Editing Generative grammar (section)

=== Innateness and universality ===

A major goal of generative research is to figure out which aspects of linguistic competence are innate and which are not. Within generative grammar, it is generally accepted that at least some [[domain-specific]] aspects are innate, and the term "universal grammar" is often used as a placeholder for whichever those turn out to be.<ref name ="WasowHandbookUniversality">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Generative Grammar |encyclopedia=The Handbook of Linguistics|year=2003|last=Wasow|first=Thomas|author-link=Tom Wasow|editor-last1=Aronoff|editor-first1=Mark|editor-last2=Ress-Miller|editor-first2=Janie|publisher= Blackwell|url=https://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/WWW_Content/9780631204978/12.pdf|doi=10.1002/9780470756409.ch12}|page=299}}</ref><ref name = "PesetskyUG">{{cite encyclopedia|title=Linguistic universals and universal grammar|encyclopedia=The MIT encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences|year=1999|last=Pesetsky|first=David|author-link=David Pesetsky|editor-last1=Wilson|editor-first1=Robert|editor-last2=Keil|editor-first2=Frank|publisher=MIT Press|doi=10.7551/mitpress/4660.001.0001 |pages=476-478}}</ref>

The idea that at least some aspects are innate is motivated by [[poverty of the stimulus]] arguments.<ref name = "AdgerPOS">{{cite book|last=Adger|first=David|author-link=David Adger|year=2003|title=Core syntax: A minimalist approach|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=8-11|isbn=978-0199243709}}</ref><ref name ="Lasnik&LidzPOS">{{cite encyclopedia |title=The Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulus|last1=Lasnik|first1=Howard|author-link1=Howard Lasnik|last2=Lidz|first2=Jeffrey|author-link2=Jeffrey Lidz|encyclopedia=The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar|year=2017|editor-last=Roberts|editor-first=Ian|editor-link=Ian Roberts (linguist)|publisher=Oxford University Press|url=https://jefflidz.com/Docs/LasnikLidz2016.pdf}}</ref> For example, one famous poverty of the stimulus argument concerns the acquisition of [[yes-no question]]s in English. This argument starts from the observation that children only make mistakes compatible with rules targeting [[hierarchical structure (linguistics)|hierarchical structure]] even though the examples which they encounter could have been generated by a simpler rule that targets linear order. In other words, children seem to ignore the possibility that the question rule is as simple as "switch the order of the first two words" and immediately jump to alternatives that rearrange [[constituent (linguistics)|constituents]] in [[Tree (data_structure)|tree structure]]s. This is taken as evidence that children are born knowing that grammatical rules involve hierarchical structure, even though they have to figure out what those rules are.<ref name = "AdgerPOS"/><ref name ="Lasnik&LidzPOS"/><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Crain|first1=Stephen|author-link1=Stephen Crain|last2=Nakayama|first2=Mineharu|year=1987|title=Structure dependence in grammar formation|journal=Language|volume=63|issue=3|doi=10.2307/415004}}</ref> The empirical basis of poverty of the stimulus arguments has been challenged by [[Geoffrey Pullum]] and others, leading to back-and-forth debate in the [[language acquisition]] literature.<ref name="PullumScholz">{{cite journal|last1=Pullum|first1=Geoff|author-link1=Geoff Pullum|last2=Scholz|first2=Barbara|author-link2=Barbara Scholz|date=2002|title=Empirical assessment of stimulus poverty arguments|journal=The Linguistic Review|volume=18|issue=1–2|pages=9–50|doi=10.1515/tlir.19.1-2.9}}</ref><ref name="LegateYang">{{cite journal|last1=Legate|first1=Julie Anne|author-link1=Julie Anne Legate|last2=Yang|first2=Charles|author-link2=Charles Yang (linguist)|date=2002|title=Empirical re-assessment of stimulus poverty arguments|journal=The Linguistic Review|volume=18|issue=1–2|pages=151-162|doi=10.1515/tlir.19.1-2.9|url=https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~ycharles/papers/tlr-final.pdf}}</ref> Recent work has also suggested that some [[recurrent neural network]] architectures are able to learn hierarchical structure without an explicit constraint.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=McCoy|first1=R. Thomas|last2=Frank|first2=Robert|last3=Linzen|first3=Tal|year=2018 |title=Revisiting the poverty of the stimulus: hierarchical generalization without a hierarchical bias in recurrent neural networks|journal=Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society|pages=2093-2098|url=https://tallinzen.net/media/papers/mccoy_frank_linzen_2018_cogsci.pdf}}</ref>

Within generative grammar, there are a variety of theories about what universal grammar consists of. One notable hypothesis proposed by [[Hagit Borer]] holds that the fundamental syntactic operations are universal and that all variation arises from different [[feature (linguistics)|feature]]-specifications in the [[mental lexicon|lexicon]].<ref name="PesetskyUG"/><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Parameters|encyclopedia=The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism|year=2012|last= Gallego|first=Ángel|editor-last=Boeckx|editor-first=Cedric|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199549368.013.0023}}</ref> On the other hand, a strong hypothesis adopted in some variants of [[Optimality Theory]] holds that humans are born with a universal set of constraints, and that all variation arises from differences in how these constraints are ranked.<ref name="PesetskyUG"/><ref name ="McCarthyOT">{{cite book|last=McCarthy|first=John|year=1992|title=Doing optimality theory|publisher=Wiley|pages=1-3|isbn=978-1-4051-5136-8}}</ref> In a 2002 paper, [[Noam Chomsky]], [[Marc Hauser]] and [[W. Tecumseh Fitch]] proposed that universal grammar consists solely of the capacity for hierarchical phrase structure.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Hauser|first1=Marc|author-link1=Marc Hauser|last2=Chomsky|first2=Noam|author-link2=Noam Chomsky|last3=Fitch|first3=W. Tecumseh|author-link3=W. Tecumseh Fitch|year=2002|title=The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve|journal=Science|volume=298|pages=1569-1579|doi=10.1126/science.298.5598.1569}}</ref>

In day-to-day research, the notion that universal grammar exists motivates analyses in terms of general principles. As much as possible, facts about particular languages are derived from these general principles rather than from language-specific stipulations.<ref name ="WasowHandbookUniversality"/>