Editing Universal grammar (section)

== Views and assessments ==

Recent research has used [[recurrent neural network]] architectures (RNNs). McCoy et al. (2018) focused on a strong version of the [[poverty of the stimulus|poverty-of-the-stimulus]] argument, which claims that language learners require a hierarchical ''constraint'', although they report that a milder version, which only asserts that a hierarchical ''bias'' is necessary, is difficult to assess using RNNs because RNNs must possess some biases and the nature of these biases remains "currently poorly understood." They go on to acknowledge that while all the architectures they used had a bias toward linear order and the GRU-with-attention architecture was the only one that overcame this linear bias sufficiently to generalize hierarchically. "Humans certainly could have such an innate constraint."<ref name=revisit>{{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|arxiv=1802.09091 |url=https://tallinzen.net/media/papers/mccoy_frank_linzen_2018_cogsci.pdf}}</ref>{{rp|}}

The empirical basis of poverty-of-the-stimulus arguments has been challenged by [[Geoffrey Pullum]] and others, leading to a persistent 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> 

[[Language acquisition]] researcher Michael Ramscar has suggested that when children erroneously expect an ungrammatical form that then never occurs, the repeated failure of expectation serves as a form of implicit [[negative feedback]] that allows them to correct their errors over time, in the way that, for example, children correct grammar generalizations like ''goed'' to ''went'' through repetitive failure.<ref name=":1" /><ref name="Ramscar">{{cite journal |last1=Ramscar |first1=Michael |last2=Yarlett |first2=Daniel |year=2007 |title=Linguistic self-correction in the absence of feedback: A new approach to the logical problem of language acquisition |journal=Cognitive Science |volume=31 |issue=6 |pages=927–960 |doi=10.1080/03640210701703576 |pmid=21635323|citeseerx=10.1.1.501.4207 |s2cid=2277787 }}</ref>

In addition, it has been suggested that people learn about probabilistic patterns of word distribution in their language, rather than hard and fast rules (see [[Distributional hypothesis]]).<ref name="McDonald">{{cite journal |last1=McDonald |first1=Scott |last2=Ramscar |first2=Michael |year=2001 |title=Testing the distributional hypothesis: The influence of context on judgements of semantic similarity |journal=Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society |pages=611–616 |citeseerx=10.1.1.104.7535 }}</ref> For example, in [[English language|English]], children overgeneralize the past tense marker "-ed" and conjugate irregular verbs as if they were regular, producing forms like ''goed'' and ''eated'', and then correct this deviancy over time.<ref name=":1">{{cite book |last=Fernández |first=Eva M. |author2=Helen Smith Cairns |title=Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics |location=Chichester, West Sussex, England  |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-4051-9147-0 }}</ref> It has also been hypothesized that the poverty of the stimulus problem can be largely avoided if it is assumed that children employ ''similarity-based generalization'' strategies in language learning, i.e. generalizing about the usage of new words from similar words they already know how to use.<ref name="Yarlett">{{cite journal |last1=Yarlett |first1=Daniel G. |last2=Ramscar |first2=Michael J. A. |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140419012951/http://psych.stanford.edu/~michael/papers/Draft_Yarlett_Similarity.pdf|year=2008 |journal=draft|title=Language Learning Through Similarity-Based Generalization|citeseerx=10.1.1.393.7298 |publisher=[[Stanford University]]}}</ref>

[[Neurogenetics|Neurogeneticists]] [[Simon Fisher]] and [[Sonja Vernes]] observe that, with human language-skills being evidently unmatched elsewhere in the world's fauna, there have been several theories about one single [[mutation]] event occurring some time in the past in our nonspeaking ancestors, as argued by e.g. Chomsky (2011), i.e. some "lone spark that was sufficient to trigger the sudden appearance of language and culture." They characterize that notion as "romantic" and "inconsistent with the messy mappings between genetics and cognitive processes." According to Fisher & Vernes, the link between genes to grammar has not been consistently mapped by scientists. What has been established by research, they claim, relates primarily to [[Speech–language pathology|speech pathologies]]. The arising lack of certainty, they conclude, has provided an audience for "unconstrained speculations" that have fed the "myth" of "so-called grammar genes".<ref name="Fisher/Vernes">{{cite journal|last1=Fisher|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270692066_Genetics_and_the_Language_Sciences |first1=Simon E. |last2=Vernes |first2=Sonja C. |date=January 2015 |title=Genetics and the Language Sciences |journal= [[Annual Review of Linguistics]]|pages=289–310 |doi=10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-125024 |doi-access=free |volume=1|hdl=11858/00-001M-0000-0019-DA19-1 |hdl-access=free|access-date=1 May 2025 }}</ref>

