children are allowed to develop at their own pace. If children do not learn or develop as expected, they are given guidance and assistance as long as they need, without any pressure, but with the knowledge that the parents will not always be there. In reality, most families are a combination of the two family types, meaning that when it comes to one kind of issue, parents would be nurturant, and in another they would be strict and impose a different set of policies. The degree to which they vary is more accurately viewed as a continuum.
On a literal level, this explains the differences between Eastern and Western family life, together with it implications for child-rearing. The details would be interesting to go in to, but not relevant to the discussion at hand.

Christianity adopts the GOD AS STRICT FATHER metaphor. This explains its intolerance of other religions, with its rigid rules and regulations. Circumstances precluding the ‘children’ from following the rules are not taken into consideration: ALL Hindus (including saintly souls like Mahatma Gandhi), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and other non-believers are going to hell to suffer for eternity. Some would say that this includes people who were born before Jesus started teaching, the people who were around when Jesus was around but had not heard of him, as well as people in remote parts of the world. They may all be good people, but the Bible says that we can only reach the Father through Jesus, by explicitly accepting him as your sole saviour, and that’s that. It is also not a coincidence that God within this frame is perceived as a male figure, who makes all the decisions and has all the authority.

The GOD AS NURTURANT PARENT metaphor is adopted by Hindus. This explains its acceptance of all people, regardless of the faith they practice. Rules and regulations are perceived more as guidelines which ought to be adjusted according to circumstances. This is why there are even various scriptures to suite these various circumstances. The belief in karma ties in with the idea that the punishment should suit the crime, and that God has the power to forgive at His discretion. (With the above frame you are forgiven once and then expected to obey, or else…) The belief in reincarnation shows that you are given opportunities to better yourself, instead of going straight to hell after one lifetime. If you have managed to become a virtuous person, through whatever means available to you, you are welcomed into heaven with open arms. Hindus also believe that God has a female aspect, analogous to the Yin-Yang concept in Chinese philosophy. Just as God is seen as a single, male figure in the above frame, here God is seen as a complex, multi-faceted being, and his creation is governed by multiple laws which can only be understood systemically and hierarchically, not in a linear if … then fashion.

In light of this, when a Hindu is befuddled by the Christian who sees God being omnipresent with room for hell, and His absence from hell as logically CONSISTENT, the Christian sees no problem with this because what Father says goes no matter what. The fact that God can send you to hell to suffer for eternity whilst still being all-merciful is also not questioned for the same reason. Hindus are perplexed by the fact that God should be feared, and that religion should be based on blind obedience with dire consequences, without concern for anything else. These people would be consistently talking past each other all the time, without understanding either side unless they are willing to step out of their frame and at least understand the side’s frame, and vice versa. This is slightly more complicated than seeing things from another person’s point of view, or stepping into someone else’s shoes, though it’s pretty much the same thing in principle.

It is through repetition and propaganda (and fear of damnation) that many are converted, and this is nothing more than getting the potential proselyte to accept your frame. In my experience, conversion to fideism is based on fear (with solace taken in the belief that He cares for you and that it’s for your own good), and is deemed necessary for various reasons by current practitioners, whereas ‘conversion’ to deism is seen as unnecessary, since God loves all of his creation, and a personal choice which not really necessary.

In general, the Eastern religions (deistic) embrace the GOD AS NUTURANT PARENT frame, whereas the Western religions (fideistic) embrace the GOD AS STRICT FATHER frame.

In American politics, there are two main political parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The republicans are labeled as conservatives, whereas the democrats are labeled progressives. The labels are self-explanatory, and we can understand their policies by seeing this too in terms of conceptual metaphor. Here we have a NATION AS FAMILY METAPHOR, with the republicans adopting the STRICT FATHER model, and the democrats adopting the NUTURANT PARENT model. (This spills over into their religious beliefs, with the democrats being more tolerant of other religions and cultures, and the republicans not.)

