Language Is Instinct: a New Paradigm in Linguistics

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LANGUAGE IS INSTINCT: A NEW PARADIGM IN LINGUISTICS

A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph

by ALAN BELK

In partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts September, 1998

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Alan Belk Advisor: University of Guelph 1998 Professor Michael Ruse

If we can idencify a science, descnbe its paradigm, anomalies and research questions, recognize a cnsis or impending crisis and a cornpeting paradigm, then a revolution as described by Thomas Kuhn (1970) is taking place. Steven Pinker's book The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creares Language is, according to its Preface, intended to explain the current state of knowledge about language. 1 examine Pinker's daims and arguments that language is instinciive using Kuhn's ideas as a hmework and show that there is a shift to a new paradigm in Linguistics, together with a new set of anomalies and research questions that are engendered by the new paradigm, and thus show that a revolution is occurring. To my friends: Isobel Heathcote, for encouraging me to start;

Michael Ruse, for encouraging me to finish; David Martens,

for the bits in between; and to my daughter Zoë (who Iistened

to me talk about it so rnuch) and my son Edward.

"'ïime flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." Pinker (1994) p. 153 Section 1 The Language Instinct 2

Section 2 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 4

Section 3 Nagel's Reduction 7

3.1 Reduction and Emergence 7

3.2 Kuhn or Nagel? 12

Section 4 The Development of Linguistics in North Amenca 13

Section 5 The Development of Linguisucs in Europe 19 Section 6 The Standard Social Science Mode1 23

6.1 What are the Social Sciences? 23

6.2 Tooby and Cosmides 24

Section 7 Conclusion 28

CHAPTER 3 TkEE LANGUAGE LNS7ZNCT 30

Section 1 Introduction 30

Section 2 The Claim That Language 1s An Instinct 31

2.1 Language Complexity 35

2.2 Language Creation 37

2.3 Sign Languages 38 2.4 Teaching Children Language 39

2.5 What if Something Goes Wrong? 40

2.6 Thinking (Mentalese) 43

2.7 Do Words Detennine Thougbts? 44

2.8 How the Mind Works 46 2.9 The Turing Machine-Linking Language and Thought- 47

2-10 Conclusion 50

Section 3 Grammar and Lexicon 51 3.1 The Lexicon 52 3.2 The Grammar 54

3.3 Conclusion 57

Setion 4 The Physical Basis of Language 58

4.1 The Sound of Language (Connecting Language and Speech) 58

4.2 Sentences-Decoding the Message 61

4.3 Why Do We Speak Different Languages? 64

4.4 Conclusion 67

Section S Evolution and the Genetic Basis of Language 68

Section 6 The Relationship Between Language and the Mind 72

CHAPTER 4 THE REVOLUTION 73

Section 1 The Relationship between SSSM and Language is Instinct_ 73

Section 2 The Relationship with Darwinism 76

Setion 3 Who Wi11 Win the Revolution? 78

Section 4 Conclusion 79

BIBLIOGRAPHY 82

iii LIST OF WLES

Table 1. The tenable positions for the various combinations of general intellect and apparent language ability 42 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In his book The Larzguage Instinct, Steven Pinker makes a case that human language is an instinct, a biological drive chat we cannot subdue or control. This view opposes the established view that language is a culnirally determined artifact-what Pinker calls "the Standard Social Science Model" of language. (For an illustration that this view is still current, and of the research it governs, see for example Smillie (1995)). My thesis is chat we are experiencing a scientific revolution, as described by Thomas Kuhn (1970), in the field of linguistics.

In the next chapter I will prepare the ground by giving a brkf ove~ewof The Language Instinct in order to outline the position Pinker is taking. I will outline Thomas Kuhn's The Stmctzue of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn (1970)) which provides the framework for my thesis that we are undergoing a revolution in our understanding of language, and sumrnarise Ernest Nagel's views on the reduction of scientific theories to provide a contrasting view of how science changes. 1 will review the development of the field of linguistics over the last hundred years or so in order to demonstrate that it can be considered a science and thus be suitable for analysis in terms of Kuhn's (and Nagel's) ideas. And in order to show how Pinker's claim that language is an instinct differs from established views of language 1 will describe the Standard Social Science Model.

In the third chapter 1 will analyze The Language Instinct in some detail to show how the ideas Pinker puts forward represent another view of the world with respect to language. That is, Pinker's view is wholly incommensurable with the Standard Social Science Model. In my final chapter 1 will show how a revolution is occumng to justify my thesis that there is a scientific revolution in progress which will change the way we understand human language. CWAPTER 2 BACKGROUND

Section 1 The L~nguugeInstinct

Pinker (1995) claims that, as a species, we possess a "remarkable abiliqt' which allows us "to shape events in each other's brains with exquisite precision" (p. 15); and that language is an ability such that "simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other's minds" (p. 15). Language is a "preeminent trait" of the human species. And the prevailing scienrific view of language has entered the general consciousness, so that

Most educated people already have opinions about language. They know that it is man's most important cultural invention, the quintessenad example of his capacity to use syrnbols, and a biologicdly unprecedented event irrevocabIy separating him from other animais. They know that language pervades thought, with different languages causing their speakers to con- sme reality in different ways. They know that children learn to talk from role modeis and caregivers. They know that gm~aticalsophistication used to be nurntred in the schools, but sagging educational standards and the debasements of popular culture have led to a frightening deciine in the ability of the average person to construct a grammatical sentence. They also know that Engiish is a zarq logicdemg tongue, in which one drives on a parkway and parks on a drivewax pIays at a recital and reates at a pIay @p. 17-18)

However:

.. . every one of these cornmon opinions is wrong! And they are dl wrong for a single reason, Language is not a cultural arafact that we learn the way we lean to teii tirne or how the Federal Government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological rnakeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without con- scious effort or formai instruction, is depioyed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilines to process information or behave inteliigently (P. 18)

These daims announce that Pinker has a new way of looking at language. In his view it is a biological instinct as are the abilities to walk and to copulate: it is sornething we cannot help but do, that we do in spite of ourselves. It is something that is expressed at a parcicular stage in our development from conception to adulthood and death. It is an adaptive trait. Its use does not denote or indicate other abilities. And it serves not to describe the world, nor to exchange information, but to communicate intentionality (Intentionality, as described by Searle (1994) is the property of the mind "by which it is directed at, about, or of objects and states of affairs in the world" (emphasis in original)):

Mental states have i~tn'nsicUitentionality, materiai objem in the world that are used to represent something have derived intentionality. The most important fonn of derived intentionaliry is in Ianguage and there is a special

name in English for this form of intentionality. It is cailed 'meaning' in one of the many senses of that word. (p. 386: emphasis in originai)

If Pinker's claims are accepted, then we are in some stage of a scientific revolution as defined and described by Kuhn (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a descriptive work, and shows that there are histoncally repeative patterns in the human activity called science which may therefore be used as predictive of future turns of events. In this thesis 1 shall analyze The Language Instinct to see how suong Pinker's claims are (in order to assess the prospects of their acceptance), and place it within Kuhn's hmework (as far as is practicable: Kuhn draws his conclusions from a study of the history of science, and this revolution, if such it be, is not yet complete), to show that we are justified in accepting that Pinker provides us with a new way of viewing the world, or, as Kuhn more strongly purs it, that we are living in a new world. Setion 2 The Structure of Scientifi Revolutions

I include this outline of Kuhn (1970) to idenafy the key concepts which I will use in my claim that The Language Instinct is part of a revolution in progress. Since Kuhn's work was originally published in 1962 it has been subjected to a lot of criticism-for example, ambiguity in the use of the word "paradigm" (Kuhn acknowledges that perhaps 22 different usages have been detected (p. 181))-but it nonetheless provides a valid framework for describing how change, and al1 that implies, occurs in science. Kuhn is, by and large, descriptive rather than normative, so 1 will apply his concepts accordingly

Kuhn uses several key concepts. First there is the notion (or notions, since the word is used in more than one sense by Kuhn) of a paradigm. This is 'khat the members of a scientific cornmunity share" (p. 176) and comprises not only the laws and results of the science under consideration but the methodologies, the aims, the conventions, the research questions and the unsolved problems of the science. One important aspect of the paradigm is that it is exernplary for study and research and that research questions are expected to be answered within the constraints of the paradigm. Most important is Kuhn's assertion that the research questions are intended to support the paradigm, not to extend nor to question it.

Second, there is the scientific community: the scientists, students, observers and philosophers who share and strive to maintain the paradigm. Kuhn acknowledges the apparent circularity in the definitions of paradigm and community and points out that these are essentially in a dynamic relationship, and that the incessant changing of paradigm and community avoids the circuiarity. The community changes as scientists are trained and die; the paradigm changes as new observations are made. However the change is such that the paradigm will be strengthened since it is used as an exemplar. What is particularly important is that the community is part of the force to conform to the paradigm-if you don't conform, you're out. The scientific community practices nomal science-fact gathering, observation, research, theory development, and the amculaaon of the obtaining paradigm. In part the circularity exists because "paradigm" is being used in two senses: first, it is a single statement which encapsulates the science in question-the universe srarted with a big bang, the eanh is the centre of the universe-and second, it is the whole science, all the results, experiments and observations which combine to be the science itself. In western eurocentric culture science has become very much institutionalised, in universities, the military, and trans-national corporations and this in itself puts great pressure on scientists to conform.

Third, there are anomalies. These are results that for whatever reason do not fit the established paradigm; they may be accepted as anomalies, the paradigm may be modified to explain hem, or they rnay form part of the set of unsolved problems not to be addressed by the science. What is important about them is that they are recognized as such but do not in thernselves force a change in the paradigm. (As an illustration of an anomaly, the classic expenment of light obsenred passing through one dit suggests photons behave as particles, whereas light hom a single source passing through two slits suggests they behave as waves; since nothing could be both wave and particle, this was a very real anomaly.)

Fourth, what these ideas lead to when taken together is the notion of a world view and, most importantly, science is done with an inbuilt constraint to conforrn to the world view. Thus the process of educating and training a scientist ensures that the goal of the scientist is to solve problems in conformity with the obtaining paradigm; one aspect of this is peer recognition and review, for example; another is the commonality of textbooks, which in essence give the received view of the history, established results and wolved problems of the science. As a result, science becomes immured against paradigrnatic change. But fifth, mises occur. Perhaps scientific discoveries result in more anomalies than the paradigm can bear; perhaps another paradigm (from a separate science, or branch of the science) explains anomalies in a way that the existing paradigm cannot.

Sixth, revolution occurs when a new paradigm, through crisis, overthrows an existing paradigm. The choice of the revolutionary metaphor is not accidental, and it suggests a method of change that is violent (metapho~caily),change that is perhaps unexpected, change that originates from outside the establishment, change that the establishment will do whatever it can to prevent in order to maintain the status quo, and change which forces everyone involved to take a position: there is no neutrality in a revolution.

Seventh, there is the notion of uicornmensurability. In short, the language and terminologies of two paradigms acquire such different meanings that they become as two distinct tongues, each intelligible only to those within the community of the particular paradigm.

Finally, it is important to bear in mind that Kuhn is discussing a human activity which is ongoing and dynamic, and that the revolution does not take place in an instant. It is not neat and tidy, and may not have an easiiy discernable start or end. The textbooks have to be rewritten, the die-hard adherents of the old paradigm have to die off, the new anomalies have to be recognized and the new (accepted) research questions need to be defined, funding has to be arranged, and the paradigm has to enter the coIlective consciousness of the non-scientific community (this point is not explicitly made by Kuhn, but the research questions of science are in practice determined in conjunction with the wider non-scientific comrnuni~,usually through financial allocations: for instance, do we investigate AIDS or the ebola virus? is detennined at Ieast in part by non-scientific considerations) . Kuhn's view is that the result of the revolution is a new world view that has replaced its predecessor. There is no (expücit or impücit) claim that the old paradigm was wrong, or that the new one is right or better (save that these suggestions could be considered inherent in the metaphor of revolution), merely that we now have a different understanding of the world (Kuhn claims that the world has changed-"we may want to Say that after a revolution scientisrs are responding to a different world" (p. 111)). Clearly Kuhn does not hold the view that science is in any way realist (an issue that is outside the scope of this thesis, although many in the scientific community hold that it is-something I will touch upon in my review of the Standard Social Science Model below).

There is one thing that Kuhn does not fully address. He acknowledges that coexistent paradigms may allow different views of the same phenomenon (his illustration is of the different views of an atom held by chemist and physicist); however, he does not discuss in depth any hierarchical relationships between paradigrns. To illustrate what I mean, mechanics is a branch of physics, so any paradigm of physics which overarches the paradigrns of mechanics must be assumed by and not conuadicted by any paradigm of mechanics (if this were not the case, we would not be examining mechanics but physics itself). Likewise, no paradigm of evolutionary biology, genetics, adaptation, paleontology.. . must contradict Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection; for in such a case we would be discussing the DaMnnian paradigrn. This is not to Say that the Daminian paradigm is in anyway sacrosanct but ro recognize that it is larger and more hindamental than the paradigms of biology, genedcs, etc., which deal with aspects of life, since it deals with life as a whole

Section 3 Nagel's Reduction

3.1 Reduction and Emergence

Kuhn's view of change in science was itself revolutionary when it appeared. It was in contrast to the established view of science and scientific change which was that science told the tmth about the universe, and that scientific change was ordered and above al1 logical. Kuhn's science is a social construction, and is opposed to the realism that obtained at the the. To contrast Kuhn's approach E will use Ernest Nagel's ideas on scientific change as an illustration of the normative view of science and scientific theories.

Nagel takes the view that science is in the main hypothetico-deductive; that is, there are a number of axiomatic statements which form the unproved/unprovable (within the science in question) foundations of the science, and al1 the results of the science are logically deducible fiom these axioms; experiment serves to verify the results:

.. . the distinctive aim of science is to provide systematic and responsibly supported explanations. (Nage1 1961, p. 15)

In short, it provides answers to questions of "Why?" Nagei identifies three other types of scientific explanation: probabilistic, used in a statistical sense; teleological or functional, in the sense that one thing may be explained as part of another but without implying design; and genetic in the sense of one thing generating another rather than the specific biological hereditary sense. The hypothetico-deductive mode1 is favoured and seems to be tacitly assumed in most of his writing on reduction.

