Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)

In this article I explore some of the arguments pertaining to word-structure used by the nativists to bolster the idea that language is part of our genetic endowment. The focal point of this analysis will centre primarily on the arguments put forth by Steven Pinker in his various works, regarding the morphological constraints supposedly imposed on language by our genetically hard-wired language faculty. Peter Gordon’s work on English compounding will also be critically evaluated. I contend that these allegedly innate constraints are wrongly construed as such, and can easily be explained without postulating a ‘language acquisition device’, as contingent cultural and environmental factors suffice when trying to explain the morphological phenomena Pinker believes can only be explained by the innate constraints of universal grammar. Hence, this strand of the nativist’s paradigm needs to be seriously re-evaluated as the original conclusions drawn by theorists like Pinker and Gordon are flawed. Introduction Linguistic nativism has been built on an edifice ranging from armchair philosophical argumentation to rigorous empirical data. There are numerous strands of nativism, but the focus here is on word-structure, and on how influential scholars like Steven Pinker have bolstered their case for linguistic innateness with reference to the phenomenon of how phenomena such as derivational and inflexional morphology are constrained by a genetically hard-wired language faculty. Peter Gordon (1986) argues along similar lines, citing research done on compound words, claiming that innate restrictions preclude the compounding of morphologically complex modifiers. Though this argument is only one strand of a particular theory with an increasingly parochial following, it is still a paradigm that is followed by the majority of linguistics scholars around the world. The concern here is that the mind-set that accompanies a theory of this kind can have negative consequences. In Grein and Weigand (2007), for example, Geoffrey Sampson explores some of the contentious upshots regarding a theory that tries to homogenise mankind, while ignoring the disparities. Language policy has also been informed the world over by this way of thinking. The belief is that if things as detailed as the rules pertaining to word-structure are part of a child’s innate machinery, then the educator’s role is merely to elicit this innate knowledge. This may have contributed to the rationale behind the failed outcomes-based education curriculum, which sees the teacher as a ‘facilitator’ who is not meant to teach, but merely to stimulate the expression of what is already innately there. In the pedagogical context of teaching English as a foreign language, adherents to the critical period hypothesis believe that teachers’ jobs only ought to entail helping their students/learners to ‘get by’ in the target language by aiming for a basic level of communicative competence. This aim is because educators are trained in a paradigm based on the belief that it is impossible to attain native speaker competence after a certain age – this is a biologically constrained phenomenon (cf. Lenneberg, [1967], on whose work Chomsky draws and which he explicitly endorses). The various strands of nativism alluded to here are used to inform policies that are damaging to the country; linguistic pedagogy draws on theoretical underpinnings in linguistics, 7 Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM) Vol.3, Issue 1, March 2013 and aside from the pedagogical implications of the theory, the nativist paradigm is taking linguistics as a whole away from its scientific standing in the academic world. Scholars such as Gordon (1986) and Pinker (1994; 1999) argue that phenomena such as compounding rules and the rules pertaining to morphological concatenation are not logically necessary, making their alleged ubiquity not only contingent, but in need of explanation. As mentioned, Gordon and Pinker explain the morphological restrictions found in their data by postulating a universal grammar that is part of our biological endowment. This article serves to re-evaluate this strand of linguistic innateness by pointing out the false predictions Pinker, Gordon (and others of their ilk) make with regard to morphology, and in light of that counterevidence, proffer an explanation that is more commonsensically commensurable. Hence, this article calls for a paradigmatic re-evaluation of linguistic nativism as a whole. Nativism should either be more answerable to conspicuous counter-evidence, or embrace a theory that is more amenable to the counter-evidence shown in conflicting data. The case for innate morphological constraints Pinker (1994) claims that the restrictions pertaining to the structure of words lend evidence to nativism in the sense that children’s minds seem to be designed with the logic of word-structure built in. His first example is that of a pattern whereby the derivational