Let us consider the ‘war’ in Iraq:
The republicans believe they should use violence, and attack all opposition with a take no prisoners kind of attitude. Furthermore, they believe they know what is best for Iraq, and that they must obey or else… Notice, it is only within this frame that terms like ‘war’ and ‘surrender’ have any meaning. Here it must be known that the ‘father’ is tough, and if you mess with his ‘family’, he’s going to browbeat you. Democrats see this as an illegal occupation of sovereign territory, and that leaving is precisely that: leaving – withdrawing from a land they invaded under false pretences. When a republican accuses the democrat of being weak and wanting to surrender, the very phrase has no meaning within the nuturant parent frame. If a nuturant parent’s child gets beaten up, he would first ask the child what he did to instigate the fight. After ascertaining for sure whose fault it is, he would then talk to the parents of the other child. Likewise, a diplomatic understanding of the underlying causes which instigated 9/11 would help in finding a holistic solution, and a punishment which fits the crime, something like dealing with it as a criminal act. What the Bush administration did was tantamount to going and beating up the child accused of beating up your own child [Afghanistan] (no questions asked – you messed with a member of my family, now I will show you who’s boss), then beating up your child’s friend, since he has something your family could use and beating him up for this reason will give you an excuse to take what he has [Iraq and its oil resources]. For those who do not know, America is currently setting up a number oil companies in various parts of Iraq. A strict father would also, after all this, punish his child just to get the point across that he should steer clear of fights; America is punishing its own citizens with moves to allow random phone tapping and email hacking to try and catch the Judas. With the war powers Bush has given himself during this occupation, he has the right to detain without charge anyone accused of terrorism. Many have been detained, without even a doctored charge, and tortured in various ways in the notorious prison in Guantanamo Bay, deliberately set up there so it would be outside the world’s eye. Sami Al-Haj, a camera-man for Al-Jazeera is an example of this: he was held without charge for six years, and underwent extreme abuse and torture for no reason. Republicans would say that these are terrorists, and they do not deserve to be treated normally, or with dignity. Torture is necessary to gain ‘intelligence’ and to get them to admit what plans they are hatching, etc. Even if this were true, they would have to explain why they would torture someone who is arrested with NO charge, even after six years. If were told he’s accused of x, and that admitting x would stop the torture, he may have admitted it just to have some solace, but as I said in many cases there were NO charges! Indeed, many did ‘admit’ to crimes under torture, which the republican politicians are delighted with. This kind of policy seems inhumane and barbaric, and it makes us educated, civilised people wonder how things can happen under the auspices of such a developed nation. When you see the frame as a kick-ass ‘father’, like Rocky, going to some kid and saying Are you the one who’s messing around with my kid? He says no at first, until he pushed around a few times, followed by a slaps, etc.; then he comes around to see the light, apologise, and ‘admit’ guilt; this is their idea of victory.

In being steadfast, the republicans want to be perceived as being tough. However, they are not as resolute in their policies as they would like to be. For example, they do not speak to or work with terrorist organizations, and of course what counts as a terrorist organization is left to their discretion, and by the official definition, the USA falls under a terrorist state as well, in addition to actively supporting alleged dictators like Saddam Hussein. South Africa’s ANC was listed as a terrorist organization all along, until July 2008 (this was George Bush’s ‘gift’ to Mandela on his 90th birthday! ), yet the USA has always had good relations with South Africa ever since sanctions were lifted in the early 90’s.

There was a successful rescue mission conducted in the middle of 2008 by the Columbian army on the Farc rebels, who held many high profile hostages, including two US army officials and a former Columbian presidential candidate (she was campaigning when she was taken hostage) for many years. This was only made possible because they entered into negotiations with the rebels, and executed the rescue on that premise. Without this intervention, the hostages would still be captivity, including the US officials – this is further proof that conservative policy does not make much sense.

However, republicans are so successful because they own all the major media houses in the States, and they invest millions in setting up think-thanks, which churn out publications in non-peer-reviewed journals. Hence, they create their own frames, which are instilled in the minds of the people all over the world, and things that they hear outside this frame is either incorporated into this frame or not recognized as making any sense – you call them bigoted, or biased, or closed-minded, but really they are just trapped in a conservative frame. So when we talk of the ‘war’ in Iraq, we are already presupposing a republican frame: we immediately think of attack and defence, good guys and bad guys, state of emergency, and fear of espionage. When we talk of ‘occupation’, we frame the American troops as criminals! This is why the conservatives repeat over and over again WAR ON TERROR, so that this frame gets inculcated in your minds, not the liberals’ (more accurate) frame. If we talk of war, we are entering into a debate on republican turf. Liberals need to frame the debate in their terms, and like the republicans, repeat it and use surface frames that hinge on the deeper frame.

It makes no sense to say that Bush is an idiot, the Americans are evil, etc. because they know very well what they are doing, and they are good at it – which means they’re not so stupid after all.