A science contains four classes of statements: theoretical postdates, derived theorems and associated definirions; experimental laws; observation statements; and borrowed laws (Nagel's illustration is that in using a telescope to make observations regarding gravity-such as the bending of light waves fiom distant objects-we are borrowing the laws of Newtonian optics as used in the construction of the telescope). A science also has a set of descriptive statements which may concern observed or theoretical entities, and may be defined in language which has particular meaning within the science in question. In contrast to Kuhn, Nage1 is a realist and sees science as a rational continuous activity which provides an increasingly accurate way of understanding the way univene is. Thus his emphasis in his anaiysis of scientific theories is on the iogic of the theory and the relatedness of the statements of the theos., not the relatedness of the objects and phenornena represented by the theory which are in his view unchanging. 1 do not want to get into a Kuhn versus Nage1 debate except to Say that they have opposing views as to the way science happens-revolutions, revisionism and a change in the worId opposed to and unbroken increasing accumulation of knowledge starting with Aristotle-but Nage1 offers sornething that Kuhn does not satisfactorily address, an analysis of relationships between theories. In this section 1 wiIl briefly outline Nagel's ideas on the reduction of theories and in my conclusion (chapter 4) I wiii use them to explore the relationships between Naturalism, the Darwinian paradigm, and the state of Linguistics.

Nagel notes that in the history of science, theones have been absorbed by, or incorporated into, other theories. He calls this process reduction, and attempts to idenu@ conditions for reduction. First, a theory may be seen to be a part of some Iarger theory; thus Galileo's work on free-falling bodies was absorbed into Newtonian rnechanics and gravitational theory. Nagel claims this is a normal part of the development of science, and in his later work (1979) refers to it as "homogeneous" reduction. Second, there is the reduction of a (brandi of) science into an ostensibly different @ranch of) science ("inhomogeneous" reduction). Nage1 illustrates this with the incorporation of thermodynarnics into rnechanics. Thermodynamics used concepts (weight, volume) from mechanics but also had its own distinct concepts (temperature, heat, entropy) and assumptions which are not evidently corollaries of any principles of mechanics. Through an analysis of thermodynamics based on kinetic properties of gases (i.e. ideas fkom mechanics) together with some sort of linking postdate, thermodynamics can be shown to be a subscience of mechanics. In the case of homogeneous reduction Nagel sees little problem since the reduction is litele more than an extension of the logic of one science to include the logic of the second science. Essentiallx the two sciences involved in a reduction may have overlapping descriptive statements which may or may not have common meaning in both sciences. Then a (secondary) science is reducibIe to a (primary) science when the laws and theories of the secondary science can be shown to be logical consequences of the laws of the primary science (the Galileo example). However, if there are laws/ statements in the secondary science which do not occur in the primary science, we need to introduce assumptions which relate the terms of the secondaty science m the terms of the primary science in a way such that the statements of the results of the secondary science become logical consequences of the statements of the results of the primary science, so that the secondary science is reducible to the primary science. In this inhomogeneous reduction it is the nature of the bndging statements or "bridge laws", which may be logical connections, conventions or factual/empirical (and these are not necessarily exclusive) statements, which gives concem.

Nage1 acknowledges that in the scientific process of deriving laws from theories there is simplification. The problem with inhomogeneous reductions is the introduction of new terms to deal with cases in which the theory to be reduced has terms which have no equivalent in the theory to which it will be reduced. He discusses two types of "bridge laws": the first includes terms relating statements of the two theories, the second includes statements asserting that nonequivalent (in a logical sense) staternents refer to the same entities. The point about bridge laws is that they are empirical statements. He acknowledges the objection of Feyerabend that any two theories (since observation is always theory dependent) are essentially incommensurable. This gets to the root of the difference between Nage1 and Kuhn: if it is logically true that two theories are incommensurable, then there can be no Iogical way of connecting them, so how do we determine (in the case of two competing theones) which to accept? Nagel argues that it is simply (logicaily) not the case that there are no theory neunal tenns (Le. the fact that ail terms in theories are theory dependent does not imply the non-existence of terms that are not theory-dependent). In short, he denies incommensurability on logical grounds. This seems to be because deep down he is some sort of realist, holding that science represents the universe as it is and thus changes in theories are changes in our understanding: the univene does not change. As we have seen, for Kuhn and those who take the relativist position, the world does change when one theory becomes accepted over another.

Nagel also identifies "nonformai" conditions for, or consequences of, reduction. It may be that the laws of the secondary science become integrated with the laws of the primary science (rather than being logicaily deducible from them). Nagel observes that the two sciences must be reasonably compatible in their stage of development: there would seem to be littie point in reducing biology to quantum mechanics (assuming such to be possible) since the science of biology is progressing very well in its own right, and probably (in Nagel's terms) produces more results with its existing structure than it would if reduced. Again Nage1 emphasizes that in reducing one science to another it is the statements of the science that are being reduced, not the properties or natures of the subjects of obsemation of the science: in changing the tems of reference, we change the way the nature of things is understood, not the nature of the things themselves.

Nage1 also discusses "emergence" of which he gives two characterizations. The first is that if there is a complex object possessing a propeq which it is impossible to predict even with hill knowledge of the properties of its component objects, then such a property is an emergent propew An example is that it is impossible to predict some of the properties of water-for example its translucency-even with full knowledge of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. This is a claim about the theory under consideration, not about the object, and the claim stands in relation to the theory used to descnbe the object. The second characterization is of c'evolutionary emergence": it is the notion that at any tirne, the present state of the world may be compared with some previous state and if there exist "qualities, smctures, and modes of behaviour" that did not exist previously, then emergent evolution has taken place. In Nagel's words, it is "a doctrine of unceasing 'crea tive novelty'."

3.2 Kuhn or Nagel?

These then are the major differences between Kuhn and Nagel. For Kuhn, science is a human activity which he views pragmatically His concept of revolution as a means of change from one scientific theory to another (paradigm change) derives from empirical observation and his work is descriptive. As a result of a change in paradigm we know the world differentiy. For Nagel science is above all a rational activity, the pursuit of natural laws and performed similarly to mathematics. Change in hypothesis is a smooth logical progression of reduction. It is normative and scientific change enables us to know the world better: the world does not change, we do.

The cmof the difference between them is the anomaly, which Nagei does not accept. As an example, take the theory of phlogiston, which held that as an element burned, it released phlogiston. It was observed that the ashes of burned substances weighed more than the unburned substance. Clearly, in Kuhn's view of science, an anomaly, the resolution of this is a world in which combustion has changed from the release of a substance to the combination of two substances. But one explanation could be that phlogiston possessed negative weight. Logically this is an OK explanation since it fits the obsenred facts, and it only requires that we adjust Our ideas of weight to accommodate it. However, the alternative explanation, that burning a substance is a combination of that substance with something eIse would be seen by Nage1 as an alternative hypothesis which better fits the observed hcts, or as a reduction to the theory of chemistry So there would be a logical progress to another theory.

Emergent evolution is necessary to account for what Kuhn descnbes as revolutions or paradigm shifts. That is, what Kuhn explains as a paradigm shift is supposed by Nage1 to be a logical progression Fiom one theory to another. Finally Nagel presents an analysis 12 of the relationship between a whole and its parts to show that it cannot be assurned that results fiom theories which are "parts" of another theory will obtain when the theory is considered as a whole. That is, emergence applies to scientific theories.

Nagei's and Kuhn's views of the world are huidamentalIy antithetical, being essentially the realist view and the antirealist view so it is unlikely that there can be any sort of synthesis. In section 6 1 will show that practicing social scientists believe their work deals with an objective universe, and that theories should be as Nagel describes them. However, Kuhn's description better fits the observed facts of how science and social science are practiced, so 1 will use Kuhn as a descriptive framework for my analysis of The Language Instinct.

Section 4 'The Development of Linguistics in North America

The study of linguistics is a relatively new field and its histoty well delineated. Through a brief review of that histo~I will show that by the middle of this cenniry it had shaken of the wraps of its origins and was being practiced as a normal science in the Kuhnian sense. (1 choose this date because it is generally agreed in the field that the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures in 1957 announced a significant change in the way Iinguistics was to be done.)

To illusnate the state of linguistics in the middle of this century 1 have selected two works as illustracive: The Encyclopedia ofLanguage and Linguistics (Asher 1994)in keeping with Kuhn's notion that a science can be defined by its textbooks, this work serves as a definitive statement of al1 that current linguistics is compnsed-and ProbZems in GeneraZ Linguistics by Emile Benveniste (1971). In a series of papers published after 1950, Benveniste summarizes the nature of linguistic enquiry at that time and allows us to make conclusions about the then state of linguistics. He also makes a clear statement of the research problems of linguistics, which enables us to deduce a paradigrn of linguistics circa 1960, around the time that Chomsky started publishing his work on generative grammars. There have been two major schools of Linguistics in this century: the European school, which regarded the work of Ferdinand de Saussure as seminal; and the North Arnencan structuralist school, founded on the anthropological work of Franz Boas, Leonard Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. By the middle of this century the two cultures had merged (due in no smail part to the work of Bloomfield and his students, among whom was Harris, one of whose students was Chomsky), but up to that time the two developed almost entirely separately

North America possessed sornething unknown in Europe: a large number of distinct groups of native non-europeans who were considered objects worthy of scientific study in terms of culture and language. Linguistics in North America at the turn of this century was one of four fields of anthropological smdy (the othen being archaeology, cultural anthropology and physical anthropology). This is important from our point of view since we would expect paradigm consistency in the four areas.

The foundation of linguistics in North Arnenca can be dated to the middle of the seventeenth century, when a book entitied A Key into the Languqge of America was published (1643) and the chnstian bible was translated into Algonquian. There was great enthusiasm for collecting the vocabularies of native americans; Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic and distinguished collector. It was believed that the grammars (syntaxes) of all native american languages were, if not identical, very similar so there was little interest in this aspect of language. Early in the nineteenth cenniry, attempts were made to standardize recording and in 1876 the Smithsonian had record of 670 distinct vocabularies which by 1891 were classified into 55 independent families. Throughout this penod, the underlying belief was that language could be used to decipher history- although today we might Say construct rather than decipher. So by the end of the nineteenth cennq the only records of native languages were those kept by the colonizing culture, and the only Literature was that written by the same people. In 1838, Duponceau received a prestigious French Literary prize for his es- Say arguing for the essential uniformity of grarnmar in aU Arnerican Indian languages. He had coined the term 'polysynthetic' .. . in 18 19 to refer ro this peculiar grammatical structure, in which many of the traditional Indo-Euro- pean parts of speech were telescoped within the verb so that a single word might be a whole complex sentence. (Darneil (1994)p. 94)

This illustrates one of the major difficulties faced by the anthropological linguists: they spoke English; maybe they had studied Latin or Greek; maybe they spoke French or German. Whether they consciously recognized it or not, they had a concept of language that was guided by the prevailing vocabulary and syntactic rules (grammar) which centred on the word as the basic unit of meaning. And this was the framework used to analyse native american languages.

A further difficulty was that the native languages could not be explained except in terms of the anthropoiogist's Ianguage: there was no developed linguistic theory, and there were no theoretical entities such as morphemes or phonemes that could be used to present an explanation in terms of the theory. Thus any explanation of language structure had to be entirely metaphorical: "word and "sentence" can only be understood as English/anthropologist's word and EnglisNanthropologisfs sentence, and so the underlying principle of explanation could only have been that there was a match between English words and native words, and the way they were put together (to make "sentences") was different (1 reject the argument that 'kord" and "sentence" have theoretic meaning in the preceding since the conflation of sentence into 'Wordl'-that is, a single unbroken series of sounds which represent what in English would be expressed as a sentence of discrete words-wodd be as meaningless as saying a square could become a circle.)

A final difficulty was that these languages were virtually without history (save whac had been collected by the colonizers since the seventeenth century). Therefore the european method of historical analysis, of classification, of taxonomy could not possibly be applied to native american languages. So, for example, the idea that a people's migration and history could be deduced from its Language's relationship to other languages, was a non-starter.

The best to be said is that North Amencan linguistics at the beginning of the twentieth century did not possess a Myamculated paradigm. And of course, und the end of the nineteenth century al1 the practitioners of linguistics were amateurs-and 1 do not mean that pejoratively-who did not make their living From their studies: the cornmunis. of linguists was more of an exploren' club than a scientific cornmunisr or profession. (For example, in 1912, when Boas was Professor of Anthropology at Columbia, only 8 other North Arnerican Universities had chairs in anthropology: Harvard, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Berkeley, Georgetown, Ohio Wesleyan, Oklahoma,

Vermont (Stephenson 1912) .)

Boas and his successors attempted to identify the language smcrures of those groups they studied, developing notation and nomenclature to transcribe them in order to do so. The languages they studied were totaily oral (having no written record) and could ùius only be transcribed and described as they were at the time of study Noteworthy is that semantics did not at this early stage form a part of linguistics, but of anthropology. The paradigm articulated by Boas is the concept of cultural relativism, that one's culture infonns-if it does not determine-one's view of the world and thus one's language.

One especiaiiy salient feature of Arnerican Srnenaceable to Po&] influence is relativism, the view that cultural and linguistic categorization is imposed on experience in ways that differ, sometimes radicaii~from culture to culture and from language to language and that these different categori- zations have equal daims on the attention of science. (Fought (1994) p. 98) This is almost a paraphrase of the now generaliy discredited Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that distinct societies inhabit distinct worlds (not the same world with different labels) because individuals experience the world that they inhabit and in the way in which they experience it because the language habits of the society of which an individual is part "predispose certain choices of interpretation" (ibid.).

(One offshoot of cultural relativism is the idea that a simpler culture possesses a simpler language than a more complex culture, and we will see this in Pinker's dismissal of the notion that children, because they are less developed than aduits, are ccsimpIer" and have a "simpler" language.) The application of this principal to their own studies does not appear to have been greatly considered by early American linguists. That is, what are the effectc of studying and analyzing native North American languages through the cultural lenses of European dialectology and indo-european philology? One effect is ciearly cultural assimilation, so that any underlying assumptions regarding language use and development are imposed upon the native american languages. Another consequence of this principle, according to Fought, is diat individuals also have predispositions which differ between them and this mises the question of how is it possible ro generalize over a communi~/societywhen the individuals themselves inhabit different worlds? Fought asserts this is an example of Kuhnian anomaly: a problem that is inexplicable under the paradigm is, by universal agreement of the community, ignored.