affix can attach only to roots, not to stems (i.e. roots with at least one affix attached). When we try to attach a derivational affix to a stem, we get something like Darwinsian, which could refer to the works of Charles Darwin and his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. However, this would sound ridiculous, not because it is illogical, but because there seems to be some sort of innate restriction on what affix can go where in a word. Later Pinker says that the restriction is that derivational suffixes cannot attach themselves to inflected roots. Pinker (1999) discusses headless compound words, and draws conclusions that provide further evidence for his case. An example of a headed compound would be “barman”, with the -man part constituting the head. Hence, a “barman” is a kind of man, namely one that works in bars. Headless compounds are words like “walkman”. Here, -man cannot be the head because a “walkman” is neither a kind of man, nor is it a kind of walk, even though the rightmost morpheme is usually defined as the head of a compound. Pinker (1994; 1999) explains that when a compound has a head, all the information regarding the head gets percolated up to the top-most node of the (morphological) tree, including the rules. When there is a headless compound, it is not clear where the information must come from, so the “percolation conduits” get blocked, and the default rule applies. That is the reason why we say “sabre-tooths” and “still-lifes”, not “sabre-teeth” and “still-lives” (Pinker, 1999; 1994). Other research cited by Pinker includes Peter Gordon’s experiment with three-year-olds, commonly referred to as the “Jabba experiment” (Gordon, 1986). He showed them a puppet and said: “This is Jabba. Jabba eats mice. Jabba is a ___?”, to which the children replied: “Mice-eater”. Thereafter, he asked: “Jabba also eats rats. Jabba is also a ___?”, to which they replied: “Rat eater”. Now, Gordon asks, why do they use the plural “mice”, but not the plural “rats”? Given that not a single child ever used the inflected plural as the initial constituent of the compound, this could indicate that there is some sort of rule that they are applying. It is unlikely that they were told that this is so, as Motherese contains few or no compounds, especially of that kind; it is also unlikely that someone would have told them not to include inflected words in their compounds. Why do they not generalise the rule: “Create a compound by putting two words together”? Why should there be a restriction of this sort? Nativists like Gordon and Pinker would explain it as 8 Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM) Vol.3, Issue 1, March 2013 follows: If there were an innate rule of this kind to facilitate language acquisition, the child would already ‘know’ some of the things that cannot be said, like including an inflected word in the first part of a compound word, which is obviously why they avoid constructions of this sort. Gordon concludes that these results were interesting because there seemed to be a consistent restriction in terms of what kind of word was allowed to be in the first part of a compound word. “Mice-eater”, for example, was an acceptable form to them; their answer to the first question would be just that. However, they never answered “rats-eater” to the second question; they always answered “rat-eater”. This is interesting, because if one goes solely on logic, then “ratseater” ought not to be precluded, since “mice” and “rats” are both plural forms, and both (equally) morphologically complex. The question, then, that Gordon posed is: What exactly makes forms like “rats-eater” ungrammatical? The reason he postulated was that the form “rats” is clearly derived from a rule: rat + -s. The word “mice”, however, is not; despite its morphological complexity, the word is learnt as a listeme, and therefore treated as such by the lexicon. Hence, “mice” in “mice-eater” is treated by the phonology as a simplex word. This, Gordon claims, must be an innate constraint placed on us by universal grammar, and we have fairly good reason to assume this, given that children as young as three consistently do it. There are problems with this claim, however, since there are languages that do exactly that which is claimed by Gordon to be universally excluded by an innate constraint. German, for example, makes use of regular plural forms in compounds. Consider the set of data in the table below:1 Table 1: English and German compound words English compound German translation 1) Mice-eater Mäusefresser 2) Rat-eater Rattenfresser 3) Butterfly-eater Schmetterling(s)fresser 4) Insect-eater Insektenfresser 5) Cat-eater Katzenfresser 6) Flower-eater Blumenfresser 7) People-eater Menschenfresser 8) Tree-eater Bäumefresser 9) Sheep-eater Schaf(s)fresser 10) Fish-eater Fischfresser In German, -e(n) represents the plural suffix. To clarify, Table 2 shows the singular/plural forms of the (German) words used in the data above: 1 Data gathered by me from a nat