Professor of [[Natural language processing|Natural Language Computing]] [[Geoffrey Sampson]] maintains that universal grammar theories are not [[falsifiable]] and are therefore [[pseudoscience|pseudoscientific]]. He argues that the grammatical "rules" linguists posit are simply [[post-hoc]] observations about existing languages, rather than predictions about what is possible in a language.<ref name=pseudo>{{cite book |last=Sampson |first=Geoffrey |year=2005 |title=The 'Language Instinct' Debate: Revised Edition |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-0-8264-7385-1}}</ref><ref name=sampap>{{cite web |url=https://www.grsampson.net/BLID.html |title=The 'Language Instinct' Debate  |last=Sampson|first=Geoffrey |author-link=Geoffrey Sampson  |date=30 August 2022|website=GRSampson.net |access-date=April 27, 2025|quote=[My book] ends by posing the question 'How could such poor arguments have passed muster for so long?'}}</ref><ref name="Cipriani">{{cite journal | last1 = Cipriani | first1 = Enrico| year = 2015 | title = The generative grammar between philosophy and science| journal = European Journal of Literature and Linguistics | volume = 4| pages = 12–16}}</ref> Sampson claims that every one of the "poor" arguments used to justify the language-instinct claim is wrong. He writes that "either the logic is fallacious, or the factual data are incorrect (or, sometimes, both)," and the "evidence points the other way." Children are good at learning languages, because people are good at learning anything that life throws at us — not because we have fixed structures of knowledge built-in.<ref name=pseudo/> Similarly, professor of cognitive science [[Jeffrey Elman]] argues that the unlearnability of languages ostensibly assumed by universal grammar is based on a too-strict, "worst-case" model of grammar, which is not in keeping with any actual grammar. 

Linguist [[James Hurford]], in his article "Nativist and Functional Explanations in Language Acquisition,"<ref name=hurf/> offers the major differences between the glossogenetic and the [[phylogenetic]] mechanisms. He states that, "Deep aspects of the form of language are not likely to be readily identifiable with obvious specific uses, and one cannot suppose that it will be possible to attribute them directly to the recurring short-term needs of successive generations in a community. Here, nativist explanations for aspects of the form of language, appealing to an innate LAD, seem appropriate. But use or function can also be appealed to on the evolutionary timescale, to attempt to explain the structure of the LAD itself." For Hurford, biological [[mutation]]s plus functional considerations constitute the ''[[explanans]]'', while the LAD itself constitutes the ''[[explanandum]]''. The LAD is part of the species' heredity, the result of mutations over a long period, he states. But, while he agrees with Chomsky that the mechanism of grammaticisation is located in "the Chomskyan LAD" and that Chomsly is "entirely right in emphasising that a language (E-language) is an artifact resulting from the interplay of many factors," he states that this artifact should be of great interest and systematic study, and can affect grammatical competence, i.e. "I-language."<ref name=hurf>{{cite book |last=Hurford|first= James R.|author-link=James Hurford |chapter=Nativist and Functional Explanations in Language Acquisition |editor=I. M. Roca |title=Logical Issues in Language Acquisition |publisher=Foris Publications |location=[[Dordrecht]], [[Holland]]; [[Providence, Rhode Island]]|year=1995 |page=88 |chapter-url=http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~jim/rocapaper.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~jim/rocapaper.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |access-date=June 10, 2014}}</ref>

[[Morten H. Christiansen]], professor of Psychology, and Nick Chater, professor of Psychology and Language Sciences, have argued that "a biologically determined UG is not evolutionarily viable." As the processes of language change are much more rapid than processes of genetic change, they state, language constitutes a "moving target" both over time and across different human populations, and, hence, cannot provide a stable environment to which language genes could have adapted. In following Darwin, they view language as a complex and interdependent "organism," which evolves under selectional pressures from human learning and processing mechanisms, so that "apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may result from general learning and processing biases deriving from the structure of thought processes, perceptuo-motor factors, cognitive limitations, and pragmatics".<ref name=chrimort>{{cite journal |last1=Christiansen|first1=Morten H.|last2=Chater|first2=Nick|date=January 1985|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23291366_Language_as_Shaped_by_the_Brain |title=Language as Shaped by the Brain |journal=[[Behavioral and Brain Sciences]]|volume=31|issue=5 |pages=489-508|doi=10.1017/S0140525X08004998|access-date=3 May 2025}}</ref> Professor of linguistics [[Norbert Hornstein]] countered polemically that Christiansen and Chater appear "to have no idea what [[generative grammar]] [theory] is," and "especially, but not uniquely, about the Chomsky program." Hornstein points out that all "grammatically informed psycho-linguistic works done today or before" understand that generative/universal grammar capacities are but one factor among others needed to explain real-time acquisition." Christiansen and Chater's observation that "language ''use'' involves multiple interacting variables" [italics in the original] is, essentially, a [[truism]]. It is nothing new, he argues, to state that "much more than a competence theory will be required" to  figure out how language is deployed, acquired, produced, or parsed. The position, he concludes, that universal grammar properties are just "probabilistic generalizations over available linguistic inputs" belongs to the "traditional" and "debunked" view  held by [[associationists]] and [[structuralists]] many decades in the past.<ref name=horn>{{cite web |url=https://facultyoflanguage.blogspot.com/2017/08/language-vs-linguistics-again-case-of.html |title=Language vs linguistics, again; the case of Christiansen and Chater|last=Hornstein|first=Norbert |author-link=Norbert Hornstein|publisher=[[University of Maryland, College Park|University of Maryland]]|date=21 August 2017 |website=Faculty of Language |access-date=3 May 2025}}</ref>