So the state of north american linguistics as a science at the beginning of the twentieth cenniry was that it had a long way to go. There was an underlying scientific method which was something like this. Through field work linguists could annotate speech and record it. SubsequentIy they could analyze it, pnmarily in terms of words and sentences, and deduce grammatical (syntactic) rules. The result was some sort of normative mode1 (normative because it is a mode1 for the society/culture under study from which individual variation has been deliberately removed, and because it is also, in effect, a standardization of the sort that is achieved when a language becomes written as well as spoken; twenv people possess twenty different Ianguages, and to dehe"one" language based on twency examples is to normalize it) which, weakiy, was a theoreticai language. But because of the belief in cultural relativisrn, there could be no attempt to smdy aii languages and attempt to extract any generalizations since cultural relativiv precludes the deduction of any worthwhile generalities. And it was impossible to follow the european model and attempt to hd~ee-like relationships beween languages because there were no historical records pertaining to the languages under considera tion.

Through the work of Sapir, the study of the processes of language became a part of linguistic structure (the six gramma tic (syntactic) processes iden tified by Foug ht are word order (of words in a sentence), composition (the words which together compose a sentence), affixation (to the stem of a word), interna1 modification (of compound words), reduplication, and accentua1 differences (of the mess and pitch of speech)). This is a recognition that things other than word meaning and conjunction form part of the field of study and that these have to be accounted for in any linguistic theory. Couple with this one extremely important idea that was developed by Boas: that the basic unit of meaning is the sentence, "a group of articulate sounds which convey a complete idea" (Fought (1994) p. 100) and it is clear that the nature of linguistics is undergoing a sea change: it is becoming theoretical. Further evidence of change in the stature and status of linguistics is given by the appearance of Bloomfield's book Langage in 1933, which provided the definitive statement of what the proto-science was at that time. (For example, at least half of his bibliography of over 30 pages refers to German works, showing some influence of the European school.)

However, Linguistics still cannot get away from the the problem of influence and normalization. In recording and descnbing a language (Menominee) Bloomfield transcribed and edited so that what is written dom is in fact a normalized version of the language. One way to deal with this is to recognize what is happening and to state that in effect a model of the language is being created, but the issue was not addressed by Bloomfield (or, it appeaa, anyone else until the 1980s). We see also the building of the body of literature that defines Lnguistics, with titles such as Language, Introduction &O the Study of Language, Outline offlocano Syntax, Handbook of Amencan Indian Languages, Morphology, and of course Bloomfield's own Language. Thus by the 1940s Linguistics in North Amenca had become intellectually respectable, it had a body of knowledge, it had a community of practitioners, it was developing theories-in short, it was being practiced like a science.

Section 5 The Development of Linguistics in Europe

The distinguished european linguist Emile Benveniste (he was a pupil of Meillet, hirnself a student of Saussure) gives a review of the state of linguistics h-om inside the comrnunity of linguistics in a collection of papers individuaily published between 1945 and 1965. Benveniste claims that the scope of linguistics is twofold, making a distinction between linguistics as the science of languages, and that of which languages are a manifestation: human language. Hïs contention is that the problems encountered in studying the former throw light on the latter. He dates the foundation of modem linguistics with the discovery, early in the nineteenth cenniry, of Sanskrit

it should be stated that up until the First decades of our cennuy, Linguistics consisted of what was maidy a genetics of Ianguages. ït took as its task the

study of the evolution of linguistic fonns. It set itseif up as a historical su- ence, irs focus being, everywhere and aiways, a phase of the history of languages. (p. 18: emphasis in original)

In short then the study of linguistics was the development of an evolutionary uee of al1 known languages both extant and extinct. But there were questions that such a snidy could not answer, such as matis the nature of a linguistic phenornenon? What is the reality of language? 1s it meit consists of nothing but change? How does it stay the same and change at the same time? How does it bction and what is the relationship of sound to sense?" (p. 18) These are philosophical question conceming the nanire of the object of study, not scientific questions. The science of the time was thus not oniy unable to answer them, but it could ignore them to a great extent because they were not scientific questions. But as 1 have shown, there were two problems inaoduced by the American stmcturalists around the tum of the century. First, native arnerican languages were (or appeared to be) totaily different in structure from the indo-European languages, which rneant that current frameworks of analysis were at least inappropriate if not useless (although they must have underpinned any other analytic framework) . Second there was no linguistic history available. Now these questions could no longer be ignored because the foundations of linguistics were proving unable to assimilate observed data.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) single-handedly redefined the course that European linguistics would take for the first haif of the twentieth century. Benveniste identifies two questions as central to Saussure's studies of linguistics:

1. What are the basic data on which linguistics is to be grounded and how can we grasp them?

2. What is the nature of notions of human speech and by what mode of relationship are they articulated?

He outlines the central principle of Saussure's doctrine as:

.. . human speech, no matter from what point of view it is studied, is always a double entity, formed of two parts of which the one has no value apart fiorn the other. (p. 35: emphasis in original)

The dualities specified by Benveniste are the articulatory/acoustical duality; the duality of sound and sense; the duality of the individual and Society; the duaüty of langue and parole (langue is the knowledge of language, parole is the locutionary act, the performance of language); the dualiw of the material and the immatenal; the duality of the "nemonai" (paradigmatic) and the syntagmatic; the duality of sameness and opposition; the duality of the synchronie and diachronie. And the importance of these dualities, in Saussure's view, is that

.. . none of these terrns thus placed in opposition has value by itseif or refers to a substantial reality; each one of them takes its value from the fact that it is in opposition to the other ...

(p. 36)

This certainly backs up Tooby and Cosmides' (1992) contention that linguistics (as a social science) was lost in the smdy of dualities, and we have not even corne to the most paradoxical of Saussure's dualities: that of the relationship between signifier and signified. The word is the signifier and the object to which the word refers is the sigmfied. This duality implicitly admis the signifier to be an object in its own right, and once it is admitted as a unit of linguistics, then the study of language as semiotics seems inevitable. One outcome of al1 this is that we are forced to a recognition of the phoneme as a basic unit of linguistic theory-a theoretical entity that is realized in sound-and the subsequent growdi of phonernics, the study of phonemes and their structures relationships as a distinct branch of linguistic. So in one blow, we get two theoretical sides to linguistics: dualities and phonemics.

The net result was that linguistics came to study language as it was at the time it was being studied: the language of the present, isolated fiom its history and devoid of any presuppositions.

Linguistics thus entered its third phase-the present one. It took for its subject not the philosophy of language nor the evohtion of linguistic forms but brought to the fore the inûinsic reality of language, and aimed at making itseif a formal, rigourou, and systematic science.

(P. 19)

So now the basic pnnciple of linguistics has become that language forms a system; it is a systematic arrangement of parts, of formal elements put together according to certain principles of structure. There are relationships between the units of the system but there are also oppositions between them. The individual linguistic enrities can only be determined within the system that organizes and governs them and in tems of each other.

Thus linguistics was being practiced as a science, with a theoretical underpinning. As Benveniste puts it

If, Frorn here on, the direction in which Linguistics seems to be extending them [the views that language is a stmcnired system, that it is synchronous, and that it is symboIic] today could be characterized in one word, it couid be said that they mark the beginning of hguisrics conceived of as a science, on account of its cohesiveness, its autonomy, and the aims which are as- signed to it. (p. 5: emphasis in original)

This was published originally in 1954, so without the benefit of Kuhn's views as to what constitues science, but it represents the idea from within the discipline that linguistics ought to be a science. Although one could question why a practitioner of linguistics would want the subject to be a science (Status? Respectability? More government funding? Better able to get at the Truth?) the principle of charity urges us to take this as evidence that the comrnunity of linguists wants to behave like natural scientists. Furthermore, this extract shows that the ideas of the North American structuralists and the European Saussureans have corne together in linguistics to make it one discipline in that the focus of study is the smcnire and synchrony of language. But there is more:

This trend is indicated above ail by the fact that certain types of problems have been abandoned. No one now seriously raises the question of the mono- genesis or polygenesis of languages, or, in a general wax that of absolute origins. One no longer yields as easily as formerly to the ternptation to erect the individual characteristics of a language or a linguistic type into universal qualities. The horizon of linguists has expanded. AU types of language have acquired equal rights to represent language in general. At no moment of the past and in no fonn of the present can one corne upon anything "prirnor- dial". The exploration of rhe most ancient attested languages shows them to be jus as complete and no Iess complex than those of today; the analysis of "primitive" languages reveals a highly individualized and systematic organization in them. ... Finaily, and here we touch upon questions whose range extends beyond linguistics, it can be seen that "mental categories" and "laws of thought" in large measure do norhing but reflecr the organization and the distribution of Linguistic categories. We imagine a universe that our language has first shaped. The varieties of philosophical or spiritual experience depend unconsciously on a classification which language brings about oniy for the reason that it is Ianguage that is symbolic. These are some of the topics that a cognizance of the diversity of linguistic types reveals, but to tell the uuth, none of hem has been thoroughly explored. (PP. 5-61

Paradigms are rarely explicitly articulated, but this passage cornes close. According to Benveniste the mid-fifiies paradigm of linguistics held that language shaped chought and subsumed into it are the notions that language is symbolic of the external world, that language is independent of culture (since al1 languages, past and present are equally complex). Language is itself an abstract notion that stands behind the idea of languages (although this was not fully articulated nor developed). But we are at last getting a theoretical basis for linguistics, something in which expianation is given in terms of theoretical entities.

Section 6 The Standard Social Saence Mode1

6.1 What are the Social Sciences?

This is too big a quesuon for the present thesis, but 1 shall take the naive view that the social sciences are those fields of inquiry which take as the objects of study humans in society and (ostensibly) attempt to study them with methods akin to those of the natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) ; that is, fact gathenng, observation, research, theory development, and articulation of the paradigm under which the social 23 science is subsumed: in short, activities very similar if not identical to those followed by scientists who practice Kuhn's "normal sciencen. The social sciences traditionally include, but are not limited to, Psychology, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Economics, History, Linguistics and Cognitive Science.

Since the activities of social science paraliel those of normal science, is there anything in the content of the subject of study which would preclude me f?om using Kuhn's analyses as a hrnework for studying the social sciences? I think not. Social sciences have less history, and they do not purport to be able to get at the truths of the universe, but they are pursued just as seriously as naturd science. However, the fact that the social sciences as constituted are a relatively recent field of study suggests that maybe they are in some sense not as "developed" as the natural sciences: perhaps even to the extent that they cannot be considered to be mature enough to possess paradigms and the other trappings of nanual science.

As will be seen in the foliowing, the Standard Social Science Mode! as articulated by Tooby and Cosmides (1992) is in effect the overarching paradigm of the social sciences. It is important to remember, when reading Tooby and Cosmides, that they are in the trenches: they are practiung social scientists, members of (in 1992) the Department of Anthropology at the University of Santa Barbara, and Fellows of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California. What they write is part of social science, and not about social science, and what they believe, and what they believe they are doing is not relevant to my position as an observer and critic. So in wrîting about social science, what it is doing wrong, and what it ought to be doing, Tooby and Cosmides are part of the new guard of social scientists, a new cornmunity which is intent on replacing the old. The way a (social) scientist views their subject informs what they do and how they do it.

6.2 Tooby and Cosmides

Tooby and Cosmides (1992) argue that little progress has been made in the social sciences in the last hundred years because the practitioners have avoided the inherent science. One objection to my thesis, which 1 dealt with in the preceding sections, is that 24 linguistics is not a science but a social science and therefore Kuhn's description of scientific revolutions is not applicable to what 1 claim is happening in Iinguistics. For the meantixne 1 take the position oudined above, that a social science is at least modelled on a nanual science inasmuch as it attempts to discover universal laws (in the sense that they are universal to the objects of study rather than that they apply to the universe) and is generally practiced in a manner similar to a natural science; that is, social scientists perform experiments, make observations, publish, peer review, exist in institutions, get funding from the public purse, and make predictions based on their theories.

Tooby and Cosrnides claim that this has not been the case, but rather that it ought to be the case. They have a fundamentally realist view that it is possible to create a rnatrix of causality which contains (scientific) explanarion for the whole of the universe, a 'tast landscape of causation" which supersedes the dualism which has to date pervaded the western cultural tradition. They claim that the social sciences have increasingly maintained a position of intellecrual isolationisrn through propagating such dualism (for example in the nature/nurture debate). Tooby and Cosmides' view of the social sciences is strongly normative and embraces Nagel's idea that the objects of study are the way they are and it is up to the social scientist to work out the "correct" way to describe them.

Tooby and Cosmides claim that the current state of the social sciences is such that practitioners and scholars are freed from "al1 of the arduous tasks inherent in the attempt to produce scientifically valid knowledge: to make it consistent with other knowledge and to subject it to critical rejection on the basis of empirical disproof, logical inconsistency, and incoherence." (Tooby and Cosrnides (2992) p. 22). That is, whereas the natural sciences are becoming unified (according to Tooby and Cosmides), the social scientists are busy navei-gazing, oblivious to the "real" world.

Kuhn has a view of science that makes it a social constmct, and that the nature of changing paradigrns is such that any truths are contextual within the field of study and relative to the obtaining paradigm. Kuhn himself makes no daim to be predictive, but there is a prediction inherent in the notion of accepting anomalies; when an alternative 25 paradigrn obtains, it too will presumably engender anomalies, and so ad infinitum. In short, the value of Kuhn's work is that it is in some sense predictive; there is thus impliutly the suggestion that the way scientific revolutions have occurred in the past is a guide to the way they might occur in the future. Furthemore, the recognition and acceptance of anomalies, if not denying consistency at Ieast raises significant doubts as to its artainability (although opposing paradigms may not both obtain for very long). This raises the question, is it OK to accept a normative view even though one does not accept the noms? The answer here is yes, since Kuhn specifically rejects that his view is normative; the Tooby and Cosrnides case is that social scienasts should put the science back in social sciences, and that is science as it is or ought to be practiced: their views as to how it is practiced, or of what it is comprised, are not relevant to my examination.

We suggest that this lack of progres, this "failure to thrive," has been caused by the failure of the social sciences to explore or accept their logical connections to the rest of the body of science-that is, to causaiiy locate their objects of study inside the larger network of scientific knowledge. Instead of the saentific enterprise, what should be jenisoned is what we cdthe Stand- ard Social Science Model (SSSM): the consensus view of the nature of soaal and cultural phenornena that has served for a century as the intellemal framework for the organization of psychology and the sociai sciences and the inteilectual justification for their dairns of autonomy from the rest of science. (P. 23)

They suggest what they cal1 the htegrated Causal Model is a more realistic, appropriate mode1 which will connect the social sciences to the rest of science by recognizing hurnan beings as creatures that have evolved according to Darwin's theoty of evolution by natural selection. "Culture is the manufactured product of evolved psychological mechanisms situated in individuals living in groups" and the human mind is not a blank slate but a set of "Functional programs that use and process information from the world, including information that is provided both intentionally and unintentionaily by other human beings." Thus the notion that the neonate human is a blank slate to be imprinted upon by the forces of the culture in which it develops (or the equivalent notion that its mind is a general purpose cornputer waiting to be programmed) is, or should be, defunct. There is an important shift here, a change to the recognition that, like any other animal, the newborn human (or indeed, the newiy conceived human) is really a bunch of genes waiting to be expressed, a bundle of potential.

