LINGUIST List 10.927
Wed Jun 16 1999
Review: Lightfoot: The Development of Language.
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LANMBEAK, book review
Message 1: book review
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 10:02:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: LANMBEAK <LANMBEAKlivjm.ac.uk>
Subject: book review
Lightfoot, David (1999) The Development of Language: Acquisition,
Change and Evolution. Blackwell. 287 pages
Reviewed by Mike Beaken, School of Modern Languages, Liverpool JMU
Lightfoot's book attempts to combine 3 different elements - child
language, the history of English, and evolutionary biology. His
argument is that children develop internal grammars as a result of
being exposed to triggering experiences or 'cues'- small-scale
developments in adult's language, that lead them to construct a
slightly variant grammar. Such differences are contingent; based on
accidental factors that have no necessary historical explanation.
Change in languages may appear gradual; while changes in grammar are
abrupt, instances of punctuated equilibrium.
The primary subject matter in presenting this argument is the
historical development of the English language, with examples from the
history of other languages along the way. Yet, oddly enough, history is
rejected as an explanation of the changes described, in favour of
biology. The third element of the book is an attempt to describe
language changes in terms of the syntactic descriptive apparatus of UG,
combined with principles drawn from evolutionary biology.
Synopsis
After a review of the historical approach to language studies, Chapter
3 presents arguments for an innate language faculty, drawing on UG
theory. Chapter 4 presents the case for sudden, 'bumpy' change in
grammar, and outlines a model of grammatical change. Chapter 5 applies
these ideas to a particular development in the history of English -
the loss of Grammatical case distinctions in Old and Middle English,
examining some of the knock-on effects of a fairly simple but
fundamental change. Chapter 6 studies other grammatical developments,
such as V-to-I raising in English, seeking to explain wide-ranging
changes on the basis of simple cues that are picked up by the child's
I-language from the external E-language. Chapter 7 uses material from
previous work of Lightfoot's on the English verbal auxiliaries to
illustrate his model of sudden change in language systems. Chapters 8
and 9 present a general model of historical change, based on principles
of evolutionary biology, and finally rejecting 'historicism' as a basis
for the explanation of historical developments in languages.
Critical Evaluation
What Lightfoot is good at is the description of systematic language
change. It is a pleasure to follow him as he points out the elegant
patterns that occur in language, and the adjustments that take place in
one part of a language as changes occur in other parts. An example is
his chapter on the loss of abstract Case, where he traces shifts in the
system of morphological marking and case relationships in
'psych-verbs', and the occurrence of the split genitives that seem to
come out of nowhere in the Middle English period and then return there
(pp. 117-125). The section on V-to-I raising (a term for the way that
question formation changed from fronting the verb, as in "Visited you
London?" to the use of a modal or the particle do), provides him with an
opportunity to discuss the nature of the adult input that leads
children to adopt grammars with significant differences from those of
adults. His analysis shows that children need to use quite abstract
structural information to make their grammars work. He demonstrates that
in V-to-I raising, a number of syntactic changes occurred in step with
each other - the re-categorizing of the modals as instances of I (=
inflectional), rather than lexical; the development of periphrastic do
in negatives and interrogatives; and the loss of features of Verb-second
grammar. His conclusion - that periphrastic 'do' triggered the loss of
V-to-I raising, is the reverse of traditional accounts (p. 167).
His discussion of Warner's work on relatively recent changes in 'be',
'was', 'is' - suggesting that these forms ceased to be decomposable in
the 18th century, links together some apparently unrelated changes,
such as the loss of 'thou' and its accompanying verb forms, the loss of
main verb fronting, the change in category of modal verbs. In other
words, a much broader and wider reanalysis than that of the single
items 'is', 'was', 'be', was going on. 'Neither change affected 'be' in
particular, but their effect was to single out be and make it less like
a verb' p. 194. This example illustrates very nicely Lightfoot's notion
of 'contingent' change.
His account of Verb-second languages is a pleasure to read, as is his
entertaining discussion of the various lengths that grammars of
different languages have to go to in order to get round the condition
that traces must be overtly governed (pp. 243-9)
When it comes to the theoretical context of his model, however, this
book may please those who accept the Minimalist Program and UG, and
irritate those who do not. A writer who starts by stating his
assumptions, repeats his assumptions at every opportunity, and
concludes as if the case is proved, without presenting the logical
steps of the argument, is frustrating to read. For example, chapter 3
starts: "Grammars are biological entities represented in people's
brains"; chapter 4: "Grammars, then, are real biological entities
represented in individual mind/brains". Soon after the start of Chapter
5 you read "it is true that grammars are formed in a child in
accordance with the prescriptions of the linguistic genotype"; then,
chapter 6: "Grammars, in our perspective, are mental entities which
arise in the minds of individuals when they are exposed as children to
some triggering and shaping experience". At this point, you might be
forgiven for thinking, "Methinks the linguist doth protest too much."
Notice in these quotations how the transition from brain to mind is
manipulated. At times Lightfoot conflates mind and brain, as if they
were the same thing. Yet brain is a physical location in the body,
given at birth, and mind is definitely something that is formed in the
course of our social and intellectual development. We can change our
mind - but not our brain!