In the same vein, professor of linguistics [[Nicholas Evans (linguist)|Nicholas Evans]] and prfessor of psycholinguistics Stephen C. Levinson observe<ref name=evans>{{Cite journal|url=https://www.umass.edu/preferen/You%20Must%20Read%20This/Evans-Levinson%20BBS%202009.pdf| doi = 10.1017/S0140525X0999094X| pmid = 19857320| volume = 32| issue = 5| pages = 429–492| last1 = Evans| first1 = Nicholas|authorlink1= Nicholas Evans (linguist)|last2=Levinson|first2=Stephen C.| title = The Myth of Language Universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science| journal = [[Behavioral and Brain Sciences]]| year = 2009| doi-access = free| hdl = 11858/00-001M-0000-0012-C29E-4| hdl-access = free|access-date=3 May 2025}}</ref> that Chomsky’s notion of a Universal Grammar has been mistaken for a set of substantial research findings about what all languages have in common, while, it is, "in fact," the programmatic label for "whatever it turns out to be that all children bring to learning a language." For substantial findings about universals across languages, they argue,  one must turn to the field of [[linguistic typology]], which bares a "bewildering range of diverse languages" and in which "generalizations are really quite hard to extract." Chomsky’s actual views, combining, as they claim, philosophical and mathematical approaches to structure with claims about the innate endowment for language, have been "hugely influential in the [[cognitive science]]s.<ref name=evans/>{{rp|430}}

Wolfram Hinzen, in his work ''The philosophical significance of Universal Grammar''<ref name="Hinzen">{{cite journal |last=Hinzen |first=Wolfram |title=The philosophical significance of Universal Grammar |journal=Language Sciences |volume=34|url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0388000112000253 |issue=5 |date=September 2012 |pages=635–649 |doi=10.1016/j.langsci.2012.03.005 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> seeks to re-establish the [[epistemological]] significance of grammar and addresses the three main current objections to [[Descartes|Cartesian]] universal grammar, i.e. that it has no coherent formulation, it cannot have evolved by standard, accepted [[Neo-Darwinism|neo-Darwinian]] evolutionary principles, and it goes against the variation extant at all levels of linguistic organization, which lies at the heart of human faculty of language.

In the domain of field research, [[Daniel Everett]] has claimed that the [[Pirahã language]] is a counterexample to the basic tenets of universal grammar because it lacks [[Dependent clause|clausal embedding]]. According to Everett, this trait results from Pirahã culture emphasizing present-moment concrete matters.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Everett |first=Daniel L.|title=Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã: Another Look at the Design Features of Human Language |journal=Current Anthropology |volume=46 |issue=4 |date=August–October 2005 |pages=621–646 |url=http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/Everett.CA.Piraha.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/Everett.CA.Piraha.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |doi=10.1086/431525|hdl=2066/41103 |s2cid=2223235 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Nevins et al. (2007) have responded that Pirahã does, in fact, have clausal embedding, and that, even if it did not, this would be irrelevant to current theories of universal grammar. They addressed each of Everett's claims and, using Everett's "rich material" data, claim to have found no evidence of a causal relation between culture and grammatical structure. Pirahã grammar, they concluded, presents no unusual challenge, much less the "severe" one claimed by Everett, to the notion of a universal grammar.<ref>{{cite web |last1= Nevins|first1=Andrew|last2=Pesetsky|first2=David |last3=Rodrigues|first3=Cilene |url=https://cognitionandculture.net/wp-content/uploads/nevinsEtAl_07_Piraha-Exce.pdf|title=Pirahã Exceptionality: a Reassessment|date=March 8, 2007|website=International Cognition & Culture Institute|access-date=May 1, 2025}}</ref>