Tooby and Cosmides claim that a number of myths in the SSSM (mis-)directed the social sciences:

1. A Mully developed adult intelien is absent so it has to be imbued (although we do not imbue what we consider purely physical characteristics such as teeth or female breasts, we let them develop).

2. The nature-numire duaiity has been uninformative: we now recognize that we cannot easily extrapolate the influences of the one or the other in human development.

3. It does not gel with psychology: a blank slate could not do what human beings do in terms of vison, cognition, mate selection, or learning culture.

They also argue that the SSSM fails because practitioners do not have a firm or regular framework (paradigm, one might say) which would enable them to bnng out the regularity of their subject: they do not distinguish between the evolved and the manifest (p. 45). Thus language has evolved but may be manifest as French, English, or a creole. The fallacies are that what is common across cultures can be biological, and that the phenotype can be empirically separated hom the genotype. Finally they argue that the SSSM, in divorcing the social from the namal sciences, has permitted science to run unchecked by political, social or moral concerns. But the force of evolution and evolutionary naniralism is that human characteristics must be explainable in terms of Darwinian nanval selection, as adaptations that confer some sort of fitness, and this applies to psychological as well as physical characteristics and attributes. They use the argument by analogy to claim that the mind is just as much of an adaptation as the eye, and that naturally there should be "mental organs" (à la Chomsky) just as there are physical organs,

Section 7 Conclusion

Koerner (1976) argues that there have been three paradigms in linguistics, determined principally by the works of Schleicher (August Schleicher (182148) was a gerrnan philologist and linguist whose most important contributions to language were a theory of language relationships, a method of reconstructing a "parent" language and a taxonomy of languages; for a discussion of Darwin's ideas in Schleichefs work, see Taub 1993), Saussure, and Chomsky. Koerner bases his daim on the tact that he can identify three distinct paradigrns each of which fits in to the prevailing intellectual climate of the tirne- Thus, Schleicher is fuelled with the fire of Darwinisrn, Saussure is inspired by the sociological and psychological advances of Durkheim and Freud (thar is, the SSSM), and Chomsky flourishes with the discovery of the double helicai structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. But Koemer is problematical. He accepts Kuhn's ideas of paradigrn change, and argues that there have been three observable paradigms in the history of linguistics. He argues that it is in many respects a science, but he identifies Chomsky, among others, with disfavour as sorneone who is rewriting history:

Others, among them no less a person than Chomsky himseif, have indulged in Whig history' (Butterfield), i.e. presenting earlier periods of the discipline in such a mmer that one's present position, with respect to both theoretical and ideological issues, is strengthened; (P. 685) But this is, according to Kuhn, one of the hallmarks of a scientSc revolution. However berner does not accept this and argues instead for an "independent" history of linguistics. Rather than taking Kuhn's point that paradigm shifts result in a rewriting of the textbooks and the history, he holds that the existence of and changes in paradigms provide suffiuenr evidence that linguistics has become a science by the time of Chomsky. He is wrong since more than a paradigm is needed, and the rewriting of history is additional evidence that linguistics has become a science.

This, then, is the state of linguistics by the middle of the twentieth century. There is a community of Linguists, to be fomd rnainly in universities in Europe and North America, who ply their trades in a fasashion similar to that of natural scientists: they meet, publish in books and journals, research, study, teach, they have a shared paradigm, and there are some anomalies which holus bolus they ignore. But the one that concerns us here is that there is no real explanation as to how we make the transition from wordless infants to masters or mistresses of our natural tongue. And with the publication of Chomslqfs Syntactic Shctures in 1957 linguistics got a crisis.

But let Kuhn have the last words on this.

They [i.e. various groups of proto-scientists] had, that is, achieved a paradigm that proved able to guide the whole group's research. Except with the advantage of hindsight, it is hard to find another critenon that so clearly proclaims a field a science.

The nature of that uansition to maturiry deserves fuller discussion than it has received in this book, pdcularly from those concemed with the development of the contemporary social sciences. To that end it may help to point out that the transition need not (lnow think should not) be associated wirh the first acquisition of a paradigm. Section 1 Introduction

Chomsky argues that language is a natural object, to be studied in the same way as other natural object such as the solar system or clouds (Chomsky (1994)). However, he does not clairn that language is an adaptation. Pinker builds on Chomsky's ideas, but his ostensible goal in The Language Instinct is to persuade the reader that our ability to use language is genetically programrned. And he does this in the FolIowing way: he States upfkont his claim that language is an instinct-a daim redolent of Daminian naturalism-and then proceeds to identify a number of puzzles which appear to be (and to have been) insoluble under the SSSM but are solved by accepting the claim that language is instinctive: that is, that it is an adaptation that has enabled homo sapiens sapiens to fIourish as a species. There is a subtext to Pinker's work, and that is to provide an answer to the unasked question of linguistics: how do we change from babbling infants to expert language users? In this chapter 1 will anaiyze his arguments and show he is operating under a different paradigm from those who practised linguistics before Chomsky

Basically Pinker's argument is neither inductive nor deductive. It is the presentation of many, many "facts" or empincal observations coupled with the claim that al1 of the "facts" and observations are explained by the megafact that language is an instinct. It is (in fact!) a version of Whewell's consilience of inductions because it draws together puzzles from many fields and explains them all. It is a rhetorical rather than a logical argument, and its strength is that even if there should be some valid objection or counterexampie to one of his claims, the rest will still stand and so will his conclusion. 77ze Language Instinct divides into five parts:

An exploration of the daim that language is instinctive and intentional, that it is hard-wired into our brains in some wax so that we cannot help but use language.

An explanation in terms of grammar (Chomskfs "computa tional procedure") and lexicon of how we acquire the ability to express ourselves in a language irrespective of the language we express ourselves in.

An explanation of how language works in terms of human physiology and human brain-the physical basis of language.

An examination of the evolution and genetic basis of Ianguage.

The relationship between language and the mind.

1 will examine each of these in the foilowing sections.

Section 2 The Clairn That Language 1s an Instinct

1 do not want to get into a lot of discussion about what an instinct is. Pinker mainly uses the word to mean something that we cannot help but do, such as sleeping, sucking, breathing, or copulating. In naturalistic terms an instinct can be seen as an expression of our genes, and in Darwinian terms it can be seen as an adaptation which exists through natural selection. This offers Pinker three challenges: to demonstrate that language is sornething we cannot help but acquire the facility for and use; to suggest the nature of the genetic basis of language; and to explain what adaptive advantage it gives humans as a species.

Pinker identifies the ding paradigm, or hypothesis, of Ianguage as the Standard Social Science Model, which, as 1 have outiined above, holds that the human psyche, and in particular hwnan language, is determined by the surrounding culture and that it is acquired in some behavioural way. A significant part of this paradigm is the assumption that the brain is a blank slate (tabula rasa) which is fiiled by oui experiences and what we learn, and that much of what changes in our minds or brains does so as a result of "teaming": we "leam" to read, speak, ride a bicycle, copulate, speak a second language and keep a stiff upper Lip. However, the paradigm has failed to satisfactonly explain how children are able to "leam" and understand language in a very short tirne and why this occurs at a particular developmental period in the childls growth. In contrast to this, in Pinker's view the brain is an organ which in some way continues to develop or grow as the rest of our body grows and some things, such as language acquisition, are part of this development.

Kuhn's incommensurability is pertinent here. One indication that Pinker is using a different paradigm to the SSSM is that bis use of words such as "cornplex", "language" or "rules" differs horn the SSSM usage. The language of instinct (Pinker) differs fiom the language "leamed" according to the SSSM;the desadduced by Pinker are not the des of the SSSM. Language is for Pinker what humans use intentionally; for the adherents to the SSSM it is what we speak This is not a case of Pinker assuming the conclusion and arguing circularly since for him it is the paradigm and thus not questionable and not subject to proof or disproof.

According to Kuhn, we do not do science in a vacuum; we don't blindly experiment, hoping to find some auth: we ay to explain in terms of some underlying paradigrnatic idea (probably rnetaphorical) such as "light is a waven, "light is a particle", "burning is the release of phlogiston", "electricity is a fiuid", "linguistics is a science", or "the universe is expanding". These are al1 unproven and unprovable assertions (at the time of their assumption into paradigms)-but not disprovable-which are ueated as hypotheses for the science in question; that is, as more results are obtained they gain in strength and believability. However, this does not prove that the axiom is me, it merely means that scientists can avoid having to give it up. This is a consequence of Kuhn's non-realist view of science. Such a view implies that tmth is coherence and largely a rnatter of consistence within the paradigm coupled with a pinch of pragrnatism. Pinker is doing two things in his book: he is trying to persuade his readers to accept the paradigm; and he is trying to show how things are explained under the paradigm. In order to do this he mut breach the "incornmensurability gapn between his (Language is Instinct) paradigm and that (SSSM) of his readers.

Definitions, as used by scientists and philosophers, serve a nurnber of purposes: to remove ambiguity, to identiQ meaning, to clarify what is included in and what is excluded from a discussion, to formalize a notion. But they operate within the obtaining paradigrn. Pinker does not define language Save to Say that it is an instinct, and that it is removed from particular languages such as English or Latin. In justimng the claim that language is an instinct Pinker has eo explore what language is since any existing definition of language would consmin the exploration and perforce be in terms of existing paradigms. So nght from the start he is implicitly rejecting established notions of language. That is, "language" no longer means "the ability to speak French" (or something like that) but "the drive to acquire and use speech".

He validates the notion of language as an instinct in two ways. First, he quotes Darwin ("man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children") (p. 20) and points out that language can be obsemed in species other than humans (he instances birds, but whales and dolphins are generally supposed to communicate in language, as do bees). Second, he points out two "fundamental facts about language" identified by Chomsky: every sentence uttered by any person has a good chance of being unique in the history of the universe; and children develop their language skills in an ememely short time and at a young age, and afterwards are able to interpret and understand the unique utterances which others address to them.

This has the following consequences. In amibuting the idea of a language instinct to Darwin (although Darwin's ideas include the one that language is leamed by rote) it acquires respecrability-evolution &y natural selection is the only explanation for the way we are-but it also places the ciaim that language is an instinct within an overarching paradigm of naturalism and evolution which permits Pinker to assimilate Chomsky's resuits into his argument without having to address Chomsky's doubts-that language can not be explained by Darwinian naml selection. (For a surnrnary of Chomsky's arguments that language is a natural object see Chomslq (1995). In essence, Chomsky argues that language is a natural object and that the manifestation of the human language facdty consists of a ucomputational procedure and a lexicon." (p. 15)). But more important is the notion that every sentence ever uttered, or that will ever be uttered, is very probabIy unique, for it has a number of exceedingly powerful implications.

First, it suggests the immense power of language: in short, language should be able to address or describe anything because of its open endedness. Second, there is the corollary that no sentence ever repeats any other sentence: thus rote and mimicry of sentences play little part in language acquisition and usage. Third, in becoming competent users of language we must be doing something other than filing away in our minds things such as "this is the sentence that I use in this situation." Fourth, since the number of words any one individual knows is finitely bounded, it seems unlikely that we constnict sentences in the style of "pick a noun, pick a verb, pick another noun, add a Ml stop," which irnplies that language is more than a process of arranging its elements according to some mechanical des.

"Language is an instinct" has two corollaries. One is that language is something we do, like thinking, breathing or engaging in sex, without thought or premeditation. This removes the need for any explanation of why we do it because there is no longer any question of why we use it: we cannot help but do it. This does not obviate the need to explain it in evolutionary terms-to the contras: it is an adaptive trait, and there are the questions of how did an adaptation come to be and how does it render the organism fitter-but it removes the need for causal explanation. The questions we may legitimately ask about language (How do we learn it? What is the grammar and syntax?) have changed. The second corollary is that it intrinsically changes the nature of language. The duck becomes a rabbit, we view language in a different way. To Say that we leam language no longer means that we acquire a new ski11 or abiliw it means that our brains have passed another milestone in their normal natural development.

To summarize, we see the annunciation of a new paradigm-Language is Instinct- in an attempt to explain an observed phenornenon (children's rapid and almost complete acquisition and assimilation of language) which is an anomaly under the prevailing paradigm (SSSM). We see the introduction of a new theory (Grammar + Lexicon) which is consistent with an overarching paradigm (Darwinism) and the movement of naturalism. There is a consequence of assurning the Darwinian paradigm: language as an instinct must be explainable as an adaptation and as a trait that appears in some species and not others. In terms of a Kuhnian revolution, a new paradigm exists and Iinguistics under this paradigm has become incommensurable with what went before. The explanandum differs and so will the explanation.

Part of doing normal science is to make observations and either to demonstrate that the observations fulfil the predictions of an existing hypothesis, or to create a hypothesis to exptain the measurements or observations. In Kuhn's view, we solve problems using a paradigm (as exemplar) or we show how the paradigm allows us to tidy up a research question, perhaps modifyîng the paradigrn in the process. In this section 1 will examine Pinkefs empirical observations about language and evaluate the concIusions he draws From them. The Rrst major daim is that al1 ethnic groups, no matter how cornplex or sophisticated their cultures and lifestyles, have comptex languages.

In the 1920s tribes were discovered in New Guinea who had never had contact with europeans or their descendants. In the received SSSM view, one that associates advanced use of technology with cultural superiority, they were culturally simple. However, their languages were as capable as any. Without linguistic analysis, it seemed (and seems) clear that their language was up to the task of explaining amongst themselves things that until that time were totally unknown to hem: "white" people, guns, clothes, and so on, Linguistic analysis (presumably under the SSSM) of the tongues of other tribes confirms that no matter what the structure or sound of the language used, it can be used to explain unusual and complex ideas irrespective of the cultural state of the linguistic group. This suggests first that language develops independent of culture, and second that al1 cultural groups have equal language abilities no matter how the language (tongue) is strumed and thus language is independenr of anydung in the culture. A blow to cultural relativity!

