scholarly journals EMPTY CATEGORIES IN TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-83
Author(s):  
Ruly Adha
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
Empty Category ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Empty Categories ◽  
Theory Of Language

There are three theories that are always developed in any study of language, namely theory of language structure, theory of language acquisition, and theory of language use. Among those three theories, theory of language structure is regarded as the most important one. It is assumed that if someone knows the structure of language, he/she can develop theories about how language is acquired and used. It makes Chomsky interested in developing the theory of language structure. Chomsky introduced a theory of grammar called Transformational Generative Grammar or Transformational Syntax. Transformational Syntax is a method of sentence fomation which applies some syntactic rules (or also called transformational rules). Transformational rules consist of three types, namely movement transformation, deletion transformation, and substitution transformation. When those transformational rules are applied in a sentence, they will leave empty categories. Empty categories can be in  the form of Complementizer (Comp), Trace, and PRO. This article will elaborate those empty categories; their appearance in the transformational rules; and the characteristics of each empty category.

Towards an Empirical Model of Language Acquisition

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
J. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
New School ◽  
Ambient Language ◽  
Acquisition Device ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Language Environment

Recent research in primary language acquisition can be subdivided into two schools. Under the influence of the highly mentalistic theory of language known as Transformational Generative Grammar, an innate language acquisition device was postulated, and the first school tried to establish what the structure of this device might be on the evidence of its output, i.e. early child grammars. Subsequently a new school arose which concentrated on mothers' speech to young children, providing empirical evidence against the nativist view that primary language acquisition occurs more or less independently of the ambient language environment. In the present article a language acquisition ‘device’ is suggested which differs in essential respects from the nativist-transformationalist model. Instead of an innately endowed ‘black box’ in the head of the child, the ‘device’ is seen as a two-way transmitting and receiving system existing between, and jointly operated by, the language learning child and society.

Unifying entrenched tokens and schematized types as routinized commonalities of linguistic experience

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Jörg Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Learning Mechanism ◽  
Cognitive Mechanism ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Input And Output ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Inherent Component

Abstract Proponents of usage-based models of language acquisition, language structure and language change widely agree that the repetition of specific tokens of words and strings in language use (e.g. give me a break) is conducive to their entrenchment and has a stabilizing and conserving effect, while the repetition of different instantiations of a variable type or pattern (give me a kiss, give me a smile, give me an amen) fosters schematicity and productivity (give me a(n) X). In this paper, I will argue that token-entrenchment and type-schematization are subserved by the same repetition-driven cognitive mechanism. Commonalities observed in linguistic input and output become routinized by repeated activation of patterns of associations. Token-entrenchment and type-schematization do not differ qualitatively but only quantitatively with regard to the variability of what is noticed as being similar. I argue that any form of routinization requires an abstraction over differences between episodes in terms of pronunciation, cotext and context. Therefore, schematization is an inherent component of routinization, but routinization is clearly the more fundamental cognitive process and learning mechanism. I argue that routinized patterns of associations can do the job of constructions in a more flexible, dynamic and parsimonious way and illustrate the potential of this idea with the help of data and insights gleaned from Schonefeld (2015).

scholarly journals Linguistic structures in social interaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana Mushin ◽  
Simona Pekarek Doehler
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Interactional Linguistics ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Introductory Paper ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Linguistic Structures

Abstract In this introductory paper to the inaugural volume of the journal Interactional Linguistics, we raise the question of what a theory of language might look like once we factor time into explanations of regularities in linguistic phenomena. We first present a historical overview that contextualises interactional approaches within the broader field of linguistics, and then focus on temporality as a key dimension of language use in interaction. By doing so, we discuss issues of emergence and its consequences for constituency and dependency, and of projection and its relation to action formation within and across languages. Based on video-recorded conversational data from French and Garrwa (Australian), we seek to illustrate how the discipline of linguistics can be enriched by attending to the temporal deployment of patterns of language use, and how this may in turn modify what we understand to be language structure.

