LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS

All this has obvious implications for the Nativist-Empiricist controversy over language universals. Chomsky (1968, ch. 3, and earlier) and developmental psycho-linguists who have adopted his views take a strong nativist position. According to Chomsky, ‘ Thus. . . [language] appears to be a species-specific capacity that is essentially independent of intelligence. . .We must postulate an innate structure that is rich enough to account for the disparity between experience and knowledge, one that can account for the construction of the empirically justified generative grammars within the given limitations of time and access to data. . .The factual situation is obscure enough to leave room for much difference of opinion over the true nature of this innate mental structure that makes acquisition of language possible’ (1968, pp. 68-9).

A number of philosophers have taken issue with Chomsky’s nativist claims, and among them Nelson Goodman’s arguments (1967), couched in a dialogue between Jason and Anticus (who thinks that what Jason has brought back from Outer Cantabridgia is more fleece than golden), are most relevant to our present concern.

‘Anticus: . . .Don’t you think, Jason, that before anyone acquires a language, he has had an abundance of practice in developing and using rudimentary prelinguistic symbolic systems in which gestures and sensory and perceptual occurrences of all sorts function as signs. . .

Jason: True, but surely you do not call those rudimentary systems languages.

Anticus: No; but I submit that our facility in going from one symbolic system to another is not much affected by whether each or either or neither is called a language ... if the process of acquiring the first language is thought of as beginning with the first use of symbols, then it must begin virtually at birth and takes a long time’ (pp. 25-6).

Chomsky’s reply to this (1968) was as follows: ‘ This argument might have some force if it were possible to show that the specific properties of grammar. . .were present in some form in these already acquired prelinguistic “symbolic system”. But since there is not the slightest reason to believe that this is so, the argument collapses’ (pp. 70-1).

The evidence offered in this paper would seem to give quite ample ‘reason to believe ’ that many properties of grammar are present in some form in pre-linguistic perceptuo-motor behavior. Not only does the sheer ability of Paraphrase Things in language imply that perceptual and linguistic signs must share the same underlying cognitive or semantic system, but the detailed ways in which non-linguistic, perceptual ‘ presuppositions ’ determine the form and content of descriptive sentences imply a very intimate interaction between these channels.¹ If, as seems perfectly obvious, the learning of the significance of perceptual signs and their relations in perceived events is prior to the learning of language per se, and if the development of perceptuo-motor communications systems in the human species was prior to the development of human languages per se - as seems obvious also, unless we assume that humanness and language were simultaneous mutations as humanoids dropped from the trees and stood erect! - then it seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that much, if not all, that is universal in human languages is attributable to underlying cognitive structures and processes and not either species-specific or language- specific.

Of course, one could argue that all I have done is to push the Nativist-Empiricist issue down a notch or two: This is true, but it is about the nativism of human linguistic competence that the strongest claims have been made. Chomsky’s second line of defence of Nativism moves precisely in this direction:4 If it were possible to show that these prelinguistic symbolic systems share certain significant properties with natural language. . .we would then face the problem of explaining how the pre-linguistic systems developed these properties’ (1968, p. 71). Even assuming that language behavior is learned on the foundation of pre-linguistic cognitive structures and learning, we still will have to determine to what degree and in what ways this foundation is itself innate or learned.

I have already suggested that behavior theory (as distinguished from learning theory) must accept certain cognitive abilities as innate, although not necessarily species-specific for humans: the ability to form perceptual entities on the basis of certain gestalt-like tendencies; the ability to organize behavior hierarchically; the ability to differentiate units within each hierarchical level componentially. My perceptual demonstrations have suggested certain other tendencies which could be innate. The distinction between Entities and Actions and their integration as Events certainly seem fundamental (cf. Fillmore’s case-relations), and, as I understand it, these are equally fundamental in ‘ deep structure ’. The perception of Entities as novel or as unique or as requiring differentiation from others (vs. redundant) was found to have predictable effects upon a range of linguistic phenomena - determiner, pronoun, reflexive, adjective and adverb usage. Unfulfilled cognitive expectations were found to underlie diverse manifestations of negation (as has also been recently stressed by linguists, of course). The rather delicate dependence of verb tense upon the relation of event-time to subjective time-zero was also demonstrated. Various whole-sentence effects, including transformations, were shown to be influenced by the structures of perceptual situations, e.g., as sequentially ordered actions vs. simultaneously ordered relations.

I think that the investigation of perceptuo-linguistic paraphrasing - particularly cross-culturally and down the age scale to as young speakers of diverse languages as possible - may be able to shed further light on human universals.

¹ That linguists are becoming increasingly aware of this interaction is evidenced by, for example, Lakoff’s (1969) discussion of the extra-linguistic (situational) determinants of choice among some and any and McCawley’s (this volume) discussion of the deictic use of pronouns, where their antecedents are perceptually present entities and not prior noun phrases or sentences.