What is important is that this was recognised by Edward Sapir in 1921 (according to Pinker (p. 27)), and presumably was regarded as anomalous in tems of the prevailing paradigm (SSSM) since any linguistic analysis was made under that paradigrn which held that language was culturally determined. Furthemore, complexity is understood under that paradigm in terms of case, gender, voice, and al1 the paraphemalia of established grammatical and syntactical analysis (and 1 have shown in chapter 2 how the culture of the anthropologists coloured their views), whereas for Pinker complexity is something totally different: it is the ability to use language to communicate whatever is in an individual's mind. That is, complex language is that which expresses complex "ideas", for want of a better word (the difficulty here is that under the SSSM, language and thought are indistinguishable, which would make the preceding sentence a tautology, but for Pinker they are distinct: this is clearly an incommensurabilicy), so in a sense the complexity pertains not to the language but to the mind's content. In short, the resdt that all societies, however primitive they may seem to be cultural terms, use apparently complex language constructs is an anornaly under the ruling paradigrn.

The same is mefor cultural subgroups within our own North Arnencan society- Pinker uses an example of "Black English Vemacular" from a native of Harlem-which may be seen as linguistically irnpoverished under the SSSM (the notion that socially disadvantaged, deprived or underprivileged groups are linguistically impoverished) but are as linguistically complex (in tems of expressing the speaker's experiences) as any other linguistic group in the world.

36 2.2 Language Creation

I9& century european linguistics held the view that languages did not spontaneously corne into existence but rather developed as groups of people migrated or conquered other groups, resulting in languages such as English which bear traces of Latin, French, and Germanic languages (amongst others). As people migrate, so language morphs but retains indications of its history. An illustration from our own time is provided by Srniilie (1996) who describes the language changes in groups of Yanomarno Indians resulting kom fissioning (a group splitting into two and separating) : each group deliberately tries to make its language different From the language of the pre- fissioned group. However, the notion that "primitive" people can be used as indicators of how our hunter-gatherer forbears is redolent of cultural relativism and political incorrectness; 1 offer this merely as an example that language change can be deliberate rather than accidental.

But when people from different linguistic groups are forced together they do not have a common tongue. Pinker cites the example of the slave trade where slaves had to learn English words in order to perform their labour, but the same must be meof colonization throughout the ages. How did English become the common language with which different linguistic groups in India communicate? Words are put together in order to accomplish tasks, but these do not forrn a language by any critena. Such a quasi- language is known as a pidgin. However, if pidgin users have offspring who are brought up in the pidgin culture, a formally analyzable language does develop. Such a language is called a creole, and when subjected to grammatical and syntactical analysis (in the style of Pinker) creoles tum out to be highly smctured and complex languages. Pinker's illustration of the transition from pidgin to creole demonstrates that it seems possible for a complex language to develop almost spontaneously without the need for its users to have been exposed to a model. This development is difficult, if not impossible, to expiain under the SSSM. 2.3 Sign Languages

According to Pinker sign language is the natural language of people who are deaf, and sign languages differ as much as do spoken Spanish and German. Sign languages make use of bodily gestures and facial expressions (in combination) and are capable of as much complexity as spoken languages. Arnongst people who do not Ieam to sign in chïldhood sign pidgins develop whereas deaf children under the age of four who are exposed to signing acquire either a creole or the fully fledged sign language. Pinker also claims that children acquire a full sign language from parents who have oniy a pidgin.

Signing develops at an age and in a fashion that parallels the development of spoken language, which strengthens the case that language is universal because it includes people who are physically unable to develop a spoken language, and that in tems of complexity sign languages are also on a par with spoken Ianguages. And just as a spoken language is composed of a hed number of phonemes (up to 150 are usually identified), sign languages have a similar number of basic gestures which are combined to give rise to the Ml language expression.

The introduction of sign languages is a good ploy on Pinker's part, since traditional linguistics with its reliance on speech and phonetics almost totally ignored sign languages and under the SSSM they were regarded as make-do affairs for people who were for whatever reason unable to use "real" language. We can see that the SSSM had no theory to account for sign languages but that their inclusion under the Language is Instinct paradigrn is essential. (An interest in sign languages arose in part as interest in the possibility of language acquisition by other primates; this is an area too big to get into in this thesis, but the whole notion of teaching primates to express themseives "linguisticaily" is one that requires acknowledgrnent of the SSSM paradigrn since the whole precept is behaviouralist, and founded upon the notion that other primates possess intelligence and learning ability, and that language is teachable and leamable (in SSSM tens): the Language is Instinct paradigm has to hold that it is impossible for other primates to acquire or use language in such a sophisticated way as we do because (1) it is an adaptation speufic to Homo sapiens sapiens and (2) if it were advantageous and possible, then other primates would be using language (presumably) in a way similar to us.)

Sign languages also illusmte another weakness of the SSSM: feedback It is assumed under the SSSM that being able to hear the words one utters acts as some sort of feedback loop. Indeed, being able to hear others' speech is deemed to be a prerequisite for language learning under the SSSM. However, a sign linguist does not have any such feedback loop: they do not see the signs they themselves make, so they apparently have no way of interpreting them. Furthermore, the idea of ''imitation" takes a beating: how can a person know if they are imitating a sign language gesture if they cannot see the gesture they are making? So either the notion of feedback is incorrect or it is not necessary for linguistic utterance. Perhaps this forms another research question for the new paradigm.

The view that we must teach chiidren to speak is widely and deeply held. Without pointing out the obvious fallacy in the commonly held view (if 1 talk to my baby, they will leam to talk too, therefore 1 must have taught them Ianguage-post hoc ergo propter hoc) Pinker proposes the following: if it is possible for a child to demonstrate, through usage, the acquisition of a language ski11 that they cannot possibly have been taught, then language is not leamed in the sense (Le. of the SSSM) that it must be taught. Clearly the word teach is being used in two senses here. Under the SSSM, teaching is a Skinnenan behaviouralist process-what is learned results in a change in behaviour- whereas for Pinker teaching is enabling the person being taught to express what is within themself.

An instance is the (mal-)formation of plurals. The fact that children frequentiy add an "s" to pluralize words which are pluralized in other ways is taken to indicate that they have identified a de"add an 's' to make a plural." Another is in the agreement of a verb with io subject (e.g. 1 walk, he walh, they waik) or the formation of a past tense (walk, 39 walked)-diildren seem to be able to get this right almost al1 the time, and it is in the irregular forms (e.g. he do'ed) that we can deduce that a dehas been leamed and what that deis.

This illustrates a difference between the SSSM and Language is Instinct paradigms: under the former the desare mechanical or programmable (so that the blank slate of the chiId7srnind can be programmed) and learnable by rote, whereas under the Language is Instinct paradigm, it is the fact that specific deshave to be learned that causes difficulty; that is, each of the exceptions (for example, the plural of sheep is sheep) must be Ieamed as a ''rule", or at least as a part of the lexicon entry for "sheep" (see section 3.1)) and language use and desbecome dependent upon the child having developed concepts of self (1 versus he/she/it), of pluralitiy, of past present and future.

2.5 What if something goes wrong?

One of the most powerfd shibboleths of the SSSM is that there is a strong link between language and intelligence (hardly surprising since intelligence is defined behaviourally under the SSSM). Thus it is commonly believed that the age at which a child stars talking, or the size of their vocabulary, are measures of their intelligence. But there are people who for some reason or another have become impaired in their use of language without their "intelligence" seeming to be impaired. Can anything be learned about language by studying people who have suffered some misformne which resulted in some or al1 of their language powers being diminished? If so, what? (Note that something has been slipped in here, and that is the notion that the brain is a set of hctional modules that are in sorne way linked, and that we are therefore, under the Language is Instinct paradigm, dealing with a theoreticai model of the brain that differs from the SSSM model.)

Pinker offers a number of examples. It is not unusual for people who suffer a saoke to appear to lose some language ability. An illustration of a person suffering Broca's aphasia shows that it is possible for a person to lose the ability to analyse language in terms of the grammatic smcture without losing the underlying thoughts and concepts. A disorder known as Specific Language Impairment appean to be genetic (its manifestation is that the sufferer does not to go through the normal process of "learning" language and is unable to abstract niles of language such as, for example, the

pluraüzation de). As adults they are unable to reason the presumed deswith any degree of success or consistency. In ali other respects they appear to be of normal intellect. On the other hand, there are hydrocephalics who seem to have extremely well developed language skills but less than normal hrnction in other mental areas. Similarly, Wdliams syndrome appears to be a genetic disorder which results in low general intelligence but a seemingly highly developed use of language.

Any theory which claims to explain what language is, and how its use develops in people, musr be able to explain abnorrnalities (or else identify them as anomalies). One anomalous area concerns the relationship between language and thought. The SSSM position is that thought requires language: that if not identical then they are extremely closely connected. The anomaly this engenders is that prelinguistic babies would appear to be thus incapable of thought (so how do they ever learn to speak?), and that thought is thus denied to any other species; but another group of anomalies appears in the above examples, which seems ro concern the relationship between language and thought, and that is, can they be satisfactorily explained under the SSSM?

This is fundamental to Pinker's case because it illustrates a real break with what has gone before. Conceptually there are Four posiaons that can be taken on the re!ationship between thought and Ianguage: they are distinct and separate (an organism codd have thought without language, or language without thought); they are the same thing (thought canot exist without language, nor language without thought); they are loosely connected; and they are saongly connected. The first two are extreme positions, the latter compromises. There is no logical reason why the relationship may not change during the liferime of an organism, which allows for the prelinguistic child to think while apparently without a language capability. However, in a developed human it would seem to be unnecessary to consider this logical possibility. Thus the possible inferences (in terms of the Language is Instinct paradigm) to be drawn from Pinker's examples are:

The language areas of the brain are almost totally independent of the rest of the brain (in conceptual terms), although there is some sort of link between

them in order that language may be used to represent thought it rnay also be used independent of thought (language and thought loosely coupled);

Language and thought are interrelated in some way such that they are inseparable: language is isomorphic to thought (language equals thought);

Although the language areas of the brain are distinct f?om @ut linked to) the rezt of the brain, they can act independentiy; however, the language faculty is subordinate to the general intellect (language represents thought).

1 have created a table to summarize the inferences and the combinations of general intellect and apparent language abiliq for which they can be drawn (Table 1).

High Apparent Language Low Apparent Language Ability Ability I High Mental Powers (Broca's aphasia) (S. L. 1.) Language equals thought; Language and thought are loosely Language represents thought; coupled; Language and thought are loosely Language represents thought. coupled. Low MentaI Powers (Williams syndrome) (Hydrocephalia) Language and thought are loosely ianguage equals thought; coupled. Language represents thought; ianguage and thought are Ioosely coupled.

Table 1. The tenable positions for the various combinations of general intellect and apparent language ability. Pinkefs examples show that the only position that can be held consistently is the first one, that there is an amount of independence between language and thought (i.e. language and thought are loosely coupled). Clearly there is no necessary comection between language ability and general inteiligence, but we cannot ignore the intuition that language is in some way used to represent what is in the mind-or what is happening in the mind. In the loosely coupled position it may be that there is some "connectof' between mind and language which is "broken" rather than the language module itself. In the low intellecvhigh language illustrations, this claim does stand up since the language used by the subject cannot represent what is in the mind (a high apparent language abiUity representing nothing), which supports the idea that language development is in a large pan independent of other mental development. But the loosely coupled position introduces something new, and that is the questiori "What is the nature of the comection between thought and language?"-a question that did not really anse under the SSSM,but one which is a fundamental research question under the Language is Instinct paradigm.

Pinker also claims that some of his examples point to there being some genetic basis to language, and he gives the illustration of a family of people, some OF whom exhibit a particular language impediment which appears to be a heritable trait attributable to a recessive gene, in keeping with the "loosely coupled" position. The conclusion is that whatever ability this trait affects (Le. language) is an instinct.

2.6 Thinking (Mentalese)

So far Pinker has suggested that language and thought are distinct although both (whatever they are) are located in the brain.

There is a major difficulty here. If we take an organ such as the gall bladder, which produces bile in order to dissolve fats in the gastric tract, we can make a case that the single organ (gall bladder) evolved through namlselection and gave its possessor the advantage of being able to digest fats. However, the brain is an organ of a different type since it serves so many functions and is generally regarded as a collection of parts, each one of which may be treated as if it were an entity. Thus Pinker can speak of language and thought as distinct with the assumption that they reside in or are controlled by different areas of the brain each of which (since he has argued that there are creames that think but have little language) can be treated as adaptations in themselves. This points to a fundamental difference between the SSSM and Language is Instinct paradigms as to the nature of the brain: single organ or collection of functional modules? In Pinker's model of the brain, the thought processes happen in "Mentalese" and it is when we communicate or describe thought that Ianguage is invoked, although the nature of this invocation is unclear.

The act of speech is exceedingly cornplex. It requires control of the diaphragm, which usually runs on automatic pilot, to vary the expression of air across the vocal cords; extremely fine conaol of the tongue and other muscles around the mouth to vary the shape of the mouth and nasal passages; the ability to perform a glottal stop; the downward movement of the vocal apparatus in early childhood; coordination of al1 this with the hearing apparatus (see, for example, Crelin (1989)).

The model of the brain as a set of fimctional modules presents a problern for the evolutionary explanation of the brain: do the moduies for speech develop independent of the modules for (say) vision? If so, how do we explain (e-g.) sign language or lip reading?

Part of Pinker's prograrn throughout the book is to build a theory, a model of language. "Language" represents al1 the components of the brain required to use language. Pinker's use of examples suggests that he is describing language in a realist son of way whereas the above shows that he is building a mode1 that is a simplification of reality. Thus %rain7*has different meanings under the SSSM and Instinct paradigms.

2.7 Do words determine thoughts?

It is a common belief that words determine thoughts. A euphemism (for example "gone to rest in the ams of the Lord") is justified on the grounds that it makes the 44 underlying idea ("dead") somehow easier to accept; thus an organism without language, such as a tadpole, cannot have a thought The SSSM paradigrn, which embraces the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (according to Pinker this is that people's thoughts are determined by the categories made amilable by their language) fails to satisfactorily explain how it is that children appear to have thoughts before they have language.

There are a nurnber of anomalies engendered by the belief that there is some sort of strong isomorphism between thought and language. Intuitively we feel from our own innospection that the thought of eating a donut to assuage our hunger does not need to be expressed in language before we act upon it. Particularly teliing is the creation of neologisms: how do we explain a new concept or idea that has not been "worded" other than to manipulate words to fit the concept? Or how do we translate from one language to another (in the sense that "dog" = "chien" it could be argued that two words/sounds/ Saussurean signs give rise to the same concept, but the underlying assumption of translatability is surely that a thought may be expressed in differing languages)? Are the erotic thoughts of a fienchman îhat different fiom those of an englishman? Translation is an anomaly under the SSSM: it cannot be the substitution of Saussurean signifiers on a word by word basis since that ignores any linguistic structure; nor can it be the representation of underlying ideas since those ideas are linguistically determined.