His approach to 'explanation' is revealed in a discussion (p. 97 ff.)
on why morphological doublets are rare in languages. (i.e. why are
there so few synonyms like Accounting and Accountancy). He explains
that the Blocking Effect or 'economy principle' that prevents
morphological doublets is a principle of UG. Of course, he goes on,
there are a few exceptions: "We might take these exceptions too
seriously, and weaken the economy principle to some kind of 'tendency'.
However, this would be a mistake: if the no-doublets prohibition is not
a principle, but only a tendency, it then loses its explanatory value.
If it is just a tendency it needs to be explained, and cannot itself be
invoked as an explanatory notion" (p. 98). This passage claims that UG
principles not only provide 'explanatory value', but, because they are
UG principles, they don't need to be explained themselves. Which makes
one wonder whether 'UG' is being used here as a convenient device
whereby you can appear to be explaining phenomena, without having to go
to the bother of providing any proof.
In the current pop-science style, Lightfoot brings in experts from all
sorts of scientific fields, using them not to deepen theoretical
understanding, but in an academic version of name dropping. So work
from mathematical chaos theory is brought in to justify his description
of language change as chaotic. Catastrophic change in language is
supported by a discussion of Thom's Catastrophe theory, of the meanings
of the word 'catastrophe' in English and French, and of work by Casti
on economic catastrophes (pp. 89-91).
Lightfoot seems to get uncomfortable when the word 'history' occurs,
which it must do quite often when you work in historical linguistics.
His review of linguistics in the last two centuries, and his criticism
of the 'historicist' bias within the subject is reasonable. On pp. 42-3
he discusses Marx's "very sensible approach [to history, which is]
quite compatible with what I shall sketch in late chapters for language
change", but then after two pages the discussion of history comes to a
sudden end with a reference to Francis Fukuyama (author of 'The End of
History'), and the dismissal of "gross categories like classes and
types of society" as a problem, though it is not made clear what kind
of problem these categories might be. Then the discussion reverts to
biology.
This book throws into relief the problem that UG presents for
discussions of language change, relying on the distinction between
I-language, the child's internal, or as Lightfoot describes it,
'biological' grammar, and E-language the language of the adult world
outside the child. Now, if grammarians are to concern themselves
primarily with I-language, how are they to understand the interaction
between E-language and I-language that is the source of language
change? For instance, how to account for an apparent increase in the
use of 'thou' forms in the early 17th Century, and their sudden loss at
the end of the Commonwealth period, other than by understanding the way
that debate about political questions in the lead-up to the English
Civil War came to be framed in biblical terms (as Hill 1993
demonstrates)? To Lightfoot, such 'explanation' is outside the scope of
grammarians, but can a theory of grammatical change be considered
adequate when it specifically excludes some factors that might account
for change?
The work of linguists (often described as sociolinguists, as if they
were not 'real' linguists), such as Labov and the Milroys, shows that
external factors can be related in a quite direct way to change and
variation in language. Labov's study of post-vocalic -r in New York,
for example, is a classic illustration of how language change can be
shown to have social and historical roots. Oddly enough, Lightfoot
labels Labov's work as 'psychological grammar'! p. 81
Clearly, the transmission of structural information from adult to child
plays an important part in language change, but to understand how
innovations spread through a community we have to look beyond the
individual I-language, to the influence of age-groups, occupational
groups and other such social groupings. The fact that children grow up
speaking differently from their parents supports Lightfoot's model, but
the fact that they grow up speaking exactly like other children of the
same age is a powerful argument for considering social factors.
When Lightfoot discusses language change in populations, he turns to
computer simulations (pp. 102-4), calling this 'population genetics'.
So, once again, evolutionary biology neatly dispenses with history and
society.
It is odd that in a book where child language is central, there should
be only one reference to a study of
child language (Crain and Thornton 1998). Of course, we cannot expect
Lightfoot to have access to information about the way children learnt
Old or Middle English, but contemporary child studies might or might
not have helped his
Like Chomsky, but in opposition to Pinker and Newmeyer, Lightfoot
considers that grammar is not a result of natural selection. The whole
of UG, or some elements of it, may, he concedes, have evolved as an
accidental side-effect of some other adaptive mutation. Indeed, he goes
further than Chomsky in suggesting that the language faculty may not be
unique, being just one of a number of mental abilities including the
number system and music all of which may have evolved together (p.
251).
We are left with a book that provides some illuminating and informative
accounts of changes in the English language, embedded in a lot of
speculations about biology and language faculties, which someone
looking back in twenty years time might recognize as the intellectual
packaging of the late twentieth century.
Bibliography
Hill, Christopher (1993) The English Bible and the 17th Century
Revolution. Allen Lane
Labov, W. (1966) The Social Stratification of English in New York City.
Washington D.C. Center for Applied Linguistics
Milroy, L (1987) Language and Social Networks. Blackwell
(The reviewer is a Principal Lecturer in ESOL at Liverpool JMU,
teaching subjects in English Language and Applied Linguistics. My
research interests include the Origins and Evolution of Language. I am
author of The Making of Language - 1996, Edinburgh University Press.)
Mike Beaken
School of Modern Languages
Liverpool JMU
m.a.beakenlivjm.ac.uk
44 151 231 3268