When Obama suggested talking unconditionally to Iranian leaders, he was merely referring to a willingness to understand things from their point of view, to understand their frame of reference before assuming anything, then making their frame clear to Iran, and then finding a way forward. This is at least better than unilaterally declaring that America will attack unless all alleged nuclear plants are blown up in public. The republicans will not speak to them as they are the enemy. Instead they will issue an ultimatum: do what we tell you or we will attack you. From Iran’s point of view, this is bullying. Just as Iraq had no “weapons of mass destruction”, they say they have none either, and that they have the right to develop nuclear technology, which they say is for peaceful purposes. America is seen as a fickle yet dangerous threat, who once supported Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein when it suited them, and now turned against them as show of strength and virility to show the American people that their ‘father’ is tough. Hence, the difference in policy regarding Iran.

There is a younger generation of neo-conservatives who understand the problems with the status quo, and are trying to make their policies more reasonable. Their critics say they are just taking some liberal policies and calling themselves neo-conservatives, but it remains to be seen what comes of this.

In American politics, the frames are fairly clear, and we can more often than not predict which policies will appeal to which party.

In applying this theory to the South African context, it gets a bit more complicated. In using the NATION AS FAMILY metaphor, we need to bear in mind that there are other family types, including:
“Single mother” families
“Abusive parent” families
“All are equal”, families
Surely there are other family structures, but these seem to be the most prominent. I’ll call these type 1, type 2 and type 3 for ease of reference. I would imagine a type 1 family to have a strong, sturdy, resolute yet caring mother – who strives not to show her love too blatantly; perhaps Margaret Thatcher’s government would have fallen into this category.

A type 2 parent would not care for his children, and intimidate them to make himself feel more important. He would tell them things to make them believe that he is a great man, even if he knows this to be counter-factual. He would like to control who children hang out with, and what information they receiving, for if they become too educated and street-wise, they may rebel. You can see this as strict father gone wrong. One obvious example of this kind of government is the ZANU-PF currently ruling Zimbabwe.

Imagine a type 2 parent who abuses one child, and favours the other. One could draw an analogy with this government and that of apartheid South Africa, where White people were the favoured ‘children’, and the others were treated badly for being different. Now when the abused child takes over, they decide that we must all now be equal, but decides to surreptitiously get those who benefited in the old days back [affirmative action] and so on. The parallels we can draw are endless, but now we have a type 3 parent, who decides that he needs to make things right by apologizing to the abused children, and declares that all are equal, and all should work together as a collective to make the nation a better one and serve the government who now sees them as all equal. This type 3 parent feels that if one child gets a sweet, the others must get a sweet as well. Hence, the communist ideology of equal distribution of wealth, as so often bandied about in the ANC.

Now, the National Party, the archetypal symbol of apartheid and the concomitant abuse that went with it, was the opposition party during the elections in 1994, when we had our first truly democratic elections. Though the leader at the time was a “courageous and honourable man, in Nelson Mandela’s own words and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, few forgot what they stood for during the apartheid days, and the horror and pain they inflicted on their ‘children’. The NP was soon to be deposed, but still had the stigma of being a type 2 abusive parent, and now they were to be relegated to the MAIN OPPOSITION PARTY, and therefore still a threat. The NP recognized this, and eventually changed their name to the NNP, the NEW National Party, one that has realized its mistakes, and was prepared to make amends for the ills of the past by becoming a nurturant parent under its new leadership. But this did not work, because the type 2 frame was too deeply embedded in the minds of the denizens, and it is nothing other than their failure to eradicate that type 2 frame that led to the downfall and dissolution of the party.

When the Democratic Alliance (or the then Democratic Party) won the second most seats in parliament, deposing the NP, they slotted right into that type 2 frame without even asking for it. To make matters worse, they also accepted the label OFFICIAL OPPOSITION PARTY, as if it were a good thing. Now, in addition to unknowingly fitting into a type 2 frame (remember that this is something unconscious yet indelibly burnt into people’s minds), they hang on that frame the surface frame of “opposition party”. Now, the ANC, being a type 3 family, is known to promote equality, justice, freedom and a better life for all. They are also the ones who fought the oppressors with the iconic Nelson Mandela at its helm. If you are the party opposing the ANC, followers of the ANC are seeing you as opposing freedom, justice, etc. This is a direct upshot of slotting into a type 2 frame, and then accepting the label ‘opposition party’. This is precisely why the current ANC youth league believes that the DA is the enemy and needs to be wiped out – what’s wrong with eradicating someone who stands in the way of all those things all South Africans hold so dear? This is just taking the vengeance condoned by his ‘parent’ one step further. With this also comes the stigma of being perceived as the party who would oppose everything the ANC says and does on principle. When Tony Leon (the then leader of the DA) visited my university just under 10 years back, some students were shouting at him, telling him that he’s the “devil incarnate”. Having listened to his talk, and listened to him answering (some very antagonistic) questions on policy very eloquently, and very reasonably, and having shook his hand afterwards, and observing him meet with students and chat with in a very friendly manner, I did not understand why the animosity was so rife. My brother cites Tony Leon’s father as being an apartheid judge as his reason for hating Tony Leon and the DA; this being said without any knowledge of the kind of judge he was, or the kind of person he was. But things like this make sense if we understand that his party fell into a trap, so to speak.