If the above were not convincing enough, Pinker uses the illustration of Chinese, which appears not to have a subjunctive tense (SSSM analysis). This means that the saying "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride" is untranslatable into Chinese and, as a corollary, that the Chinese have no concept of the subjunctive and so are unable to consider "hypothetically false worlds" (p. 66). Nor would anyone who had not mastered the subjunctive. And although he does not address it, what would Pinker make of the suggestion that art or music involve thought: did Mozart really spend his days saying to himself things like "Let's start with a B Rat major chord doubled in the smngs and then D minor fortissimo?" but of course in Austrian/German.. Are erotic thoughts experienced oniy as language? Clearly this is a curious state of affiirs, but it is, under the SSSM, is an anomaly which Language is Instinct explains. The idea that thinking is possible without words is not tenable under the SSSM paradigm; however, there appears to be abundant evidence that animals, particuiarly primates, have mental processes which would, if they occurred in humans, be described as thoughts.

2.8 How the mind works

With the dismissal of the strong connetion between language and thought another question is raised: if language and thought are indeed separate, and language is explicable under the paradigm of instinct, what is the nature of thought? (Clearly, under the SSSM to explain language is to expiain thought since thought = language). Pinker has to come up with an explanation which is DaMnnian and naturalistic in order not to shoot hirnself in the foot. (Strictly there is no need for him to come up with an explanation of thought at all: it could remain an anomaly; however, this would severely diminish the chance of a successful revolution-much better to make it a research question.) And although the explanation may not necessarily be within the paradigm he is using it must at least be consistent with it at this stage of paradigm development.

Although both you and 1 ma5 from our own intuition and experience, be prepared to accept that we have thoughts that are not expressible in words until we deliberately attempt to express them so, we need to put it on a more scientific basis. Studies of prelinguistic babies, vervet monkeys, and the anecdotal reports of established and respected scienasts suggest that mental processes such as counting, the analysis of familial relationships, and the conception of the general theory of relativity al1 take place without words. So it seems do pattern analysis, spatial transformations and taste recognition.

These stand as more anomalies that are not addressed by the SSSM (although it could conceivably be modified to indude explanations that visual stimuli are treated in a non-linguistic way and thus excluded from the paradigm). However, under the Language is Instinct paradigm, they become research questions: how do mental processes work? 2.9 The 'Ruing Machin-Linking Language and Thought

One aspect of naturalism is that the Cartesian mind/body duality is in some sense nonexistent; that is, there mut be some explanation for the mind in physical terms. Assuming that by mind is meant that pan of us which thinks, and under the Language is Instinct paradigm it is distinct fiom (but may include) that part of us which uses language, then a revolutionary theory mwt include (as argued in the previous section) an explanation, or potential explanation, for the physical basis of mind. In an unsophisticated view, we need to be shown how we can dissect a few brain cells, or in some way measure their state, and be able to Say "Lo! An erotic tfiought!"

In Pinker's usage, mental representation entails the view that in some way we represent our experience of the external world in our rnind/brain. Representation is an abstraction which perrnits an exploration of the symbols (the diings that represent), and a manipulation of the symbols, to be interpreted in terms of the things represented. (it is immaterial to Pinkefs argument whether we are talking rnetaphysical realism or strict idealism or whatever.) The question he is attempting to answer is: given that Our brains somehow represent the real world, and given that we boil down to strings of DNA, is there an explanation of how we manipulate the contents of our minds which is compatible with what we know of molecular biology?

The Turing machine (so called from Turing (1950) in which the conceptua1 problems of creatingdetecting a "thinking" machine were originally aired) is a theoretical device which is programmed to scan symbols and behave in particular ways when it encounters certain ones. The Turing machine suggested by Pinker can be programmed to scan a Stream of symbols and, if it encounters the first two lines of a syllogism (A is B; B is C) to produce the third Iine (A is C). What is breathtakingly beautiful about this is that it provides a bridge between sentient logic (the human abiliv to reason a syllogism) and blind determinacy. The machine is blindly determinate, the rnind reasons syllogisms. If we can accept this representaaon of how a mind (or part of it) might work-and Pinkeis grounds for accepting it are that it is a foundational mode1 of cognitive science, analogous in importance to that discipline as is plate tectonics to geology (now!) or cells to biology-then we can glimpse the possibili~that a mind operating at a biological or physical (non-rational) level can perform actions that can be interpreted symbolicaliy However, there is stiil a gap between this representation (in which the "language" or symbols and operations of the mind are called "mentalese" by Pinker) and Our use of language. Specificaily, the relationship between a word/symbol/sign and its meaning or interpretation is not one-to-one. Even if we take the view that language is to a very great extent literal, wrds are not always combined unambiguously and frequently require that the context of their utterance be mken into account when their meaning is derived. If by "Socrates" you refer to a pet ferret, then Socrates is not human. As a sentient being you rnay know what Socrates is; as a Tbgmachine you cannot. Furthemore, context changes particularly as conversation or dialogue continues, or as more knowledge is gained; at the stan of a conversation we may refer to "Socrates" but during it we may use "if' or "hem(and our meaning will be perfectly clear). The Turing machine will not be able to process "it" as a substitute for "Socrates". Lastly, we must consider that a thought or event or object rnay be described in any number of ways (since we have already acknowledged that thought and its expression are distinct) so the difficulty may be this. Linguistically the sentence is the unit of meaning. Turing Machinewise it seems that the "concept" is the unit of meaning, and we run into the significant problem of how language can accurately represent thought.

This problem is that there cannot be a simple representation of language in mentalese (in tems of mapping), so one has to be proposed to complete the claim that language and thought are not the same but are related. Pinker sketches a few broad saokes but not enough to draw a convincing picture. 1 will illustrate the difficulty using an example from Giere (1988), that of a simple elecaical circuit consisting of battery, connecting wires, and a voltmeter. If there is electncal activity in the circuit, the voltmeter will give a nonzero reading. Let us also assume that there is a neat tidy Pdradigm of Elecnicia or a complete hypothetico-deductive model, which contains al1 known and accepted results. Now elecaiaty is a theory or a model, dealing with the movement of electrons (these are also theoretical entities, but my argument is unaffected if they are considered physical abjects). The sratement that the volmeter reading shows electriciv to be present is circular since the voltmeter is an instrument constructed within the Paradigm (or Theory 00 Elecnicity, which predicts that if we have a simple circuit with resistance and a battery then a curent will flow and there will be a particular voltage-how, after all, is the voltmeter graduated?

Pinker has the same problem. The paradigm Language is Instinct contains, or at least strongly implies (see section 2.6) "the mind uses mentalese" (i.e. thought is distinct from language). The claim that the rnind uses mentalese is acceptable; the claim that mentalese can operate in a non-sentient way is plausible (that at some level the rnind operates as a Turing machine); the claim that mentalese could be universal is acceptable; the claim that we can represent what is in our minds through language is acceptable; the argument that there is no simple relationship (Le. a mapping) between language and mentalese is acceptable (perhaps the use of a pidgin indicates that there is at some level a 1-1 mapping coupled with other links). But al1 together, these do not make a sïrong case that rnentalese underlies language, because that is where we started.

Knowing a language, then, is knowuig how to -late mentalese Uiro sûings of words and vice versa. People without a language would still have mentalese, and babies and many nonhuman animals presumably have simpler dialects. Indeed, if babies did not have a mentalese to nanslate to and from English, it is not clear how leaming Engiish couid take place, or even what learning English would mean. (P. 82)

But there is a difficulty here, examined in W~ttgenstein'sprivate language argument (see Kripke 1982). Pinker views mentalese as some sort of "language" (and unfortunate metaphor because of al1 it cames with it). if mentalese is a totally "private" language, how do we understand it in ourselves? Wittgenstein demonstrated the logical impossibility of a private language. But if mentalese is a universai language of thought that al1 humans share, why then do we use Albanian, Basque, Chinese, Danish, English, French ... ? (This could be explained on evolutionary grounds). But this brings us back to the problem of "translating" from mentalese to our language of use.

My point is not that Pinker is incorrect, but that he has not made a convincing argument for the claim above. Since I am not using a normative mode1 against which co evaluate Pinkefs book, I do not need to dismiss his claim that language is an instinct because of this. In Kuhn's "normai science" we accept anomalies and need research questions. Ln this case the research question is What is the nature of the link between mentalese and Ianguage?" And perhaps this is the research question that is generating the whole of the cognitive studies indusuy.

2.10 Conclusion

Pinker has made the daim that language is an instinct-although that term has not been well defined-and has made a number of observations of human behaviour and activity that are consistent with that ciaim. Al1 people, no matter what their culture, acquire complex skills in a particular language to which they are exposed unless they miss the window of oppomrnity that is open between the ages of 2 and 4 years.

Importantly, the exposure to language does not have to be exposure to a Mly developed language For the complete acquisition of the language in question. The illustration of a creole developing fiom a pidgin is an anomaly that cannot be explained in any theory that holds that language is taught since something develops in the creole speaker-a complex language-to which they have never been exposed.

By an appeal to the established discipline of Genetics Pinker provides an explanation for observed linguistic "malfunctions" which are not explicable under the SSSM. But the strongest conclusion to be drawn is that language and thought are separate under the Language is Instinct paradigm. This allows for a totally new theory of language (without decoupling language from thought any theory of language would perforce be a theory of thought) to explain how the instinct is expressed, and rhis theory will be outlined in the next section-

We have also seen how explanations under the Language is Instinct slogan are incommensurable with explanations under the SSSM. For example, in discussing language the word "cornplex" has a number of meanings such as highly sophisticated in terms of SSSM grammadsyntax analysis, or, under the Language is Instinct paradigm, able to express abstract thoughts, able to "verbalize" arguments, or able to descnbe cuiturally unfamiliar objects and concepts; and the word language is coming to mean something different, as we will see-the start of another incornmensurabüity.

Setion 3 Grammar and Ldcon

The ostensible goal of Pinker's book is to persuade the reader that language is an instinct. He has to explain how language works as an instinct. First of all, it is a dircrete combinatonal system: that is, it is composed of a number of discrete objects (words) which can be combined into larger units (sentences) according to cenain des (that rules exist can be demonsuated by a non-sentence such as ''This sentence no verb." in which some dehas been clearly violated; Wittgenstein nomithstanding, we do not need to know what the rule is, only to know there is one). Given that there is no fixed length for a sentence, then the range of expressions (possible sentences) of the system is infînite. Further, although the meaning of the sentence is somehow dependent upon the meaning of its component words, it is not necessarily deducible from them: rearrange the order of words in a sentence and a sentence with a totally different meaning is created (A hits B; B hits A). So what are the desgoveming the discrete objects and the cornbinations? At the highest level we each possess a lexicon (a dictionary of words, or word-stems, and their c'meanings") and a grammar-the rules of combination.

This last is what is at the hean of the revolution 1 daim is taking place, and ChomsIqfs breakthrough was to define grarnmar without recourse to meaning. As Newmeyer (1986) puts it:

51 What makes Syntactic Srrucmes revolutionary is its conception of a gram-

mar as a theory of a language, subject to the same consiraints on consauc- tion and evaluation as any theory in the natural sciences. (P- 2)

3.1 The Lexicon

A lexicon is a set of words, and information about hem: their types, their meanings, whether they are regular. There are also niles (presumably part of the grammar, discussed in the next section) for combining words and fonning new words from old. A word stem might be dog, which can be a noun or a verb. We have seen the defor noun pluralization-add an s (dogs)-and the desfor foming parts of verbs according to person and tense (will dog, dogged, dogging, dogs), and so on. Thus with any word we need to know if it is a noun or a verb (or both) and the formation des, and we are able to use the word like an expert. But there is a difference in meaning between the noun dog, used in what is often referred to as its literal sense (a quadruped of the canine variety) and the verb dog, which is used figuratively (to follow like a dog), and the metaphoncal use of the noun to irnply that (perhaps) a person is in many respects a dog. So what does our interna1 dictionary contain? First, Pinker has already taken the position (outlined in section 2.5) that language and thought are separate, so the meaning of a word is the mental concept it represents. Second, a word in isolation gives no clue as to its meaning: the context of a sentence is required. Third, the meaninuuse does not become clear until the tirne of utterance and is to some extent dependent upon the other words used in a sentence and the way in which they are combined.

Now add some prehes and suffixes: ex-dog, dog-hood, dog-ness, proto-dog, mega- dog, dog-like; in each case, knowledge of the concept behind the prefix or suffix allows the creation of new meaning through the copulation. And knowledge of fifty affixes and a hundred nouns is potentially five thousand meanings, each different from the other. And we can also join nouns with a hyphen-dog-bmsh, watch-dog (it barks on the hour and half-hour), lap-dog, dog-awful-so our hundred nouns give another ten thousand possible meanings, and add to these our fifty affixes: half a milüon. This is bener than compound interest.

Pinker States that the above represent some fairly simple rules:

A noun consists of a noun-stem and an inflection (dog -+ s = dogs)-the inflection may be null, so noun dog = noun-stem dog + a nul1 inflection.

A nom-stem may be the combination of two nom-stems (dog + bite = dog- bite). This is inherendy recursive (dog-bite + victirn = dog-bite-victim)

A noun-stem rnay be combined with an affix to form another noun-stem (again recunive), so an ex-watch-dog is an ex-(watch-dog) rather than an (ex-watch)-dog.

The root of a noun (noun-root) cannot be split into any smaller parts.

There are similar rules goveming verbs and adjectives (for example, add certain affixes to a noun, such as -hlor -able to get an adjective). And the process is two-wax for if we take a common word such as anti-neoDarwinianism we know that anti- means to take a position opposing neoDanvinianism, that neo- implies a revival or a revision of Danivinianism, that -ism is the belief in or following of something Darwininan, and that -ian is concerning the teachings or theories of Darwin so an anti-neoDarwinianist is one who is against the latest revised version of belief in evolution through natural selection and its application to al1 species of plants and animals. All that in one word! But it is fundamental to the use of lan page that the deswork to decompose as well as to compose (there is the question, that 1 deal with later in section 4.1, as to the importance of the order of composition/decompostion and our abiliy to do it on the fly). As regards acquiring language, we need to be able to typify a word (noun, verb, adjective) and separate it from any conjunctions to enter it into our lexicon; and perhaps the "parentese" used as children are acquiring language serves to help children do this. But what of the exceptions? Why do Mickey and Minnie together become mice whereas in order to catch them we do not purchase micetrap? Pinker claims that two things are going on here. Fim, when a noun is composed of two nounstems it follows the rule of pluraüzation: add an s (mouse + trap + s). Second, we are captives of history and etymology (sornetimes false etymology); a word that is imported to the language is treated as a noun-stem of the importing language, so plateau becomes plateaus, whereas a word that was part of a historic predecessor of the present language (and presumably followed different rules) retains its old plural: child/children, sheep/sheep, man/men. The explanation is that our mental lexicon must contain, in addition to meaning information, an item that the plural is irregular. The lexicon must also contain idiomatic expressions which have meanings not deducible from their constituent words, such as dog-in-a-manger or piggy-in-the-middle.

