Title: Economy of Merge and Grammaticalization: Two steps in the Evolution of Language
1Economy of Merge and Grammaticalization Two
steps in the Evolution of Language
- Elly van Gelderen
- Arizona State University
- ellyvangelderen_at_asu.edu
2- What we know
- 50,000-150,000, e.g. FOXP2 120,000 bp
- art/tools
- how people/languages spread archeology and
language-gene connection - What can areal linguistics and reconstruction
tell us? - Nichols and WALS
- Greenberg
- What can (historical) syntax tell us?
3Early Migrations
4MtDNA and Migrations
5Areal Linguistics and Early Language?
- Nichols, dependent marking none in Africa,
Australia, etc
6World Atlas of Language Structures
7Dryers map on Case
8VO and OV
9Reconstruction and Early Language
- Greenberg/Ruhlen
- Campbell (1988)detrimental effect on the
field, misleads. - What works general picture of migrations but not
the actual shape of the language - Therefore we need to look at syntax for insight
into evolutionary stages
10Adam Smith, 1767
11Some hypotheses on Proto-Language
- Like Smith, Newmeyer suggests that
proto-languages may have been inflectional (2000
385, n 4) - Bickerton 1990
- fossils of proto-lg (aphasia/pidgin) no
morphology no PS - Jackendoff 2002
- Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch 2002
- FLB (CI-SM-Mechanisms for Recursion) FLN
(Recursion) - Chomsky 2005
- Merge "Great Leap Forward' in the evolution of
humans" - Piattelli-Palmarini Uriagereka 2005
- uF are a virus
12What is special?
13Crucial about language that can give insight into
evolutionary stages
- Narrow Syntax, PHON, SEM
- phrase structure and recursion merge
- External - Internal Merge
-
- Theta Discourse
- Proto-Language Morphology
14Three separate systems?
- symbolic
- thematic
- pragmatic(?)
-
- sounds/vocabulary
-
- merge and grammaticalization
15Several questions arise
- Do SEM and PHON together form the proto-language
or just SEM? Animals have both SEM and PHON but
have trouble relating the two. - The role of morphology?
- If FOXP2 is correct, it should be linked to
phonology, and then it (uF) should not be part of
NS. Jackendoff (2002 260) argues syntax and
morphology evolved independently, and Bobaljik
(2006) has agreement adding features after NS.
16What was missing in Proto-language?
17From Proto-LgTo Lg
- Merge
-
- Grammaticalization
- Principles of Merge Economy lead to
grammaticalization - Merge brought about the first step of linguistic
evolution but Principles connected with it were
responsible for further language evolution.
18A Derivation
-
- v
- v see
- ACC see javelinas EM
- uCase
- phi
19Ctd with EM and IM
- CP
- C TP
- T'
- T vP
- Pres they v'
- u3P uCase v VP
- Nom 3P Acc V D
- see it
- 3S
- Acc
20Principles connected with Merge
- a. Merge involves projection, hence headedness,
specifiers, and complements - b. The binary character of Merge results in
either - (i) (ii)
-
-
- c. There is c-command of the specifier over (the
Head and) the Complement, resulting in the
special nature of the specifier.
21Grammaticalization Specifier to Head and Late
Merge
- Specifier (je-il) to Head
- (1) Moi, jai pas vu ça.
- I, I havent seen that.
- (2) Et toi, tu aimes le rap?
- (3) on voit que lui il n'apprécie pas tellement
la politique - one sees that him he not-appreciates not so the
politics - and it can be seen that he doesnt appreciate
politics that way. (LTSN corpus, p. 15-466) - (4) Old French Modern French
- Emphatic Regular Emphatic Regular
- Subject tu zero toi tu
- (Oblique toi te toi te)
22Other instances of the Head Preference Principle
(HPP)
- Be a head, rather than a phrase/specifier
- Acquisition
- (1) those little things that you play with (Adam
410) - Lg Change
- (2) Relative pronoun that to complementizer
- Demonstrative to article
- Negative adverb to negation marker
- Adverb to aspect marker
- Adverb to complementizer (e.g. till)
23Second kind of GrammaticalizationLexical
Functional/Late Merge
24The preposition like as C
- Acquisition
- (1) like a cookie (Abe, 3.7)
- (2) no the monster crashed the planes down like
this like that (Abe, 3.7) - (3) Daddy do you teach like you do // like
how they do in your school? (Abe, 4.10) - Language change
- (4) People have never been down and out like they
are today - (5) So the other girl goes like Getting an
autograph is like, be brave and ask for it'. So I
got it. I just went up to him and he like. O.K
... - (6) 3on man is lyke out of his mynd (Dunbar
Poems, xix, 19). - Other cases of Late Merge
- Negative objects to negative markers
- modals v ASP T
- VP CP adverbials
- To P ASP M C
25After from P C
- (1) a. æfter him Stephanus feng to rice.
- after him (i.e. Pope Leo), Stephanus became
pope'. - (Chronicle A, anno 814 816)
- b. æfter þissum gefeohte cuom micel sumorlida.
- after this fight, there came a large
summer-force' - (Chronicle A, anno 871)
- (2) a. Æfter þysan com Thomas to Cantwarebyri
- After this, Thomas came to Canterbury'.
- (Chronicle A, anno 1070)
- b. æfter ðon uutedlice ic eftariso ic forlioro
vel iowih in galileam - after that, surely I arise-again I come before
you in Galilee' - (Lindisfarne Gospel, Matthew 26. 32).