At the time of writing, the ANC has reason to be rather concerned, as their leader faces corruption charges. The DA’s criticisms are brushed off and seen as inciting hate, and feelings of retaliation are justified as they were the ones who condoned the oppression of black people during apartheid – this is not true, but it fits in with the frame that the DA has unknowingly embraced. In reality, the DA adopts a nurturant parent frame, and bases its philosophy on the principles of an open society, in the Popperian sense. This is reflected in their policies, they way they reason things through, and the things they say when given the opportunity. This is only evident when you listen to what is said with an open mind, without shackling yourself into a frame. However, this is not easy as we unconsciously create frames based on various conceptual metaphors, so the “facts” only make sense within a frame. If a fact does not suit a frame, it is seen negatively, as treason, reversion to oppression and so on. A type 3 family owes allegiance to the father, who is fighting for their equality; in return, they are prepared to wipe out, kill and die for that leader. This is part of the type 3 frame, and if it is not understood as such, this can be as confusing as it is distressing.

Helen Zille, the current leader of the DA, has criticized the government’s Black Economic Empowerment policy (BEE), which is a way of giving preferential treatment to those who belong to previously disadvantaged communities. (It has more recently being upgraded to Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment, to include those who are not Black, but still belong a group that was once marginalized). Contrary to what we would expect, she does NOT criticize the fact that this policy is a kind of reverse discrimination, where a White person would not be considered for a job over a Black person, who actually might be less qualified. In fact, she points out that the policy is meant to assist the masses, who – before 1994 – have never had equal access to education and other resources. However, the in practice the policy is only being used to assist the middle-upper class Black population, and she thereby feels the term Black Elitist Enrichment would be a more appropriate label, which is a clever spin on the now hackneyed abbreviation, BEE. Her point here is that the poor Black people, who this policy is meant to help, and who it was designed for in the first place, are none the better as a result of this policy. Instead, already affluent Black businessmen are getting deals and tenders they would otherwise have to compete for in the free market.

Surely this point is not a criticism against the ANC per se, but a point made on behalf of the majority of the South African population. It is criticism which any member of the ANC should accept in principle, as it points to the failure of government implementation, and merely reminds them that their supporters are suffering as result of this.

However, common sense plays no role here, and the actual facts do not matter in the grander scheme of things. The fact is that Helen Zille represents the DA, who fits into a frame that on principle opposes everything that the ANC stands for, and therefore must oppose a better life for all. This fact cannot be over-emphasised, as the influence of cognitive frames are deeply embedded in our minds and unconscious. It takes thereby takes conscious effort to understand these frames, and then change them appropriately in a responsible manner.

This explains why people are not able to just look at the facts objectively, and use their common sense. Common sense does not exist, in that it is not common. We only have frames, and many of these are common, but many are not. If you talk about an issue that is embedded in a frame to another person who espouses another frame, your conversation will get nowhere; a DA supporter talking to an ANC supporter about Jacob Zuma’s trial will not get anywhere, just as the Hindu who argues with a Christian about the nature of God wouldn’t.

What the DA should have done, and should be doing still is not picking on particular issues. They should do what Barack Obama is doing in the States and work on changing the frames that are so indelibly burnt into the minds of the nation. It is only then that the people who count will listen, and of course I don’t just mean swaying voters in your favour. The stigma of being the NP’s replacement should be wiped out, and the DA should stop labeling itself the opposition party, because they do not oppose what the ANC stands for in THEORY. They stand up for what is right, and they stand up for the people whose tax money is being squandered unlawfully by the GOVERNMENT, of which the DA is a part. They should frame themselves as part of a whole, who are there to help care for the nation. If a member of the Independent Democrats does something wrong, it would be brought to the fore; if a member of their own party goes astray, it would be brought to the fore, and they would be dealt with.

This would be the first step in changing the negative frame that is in the minds of so many South Africans, people would listen more attentively, and they would earn the respect of their rivals. Without action based on an intelligent understanding of the situation, there is no communication, one party sees the other as being idiotic or rebellious, or whatever, when really what they are doing is quite consistent within their frame of reference.