Economy of Merge and Grammaticalization: Two steps in the Evolution of Language

1
Economy 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?

3
Early Migrations
4
MtDNA and Migrations
5
Areal Linguistics and Early Language?

• Nichols, dependent marking none in Africa,
  Australia, etc

6
World Atlas of Language Structures
7
Dryers map on Case
8
VO and OV
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Reconstruction 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

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Adam Smith, 1767
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Some 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

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What is special?
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Crucial 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

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Three separate systems?

• symbolic
• thematic
• pragmatic(?)
• sounds/vocabulary
• merge and grammaticalization

• SEM
• PHON
• NS

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Several 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.

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What was missing in Proto-language?
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From 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.

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A Derivation

• v
• v see
• ACC see javelinas EM
• uCase
• phi

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Ctd 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

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Principles 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.

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Grammaticalization 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)

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Other 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)

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Second kind of GrammaticalizationLexical
Functional/Late Merge
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The 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

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After 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).

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• (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

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Late 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?

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From 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.

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From V AUX

• VP TP
• V DP T VP
• wolde uCASE would V DP
• ACC phi uphi
• uphi

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Feature 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)

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The Linguistic Cycle, e.g. the Negative Cycle

• XP
• Spec X'
• na wiht X YP
• not nt
• through LM

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Two 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)

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Renewal 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.

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New 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).

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Conclusions

• 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.

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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.

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Some 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
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• Hauser, Marc, Noam Chomsky, Tecumseh Fitch
  2002. The Faculty of Language what is it, who
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  1569-79.
• Kuczaj, S. 1976. -Ing, -s, -ed A study of the
  acquisition of certain verb inflections.
  University of Minnesota PhD.

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• 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
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• Tauli, Valter 1958. The Structural Tendencies of
  Languages. Helsinki.