3.2 The Grammar

Observe that it has not been possible to acquire the lelacon without acquiring some des, which suggests that the lexicon and grammar may only be theoretically separable. It is in examining sentences that we see the hill richness of the grammar. First, however, observe that sense and syntax are independent; alternatively, grammar is autonomous fkom cognition. This can be illustrated in two ways: by grammatically/syntacticaliy correct sentences that are meaningless (Chomsky's "Colourless green ideas sleep iüriously") and by grammatically/syntactically incorrect sentences that are meaninghil ("How old Cary Grant?" "Old Cary Grant fine; how you?" or "Man woman sex baby."). Well, almost: there are arnbiguous sentences such as "Dr. Ruth Westheimer discusses sex with Dick Cavea." which appear to have the meaning wrapped up in some way in the grammar.

The grammar provides 'hiles" not only for sentence construction but also for deconstruction. A sentence unfolds in a linear order, the order that we speak the words, or hear them, or read them. Just as we know how to unpack "anti-neo-Darwinianism" we know how to unpack a sentence such as: "How Ann Salisbtuy cmclah that Pam Dawber's anger at not receiving her fair share of acclaim for Mork and Mindy's success derives from a fiagile ego escapes me." (P. 971

1 use chis example because it illustrates very bnefly a nurnber of grammatic rules. Fust the idea of markers and traces. We must keep the opening "How" in mind until we reach the verb "escapes"; we must keep "anger" in mind until we reach the verb "derives". We must match "not" with ".. .hg" and look for the genind/participle required by "at". And we have this sort of structure (at the point in the sentence of the opening parenthesis we place a marker in our memory to remember everything in the sentence so far, to put it on hold as it were, because that bit of the sentence will not begin to be completed until we reach the closing (matching) parenthesis):

1. How (something) escapes me;

2. How Ann Salisbury can claim (something) escapes me;

3. How Ann Salisbury can claim that Pam Dawber's anger (at something) [is because oFJ (something) escapes me.

Second, in each case there are grammatic rules goveming the contents of the (something), whether it be a noun phrase, or a verb phrase. Third, there is the rule that a sentence is led by the subject of rhe verb, which leads to an extremely important result, the existence of what Pinker calls "super-des". There are four types of phrases, noun, verb, adjective and prepositional. A phrase has a head-usually the noun, verb, adjective or preposition-followed by any number (zero or greater) of modifiers. This super-nile allows for the codinudecoding of al1 phrases no matter what their type. Now Pinker claims that if we were to replace "foliowed" by "preceded" then we would have a super- nile that obtained for Japanese, which is ordered along the lines of "man dog bites". Chomsky's claim is that the super-des are imate, and that the child acquiring language has only to set the precede/succeed Nvitch (something which can be done fairly easily through empirical observation) in order to be able to decode language as it is exposed to it. Thus by positing the existence of principles (super-des) and parameters (switches) language acquisition has been reduced to a few mies rather than the hundreds traditional under the SSSM, such as "Never end a sentence with a prepositionn-which are language specific, prescriptive, normative, and often depend upon knowing the meaning of a sentence. Under Language as Instinct, the sentence 'This is something that 1 will not put up withn is not a gramrnatically incorrect Corn of '"T'his is something up with which 1 will not put": the final 'Wthn is the head of a prepositional phrase, so it must precede whatever cornes next-in this case, nothing. So now the meaning of ''desn differs between the SSSM and Language is Instinct paradigrns.

This illustrates very well the difference between SSSM and Language is Instinct; the former is dealing with prepositions and a normative view of language with a prescriptive grammar; the latter talks of phrases, heads, X-bars, traces, markers and parameters. Tthey are not treating the same thing. Another thing we get here is an explanation of 1 rule suits all; under the SSSM, english children Iearn English syntax, japanese children leam Japanese syntax, latin children Iearn Latin syntax and so on.

We must also return to the Iexicon. For verbs, the lexicon must contain information about whether the verb takes a direct object (e.g "puf' must be followed by "something" and "somewhere"-again illustrating the closeness of the lexicon and the grammar-and this is used in the grammatic structure of the sentence so that any sentence containing the "put" word, whether statement, command, question, active or passive, must satisb the need for a thing put and a place put ("Put it down!" "It was put down." "1 put it down," "Put dom the plate," and so on. This illustrates the notion of deep smcture: whatever the phrase structure of the sentence, there is an underlying (deep) structure which must be adhered to. The deep structure is dependent on the lexicon enmes (such as "put must take an object and a place") and the trace is the connection between the deep and the surface structure of the sentence. Fially, the function words. There is a whole bunch of words that are neither nouns, adjectives, verbs, nor prepositions, such as: and, but, than, that, (in order) to, a, the, 's, or, be, will, and so on. Function words impose a structure on the sentence. So for example we know that when we see an 'Sf" we are deaiing with a sentence of the form "if (sentence) then (sentence)"; if a sentence contains the auxiliary "will", we know we are dealing with an intended act or the hope that an event will occur.

Pinker ends with a clairn that this explanation of gramrnar and syncax "offers a clear rehrtation of the doctrine that there is nothing in the rnind that was not first in the senses." (p. 124). A lexicon, traces and X-bars are not real o bjects. They are theoretical entities. However, if the theory of grammar and lexicon is accepted as being a "goodn model for language acquisition, then it must also be accepted that there are some mental and physical realities underlying the model and which fonn a basis for it. These physical and mental entities are not acquired, they are an innate part of our composition as human beings. Pinker's contention is that granmar links the ear, the mouth and the mind and possesses its own abstract logic and complexity.

3.3 Conclusion

We now have here the outline of a (simplified) theory: in the lexicon word stems and their "meanings" (together with a few other things like their type (verb, adjective, noun) and any irregularities) are leamed and stored, together with affixes and some desfor conjunction. We also have a grammar containing a number of rules for sentence construction which devolve fiom some "super-des" and parameters which are part of our innate mental composition. Together these allow us to create (encode) new words from old whose meaning is decodable/intelligible to some other person who speaks the same language. It is a theory that operates under the paradigm that we are impelled to learn word meanings and to build a lexicon and grammar according to innate rules. There are prime theoreticai entities, the word stem which is for the purposes of the theory atomistic and the sentence which is similarly atomistic in terms of meaning. The theory does not contain the vocabulary of the SSSM, words such as gerund, participle, gender, person: it creates its own meanings. And it claims that the 2 year old child is able to instinctively deduce the des.

Section 4 The Physical Basis of Language (Comecting Language and Speech)

Language is a whole body experience. It requires the larynx, the diaphragm, the tongue, the mouth, the üps, the hearing, the eyes, the hands and arms, and the brain al1 to be coordinated in order to convey the exquisite meaning of "Brunis is an honoutable man."

4.1 The Sound of Language

We are accustomed to thinking of words as discrere units of language, which may in Nm be broken down into morphemes (the basic part of a word to which meaning can be imputed), phonemes (the basic unis of sound, approximating the letters of a word) and syllables (the basic sound of a vowel, possibly coupled with consonants, in a word) each of which can in themselves be treated as a distinct and discrete unit. So far Pinker has given us a theoretical basis for language in the rnind/brain. But language is used a a vehicle of communication, the outward manifestation of what is in the brain. Under the SSSM, speech is what we leam as we leam language, so a word and its sound are identical (which legitimizes the study of sounds as being the tme subject of linguistics). But under Language as Instinct a word has become an abstraction, a theoretical entity, an enay in the mental lexicon.

The rain may indeed in Spain fa11 mainly on the plain, but most people do not speak in the way that Henry Higgins would have Eliza Dolittle speak; they utter a continuous saeam of sound, rated at anything from ten to thirty phonemes a second (or fifty if they are Alvin the Chipmunk). Pinker provides justification for this on the grounds of "least effort" and efficiency: we need to speak by expending as Little energy on the act as possible. The variation of the vocal tract as we speak is a continuous, not a discrete, process since it requires less effort than would the separate amculation of each word, and this results in sounds that only approlamate the sound that would be made if they (words) were individually and succinctly pronounced. As an illusmtion, experiment with "utter this belief", "utter disbelief" and "udder disbelief" or "a noisy noise annoys an oyster".

So part of the communication process is for the speaker to convert thoughts into words, words into sound, and for the hearer to reverse the process. Pinker claims that there are structural desgoveming sound production.

Sound production can be analyzed mechanically or physiologically along the following Lines. The major articulator of a phoneme may be one of six parts of the speech apparatus: larynx, sofk palate, tongue body, tongue tip, tongue root or lips; the articulator is moved in one of three ways: fricative, stop or vowel; then configurations of other parts of the apparatus can be specified: whether the larynx is voiced or not (Le. the vocal chords are used in the production of the phoneme), whether the soft palate is nasal or not, whether the lips are rounded or not; and whether the tongue root is tense or lax. This gives a possibility of 288 (theoretical) phonemes-6 possibilities for major articulator x 3 possibilities for type of articulation x 16 possibilities for other parts. In fact, English uses about only 40 of these.

There are niles governing the combinations of phonemes to determine what syllables are formed in the language; syllables are arranged into feet, and a word rnay consist of a number of feet. Some feet are stressed in a word, others are not, and 10 and behold! Poeay! There are also rules goveming pronunciation. As an illustration the past tense of the verbs walk, slap, and pass is pronounced as if the last letter is a t, whereas the past tense of jog, sob and fiu is pronounced as a d. This illustrates that the past tense of a word ending with a voiceless consonant is sounded as if it were a t (which is not voiced) and the past tense of a verb ending in a voiced consonant is sounded as a d (which is itself voiced). The physical problem here is that it is a difficult transition from a voiced to an unvoiced sound (in order to sound the d in waked we have to Say "walk- edn; to Say "sobf' there has to be some sort of stop between the b and the t (as further evicience of this, when saying the word "subterranean" we tend either to say "subterranean", to change the voiced b into a voiceless p to give "supterranean", or to omit the b altogether: "sutterranean"). A consequence of ail this is that in order to successNly speak a foreign language one must master not only the lexicon and grarnmar but also the phoneme group of which the syllables of the language are composed. Since part of language acquisition is mastering the phoneme group of our native tongue, which usually takes place when we are around two years old, and the phoneme group of a second language rnay be totally different to the one acquired as a child (one might Say "foreign") it is not surprising that it is hard for many adults to correctly pronounce a second language. This means that under the Language is Instinct paradigm, mastering a second language involves mastering a complex range of motor skills to control the vocal apparatus whereas under the SSSM we merely repeat what we did when we mastered our first language: iearn words and how to pronounce them.

The point is that these desobtain for both listeners and speakers. And in listening to an unknown language, not knowing the rules means that we cannot exuapolate the syllables and morphemes and hence words. But if we do know the niles then we can generally understand what someone is saying to us. But we also get a bit of help fiom Our brains in that there is some sort of expectation built up by markers and funcrion words when we are listening: we know that an "if" will be followed by a "then" and so are expecting it. But there is also a contemal expectation built up by the subject of the conversation/discourse. For example, around the topic of zoo we have expectations of animals and birds to help us fil1 out the sounds into words. And of course one phoneme may only be foI1owed by another chosen from a limited set.

Which brings us to writing and spelling. In English, which on the whole uses a phonemic based alphabet, the assumption is that a word can be sounded out from its spelling but there are conventions of spelling which do not always correspond to conventions of speech (as illusuated by passeUpast). But vniting is discrete, speakuig is not. As we have seen it is the production of a continuous sound fiom which words are inferred. But English is also to some extent a morphemic based writing system (iike Latin) so a particular spelling might be used to indicate morphemic relationships even though two words are pronounced totally differently (For example, resign and resigna tion) . Furthemore, speiling is, compared to (or in cornparison with!) speaking, unlikely to change: no matter what the regional pronuciation or inflexion of a word, it has only one spelling. Spelling is also normative, so a word whose spelling was fixed 300 years ago may have been pronounced differently then than it is now (the suffix -tion is a good example as it used to be pronounced "si-onn rather than as it now is "shun").

But writing is not in ougenetic makeup, whereas speaking is. Writing is a way of representing words which humans have constructed and which has to be mily leamed (given that we possess the motor skills, reading and writing can be learned successfully at any age with no denimental effects); speaking is a different way of representing words. And words are really in Our heads. Saussure held that the word (sign) is arbitrary, but it can be so only to a limited extent. A desk is a desk in English, but there is no way it could have been pupitre in English because the phonemes of which it is composed are not the phonemes of English, they are the phonernes of French. Hence the rendency to anglicise: Ypres becomes Wipers because those are the English phonemes that come closest to the spelling. But however it is pronounced, it is speUed Ypres.

4.2 Sentences - Decoding the Message

So far we have looked at the construction of a sentence, and Pinker has made the underlying assurnption that the message is somehow in our minds before we consuuct the sentence that contains the message. This is a major incommensurability between the SSSM and Language is Instinct paradigms. For Pinker the speech act is goal directed (we want to plant a thought in the other person's mind), and thfs must play a part in the formation of the sentence, as must the thought underlying the sentence. For adherents of the SSSM, the sentence is the thought. A major problem-lying-is explained easüy under Pinkefs view which is hard to explain under the SSSM. But how do we exaact the message when we receive the sentence? 61 Pinker's major argument is that we understand a sentence in real time, whether we read it, hear it, or see it (as sign language). This means that we cannot go back over a sentence, in the aaditional way of taking the whole sentence and analyzing (parsing) it into nouns, verbs, subjects, phrases, clauses and so on. But that is looking ar a sentence with hindsight and is not normally how we expenence a sentence. Whether we read or hear it, it graduaily becomes unfolded into a cornplete sentence which we have to have understood by the time we reach the Ml stop because we will be into the next sentence. As a simple example, by the time we have heard ''The dog" we know that it is a noun phrase, the subject of the sentence, and we are expecting a verb. When we hear 'kas bitten" we (almost) know a preposition must come nem: "by" and we are almost sure that a noun phrase will foliow-"the man". In Pinker's analysis, as we parse we are creating and cornpleting sirnultaneous branches of a sentence aee with the property that as soon as we get to the end of a branch we know we will never need to go back to it but before we get to the end we may have to open up new branches. And until a branch is complete we must keep it in some son of short term memory with an "incomplete" flag together with the possible expectations of how it might be completed.