Sentence First, Arguments Afterward

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Gleitman
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Developmental Psycholinguistics

This book collects the most significant papers written by Lila R. Gleitman, spanning 50 years of research on language and its acquisition. The book traces the roots of developmental psycholinguistics while presenting empirically driven arguments in favor of a rationalist theory of language acquisition. Gleitman’s work simultaneously shows how learners acquire knowledge richer than what can be found in the environment and how they use their input to acquire a specific language. The book also includes a foreword by Noam Chomsky and an introductory chapter by Jeffrey Lidz contextualizing Gleitman’s work in the transition from structuralism to mentalist architectures in linguistics.

scholarly journals Can Frequency Account for the Grammatical Choices of Children and Adults in Nominal Modification Contexts? Evidence from Elicited Production and Child-Directed Speech

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Emanuela Sanfelici ◽  
Petra Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Production Rate ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
High Production Rate ◽  
High Production ◽  
Acquisition Order

There is consensus that languages possess several grammatical variants satisfying the same conversational function. Nevertheless, it is a matter of debate which principles guide the adult speaker’s choice and the child’s acquisition order of these variants. Various proposals have suggested that frequency shapes adult language use and language acquisition. Taking the domain of nominal modification as its testing ground, this paper explores in two studies the role that frequency of structures plays for adults’ and children’s structural choices in German. In Study 1, 133 three- to six-year-old children and 21 adults were tested with an elicited production task prompting participants to identify an agent or a patient referent among a set of alternatives. Study 2 analyzed a corpus of child-directed speech to examine the frequency of passive relative clauses, which children, similar to adults, produced very often in Study 1. Importantly, passive relatives were found to be infrequent in the child input. These two results show that the high production rate of rare structures, such as passive relatives, is difficult to account for with frequency. We claim that the relation between frequency in natural speech and use of a given variant in a specific context is indirect: speakers may opt for the less grammatically complex computation rather than for the variant most frequently used in spontaneous speech.

scholarly journals Modularity and derivation in Functional Discourse Grammar

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Daniel GARCÍA VELASCO
Keyword(s):  
Central Issue ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
External Constraints ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Maximal Depth ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Different Levels

ABSTRACT Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a typologically-based theory of language structure which is organized in levels, layers and components. In this paper, I will claim that FDG is modular in Sadock’s sense, as it presents four independent levels of representation with their own linguistic primitives each. For modular grammars, the relation between the different levels (more technically, the nature of the interfaces) is a central issue. It will be shown that FDG is a top-down grammar which follows two basic principles in its dynamic implementation: Depth-first and Maximal depth. Together with external constraints, these principles conspire to create linguistic representations which are psychologically adequate and which allow levels to be circumvented if necessary, thus simplifying representations and creating mismatches among them.

Discourse

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Poesio
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Structure Theory ◽  
Hierarchy Theory ◽  
Discourse Representation Theory ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Discourse Model ◽  
Relational Coherence ◽  
Basic Facts ◽  
The Right ◽  
Intentional Structure

Discourse is the area of linguistics concerned with the aspects of language use that go beyond the sentence—and in particular, with the study of coherence and salience. In this chapter we present a few key theories of these phenomena. We distinguish between two main types of coherence: entity coherence, primarily established through anaphora; and relational coherence, expressed through connectives and other relational devices. Our discussion of anaphora and entity coherence covers the basic facts about anaphoric reference and introduces the dynamic approach to the semantics of anaphora implemented in theories such as Discourse Representation Theory, based on the notion of discourse model and its updates. With regards to relational coherence, we review some of the main claims about the relational structure of discourse—such as the claim that coherent discourses have a tree structure, or the right frontier hypothesis—and four main theoretical approaches: Rhetorical Structure Theory, Grosz and Sidner’s intentional structure theory, the inference-based approach developed by Hobbs and expanded in Segmented DRT, and the connective-based account. Finally we cover theories of local and global salience and its effects, including Gundel’s Activation Hierarchy theory and Grosz and Sidner’s theory of the local and global focus.

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