26- (1) After that the king hadde brent the volum
- (Wyclyf 1382, taken over in Coverdale 1535 and
KJV 1611, from the OED). - (2) After that Raleigh had Intelligence that
Cobham had accused him, he endeavour'd to have
Intelligence from Cobham (HC, EModE2) - (3) Aftir he hadde take þe hooli Goost (c1360
Wyclif De Dot. Eccl. 22). - (4) After thei han slayn them (1366
Mandeville174). - Four stages
- PP PP 900 (Chronicle A) present
- PP (that) 950 (Lindisfarne) - 1600 (OED 1587)
- P that 1220 (Lambeth) - 1600 (OED 1611)
- C 1360 (Wycliff) - present
27Late Merge??
- Chomsky (1995 348) Late Merge accounts for the
presence of expletive subjects over raising the
principle is used by Fox (2002) to account for
Antecedent Contained Deletion and by Bhatt
Pancheva (2004) for the scope of degree clauses.
Both Roberts Roussou (2003) and van Gelderen
(2004) use it to account for grammaticalization. - Chomsky post 1995 IM EM, no difference
- It still seems salvageable (CF CS, Uriagereka
2006), but is it better to see things in terms of
features?
28From P C
- PP CP
- P DP C TP
- after after
- u-phi 3S (u-phi)
- ACC uACC
- In English, no phi, but Germanic C-agreement.
29From V AUX
- VP TP
- V DP T VP
- wolde uCASE would V DP
- ACC phi uphi
- uphi
30Feature Economy uF as perfection
- Economy of Features
- Minimize the interpretable features in the
derivation - a. Spec Head zero
- b. semantic interpretable uninterpretable (p
hi on N) (uphi on T)
31The Linguistic Cycle, e.g. the Negative Cycle
- XP
- Spec X'
- na wiht X YP
- not nt
-
- through LM
32Two other principles
- Null hypothesis of language acquisition
- A string is a word with lexical content
- (Faarlund 2005)
- Specifier Incorporation (SIP)
- When possible, be a specifier if you are a
phrase/adjunct - (van Gelderen 2005)
33Renewal at the end of the cycle
- Newmeyer 2006 notes that some grammaticalizations
from noun/verb to affix can take as little as
1000 years, and wonders how there can be anything
left to grammaticalize if this is the right
scenario. - Late Merge (Feature Economy), however, provides
an answer for what the source of the
replenishments are, namely lexical elements from
lower in the tree. There are also borrowings and
creative inventions through SIP. - The Economy Principles do not provide a reason
why certain languages/societies are more
conservative than others, e.g. why the split
infinitive has encountered such opposition by
prescriptivists, and has kept to from
grammaticalizing more.
34New specifiers
- (1) a laide de Dieu notre Seigneur, Qui vous
douit bonne vie et longue. - With the help of God, our Lord, who gives us
a good and long life' (Bekynton, from Rydén, p.
131). - (2) be the grace of God, who haue yow in kepyng
- by the grace of God, who keeps you' (Paston
Letters 410).
35Conclusions
- 1. Evolution as Grammaticalization
- The emergence of syntax could have followed the
path that current grammaticalization also follows
and one that children take as well. In
particular, Merge brings with it, a set of
relations and a set of (general cognitive)Economy
Principles, from which grammaticalization and
language change follow.
36 2 uF is normal
- Chomsky (2002 113) sees the semantic component
as expressing thematic as well as discourse
information. If thematic structure was already
present in proto-language (Bickerton 1990), the
evolutionary change of Merge made them
linguistic. What was added through
grammaticalization is the morphology, the second
layer of semantic information.
37Some References
- Bickerton, Derek 1990. Language and Species.
Chicago University of Chicago Press. - Carstairs-McCarthy, A., 1999. Origins of complex
language. OUP. - Chomsky, Noam 2002. On Nature and Language. CUP.
- Chomsky, Noam 2005. Three factors in Language
design. Linguistic Inquiry 36.1 1-22. - Chomsky, Noam 2006. Approaching UG from below.
ms. - Dryer, Matthew n.d. http//linguistics.buffalo.edu
/people/faculty/dryer. - Faarlund, Jan Terje 2005. talk/to appear in
EyÞórrson, Tolli 2007. - Forster, Peter http//www.mcdonald.cam.ac.uk/genet
ics/mtDNAworld/one.html. - Gelderen, Elly van 2004. Grammaticalization as
Economy. Benjamins. - Haspelmath, Martin et al. 2005. The World Atlas
of Language Structures - Hauser, Marc, Noam Chomsky, Tecumseh Fitch
2002. The Faculty of Language what is it, who
has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298
1569-79. - Kuczaj, S. 1976. -Ing, -s, -ed A study of the
acquisition of certain verb inflections.
University of Minnesota PhD.
38- Newmeyer, Frederick 2000. On the Reconstruction
of 'Proto-World' Word Order. In Chris Knight et
al (eds) The Evolutionary Emergence of Language,
372-388. CUP. - Newmeyer, Frederick 2006. What can
Grammaticalization tell us about the Origins of
Language?. Abstract, http//www.tech.plym.ac.uk/so
cce/evolang6/newmeyer.doc - Nichols, Johanna 1992. Linguistic diversity in
space and time. Univ of Chicago Press. - Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo Juan Uriagereka
2005. The Evolution of the Narrow Faculty of
Language. Lingue e Linguaggio, 1-52. - Smith, Adam. 1767. The theory of moral
sentiments. To which is added a dissertation on
the origin of languages. London 3rd ed. - Tauli, Valter 1958. The Structural Tendencies of
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