From our own experience we know that some sentences are easier to understand than others. The nursery Song of the house that Jack built provides an illustration of this. By the time we finish the verse "This is the maiden al1 forlom that milked the cow with the crumpled hom that tossed the dog that chased the cat that caught the rat that lived in the house that Jack built" we are waiting for the completion of the phrases started by each "that", and we have probably forgotten what he first one was. Pinker's explanation is that there are various ways of branching, some of which are inherentiy more easy to understand than others.

But we use language for communication. How can we be sure that the person we sent the message to received it as intended? Well, we have a good theory for how a sentence is constructed; can we reverse the theory (the classic line of auto repair manuals "replacement is the reverse of removal")? If so, we accomplish a nurnber of things. First the original theory becomes more plausible; second, it gains a simpliciry that makes it intuitively more acceptabIe; tbird, it becomes a stronger theory because of these two. Especiaily if we can set it against an alternative theory which we can trash. Pinker's daim is that we can, and the value of his theory is precisely that it works when creating or when understanding a sentence.

Here we see an incommensurabili~At the beginning of The Language Instinct, Pinker announced that his view of language is that we use it "to cause precise combinations of ideas to anse in each other's minds" (p. 15). (Although he does not pursue this line of thought, this view of language provides a basis for metaphor and other figures of speech not as "grammatical" twists and tums or clever wordsrnithing, but as essential to creating my idea in your head.) This is not the same as saying that the sentence contains, or has, a meaning (which is the SSSM view of a sentence). Thus under the Language is Instinct paradigm, when we Say that we understand a sentence we are not saying we know what it means, we are saying (sornething like) "the ideas in my head are now what you intended them to be."

When we are hearing a sentence, and a number of possible branches open up, we clearly do not have time to evaluate al1 possible branches (remember we are having to understand in real time). As an analogy, consider a chess-playing cornputer which can be prograrnmed to evaluate al1 possible future move (trees): first we need to limit it to only evaluating a few nurnber of moves ahead, and second we need to be able to have it oniy evaluate "probable" or "likelf' or "profitable" moves or we codd never get it to play a first move. Pinker argues that the grammar gives us a means of understanding sentences that avoidss our having to evaluate unlikely, improbable, or unprofitable possibilities for the unfolding sentence. We have, as each word is uttered or heard, to go a little Mer down what we believe to be the right track at the risk of having to back up to the beginning if we take a wrong branch. Pinker's argument is that the structure of the aee is such that we are led down the correct path and that we have a number of contexmal clues to assist us: the context of the conversation, the context of the speaker's and the listenefs shared experiences, the context of intonation and timing. Memory does have a place in sentence understanding, and that is in the notion of a trace. A trace is in essence an unsatisfied reference derived from the lexicon which we expect to find satisfied at some later (or previous) thne in the sentence to enable us to perform a reconstruction or transformation of the sentence. The meaning of ''This is the house that Jack builf' is the same as "Jack built this housen except in that two traces are engendered in the first by "tiiis" and "that", whereas only one is engendered in the second. And the hm of ''This is the maiden al1 forlorn that miked the cow with the cruxnpled horn that tossed the dog that chased the cat that caught the rat that lived in the house that Jack buiit" is the difficulty in remembering the uaces. Pinker claims that scientific experiment (brain scans or brain activity detectors) back up these ideas by showing unusual or unexpected cerebral activity at unsatisfied or miscued uaces.

Pinker also claims that the undentanding of sentences depends on an irnplicit cooperation between speaker and hearer so that things that are missing from the tes of the sentence can be filled in, as in:

Woman: Sm leaving you. Man: Who is he?

And mtly there are only a few reaily ambiguous sentences, Dr Ruth Westheimer discussing sex with Dick Cavett being one (our lexicon enay for "discuss" tells us that we discuss sornething with someone; our lexicon entry for sex tells us that "sex with" is idiomatic; so we dont know whether to associate the 'tvith" with "discuss" or "sex").

4.3 Why Do We Speak Different Languages?

There are around 4000 languages in use on this planet. One view is that they are al1 so different that we indeed have a tower of babel. We can start instantiating the differences: English is a Subject-Verb-Object language, Japanese is Subject-Object-Verb, Gaelic is Verb-Subject-Object; English is isolating in that it builds sentence from distinct words, Latin is infiecting in which word components contain various bits of idormation. The goal of classical ünguistics was to identify the dEerences. But under the language is Instinct paradigm we look for similarities.

Are there universal patterns? There appear to be so, and they appear to be irnplicative (that is, of the form "If a language has property A, then it will also have propercy 8"). This is coherent with the notion that the first thing a child does when acquiring a language is to set the parameters for, for example, SV0 rather than SOV And one universal quoted by Pinker bears on this: if a language is SV0 it has prepostions; if it is SOV then it has postpositions. This implication is not part of the language, and it cannot be learned or acquired as a part of the language: it is a theoretical observation form the standpoint of someone studying a language, and it is in theory falsifiable. Another universal is that al1 languages use subjects, verbs and objects. Another universal daim is that the lexicon and grammar underlie al1 languages.

What we see here is a begiming of a theory of language based on the Language is Instinct paradigm. From the point of view of constnicting a theory, we have seen how al1 children start acquiring language at around age 2, and that this acquisition is not necessarily dependent on the language to which they are exposed (that is, they don't have to have exposure to a fully functional Ianguage user in order to becorne one such themselves), although language acquisition seems to be dependent upon developed notions of self and other. We also know that different languages have seemingly vastly different structures. We have also seen that language is a concoction of words and rules for word formation and copulation. It is the proposed universals that pin up whatever theory of language is developed. They are empirically verifiable and theoretically disprovable; but until that happens, they form the scaffolding of the theory of language developed under the Language is Instinct paradigm.

Learning does have a part to play in language acquisition, as we have seen. The vocabulary is leamed, the rules for word formation inferred. The sound is arbitrary, and the phonemes of a language are learned but the syntactic construction is not (the univenals illusmted by Pinker pertain to the construction and saumure of the language rather than the cornponents). Pinker's argument for this is that it is evolutionady fitter this way: given that we have an ability to acquire a language, it doesn't matter what it is as long as it is the same as that of the group of people amongst whom we live, breathe and mate: and that is an accident of birth. Similarly the open-endedness of language is an advantage in that we leam the content of language (i.e. the ideas and concepts it expresses)-and one which depends on the acceptance of separation between language and thought. An analogy might be that the fine motor control required for handwriting is an advantage that is innate, but however we use that control, and whichever hand we use for it, are no part of the advantage. Learning is also an advantage when groups of people conjoui: without leaming there would never be a common language.

Pinker claims that there are three factors which affect language change over time: variation/innovation, heredity/leaming and isolation, no one of which amon its own, and each of which has an evolutionary counterpart. Variation and innovation are seen through conjunction-groups of people joining end up with a language that is some admisture of both groups' languages-or in a mend, such as estuary English becoming the dominant accent in the United Kingdom. Second, learning from our parents ensures a continuity of linguistic form. Third, separation and isolation result in two separate languages that are subjected to different influences and forces to change and so over time becorne quite distinct. We can see this in the differences between present day english English and american English, and in the differences in English in various parts of the USA.

We now have a Language is Instinct explanation for the genealogicai tree of Ianguage which was the raison d'être of nineteenth century european linguistics. The three methods of variation plus an understanding of universals provide a means of grouping languages from which conclusions can be made about their origins in terms of human migration. Thus we might intuitively suspect that the 800 languages of New Guinea are a farnily, and also the 200 australian aboriginal languages, but now we have the tools (under the Language is Instinct paradigm) to show it. And now we begin to tie in even more closely to the Darwinian paradigm. If a present day language can be shown to have ancestor languages, or if two languages can be shown to have a cornmon ancestor, then it is a logical inference that in the first case the groups of people speaking the languages must have corne together, or in the latter, diverged. Thus language studies can provide indications of the migrations of our human ancestors. Notice that we cannot make conclusions about the ethnicity of the language users: the fact that 1 speak English does not irnply that 1 am descended from a Roman, an Angle, a Jute, a Dane, a Celt, a Saxon, a Viking, a French person, a German or a Greek: it implies that groups of people who spoke these various language have at various ames corne into contact with each other and left their linguistic marks on the language 1 use today.

4.4 Conclusion

If we were to be examined by martians would they Say that as a single species we ail spoke the same language? The answer has to be yes, since hurnans al1 form one species and interbreed whatever the language they speak. If language is an adaptation then language differences must be variations in the way that Holstein cattle differ from Herefords, or else Darwin was wrong. So in order to maintain the Darwinian paradigm, Pinker has to show that despite the apparent differences in human languages, they possess an underlying biological similarity.

Part of the work was done when Pinker showed that thought and language are separate. Another part was done by the introduction of grammar and lexicon medon by super-des and parameters. Part was done by the explanation of the speech act and the phonetic basis of language, and the explanation of how we are able to understand sentences as we hear them unfolding. Part was done by the minimization of the role of leaming in language acquisition.

What al1 these parts add up to is a series of presumed biological universal (to humans) charactenstics which corne together to enable each one of us to speak the language we speak. Thus language is based in our genes, but different languages are 67 dserences of gene expression triggered by the individual's environment, such as is the onset of puberty of the type of cancer we wili succumb to. 1 am not making a claim that Pinker is correct or nght, but 1 am making the claim that he has provided a view of language that is consistent with our understanding of evolution.

Section 5 Evolution and the Genetic Basis of Language

The claim that an ability or a faculty is instinctive naturally leads to the questions

"Is it an adaptation" and 'mat is its genetic basis?" and "1s there a language gene?" Pinker has already demonstrated that language can be disrupted by some genetic malfunctions. Clearly language is somehow controlled by, or a function of, the brain, so is there anything that we know about the brain that will throw light on the genetic basis OC language?

First the state of our knowledge of brain function is such that we can be confident that Broca's area in the left brain hemisphere is hndamental to our use of language. Secondly, it has been experimentally validated that the left hemisphere is heavily involved in al1 language activity (hearing, seeing, signing, speaking, writing) even though some parts of the activity might usually be under the control of the nght hemisphere, such as listening to music. Except that this is not the case for al1 humans; people who are left handed do not have brains that are minor images of nght-handed people, most of whom appear to have language controlled by the left hemisphere.

Clearly this is a muddy picture, but two things are going on. First we are pushing language into neuroscience, and second we are defining research questions-or perhaps identimng anomalies. So when we go down the path of "in most people the left hemisphere controls language; in people who are lefi handed, the brain appears to be symmemcal but opposite to the brains of nght handed people; except that in many left handed people, the left hemisphere appears to control language" we are recognizing that there is an anomaly that we will not bother to deal with because at the present time it does not seem to matter very much (to our emerging paradigm, for which it suffices that a particular area of the brain determines language). 68 We have already seen that an injury in Broca's area results in language impairment of a particdar type; in Wemicke's area, language impairnent of a parcicular (but different) type. Apply the mode1 we have developed so far of grammar and lexicon and we conclude that Broca's area is engaged in the grammar, Wernicke's area is involved in the lexicon We see that the paradigm Language is Instinct is being used to diagnose what is wrong. We are attempting to map the theoretical ont0 the actual (in the same way that we attempt to match a gene to a particdar sequence of proteins in a DNA string). But we dont even know that the brain is an assemblage of discrete cornponents (although it seems probable that particular areas of a given brain are related to pamcular cognitive bctions, we can only Say that is how that particular brain developed; it may be that those same areas are located somewhere else in a different brain). Thus the whole field of brain research becomes linked under the Language is Instinct paradigrn.

Another area of interest for deciding the genetic basis of language is when things go wrong. There are language impairments and disorders which have a genetic basis. In studying a particular disorder, for example Specific Language Impairment, making the assumption that one gene location on one pair of chromosomes is involved, will give us insight into an aspect of language (the (in-)abiliv to infer the rule for the formation of the plural of a word, for example) and provide us with a rneans of falsifyng ou.theory. We should also be able to detect variation in language usage, just as we can detect variation in height, eye colour: perhaps a fondness for puns, the use of Malaprops (Malapropisms), or the ability to insert sorne variation of "fuck" into every sentence one utters.

The claim that something is an adaptation is a triclqr one. It must be justified in terms of companng the species that possesses the supposed adaptation with some other supposedly "related" species that does not possess it; and a plausible story must be constructed to expiain why nature would select for the adaptation: what son of evolutionary advantage does it confer? And an adaptivist explanation also has to be in keeping with Darwin's theory. We have to be sure that what is identifîed as an "adaptationn is in fact such and not an %captationnor a "spandrel". Thus we can claim an elephant's tdis an adaptation (and make up a plausible or even a just-so story as to how it rnight have come about) since most mammals possess noses which exhibit a range of morphologies; similarly a giraffe's ne&. Or we could come up with an explanation in terms of sexual selection-the peacock's tail, or the length of a nose indicating the length of other body parts. But language seems different-possibly because we are unused to regarding it in Chomsky's concept as a natural kind.

Undoubtedly the language possessed by homo sapiens sapiens sets the species apart from others. Arguably other species communicate amongst themselves (ants, birds, chimps, dolphins, educated fleas) and may even have concepts of identity, but our use of language is unique on this planet. This, Pinker correctly observes, places the developrnent of language on the evolutionary tree somewhere after the branch leading to homo diverged from ancestral chimpanzees. This is indisputable. Given that we accept Darwin's theory, and given that we accept that language is an adaptation, and given that at some stage the chimps and we humans shared a comrnon ancestor, language must have arisen in (proto-)humans after they diverged frorn the chimp branch of the evolutionary tree. But it is extremely likely that this common ancestor possessed an opposable thumb, an adaptation we have in common with the great apes. Thus in order to be compatible with the overarching DaMnnian paradigm, the Language is Instinct paradigm includes the claim that language is an adaptation, and Pinker has justified this claim by suggesting how there can be a link between thought and molecular behaviour (in the example of the Turing machine)-that is, a physiologica1 basis for the mind-and a separation between mind and language (thus allowing for (self-) consciousness to be a separate adaptation so that we can accept the similarities between humans and the higher primates (presuming them to be homologies) and also accept the language difference. Notice that it does not have to be explained how or why this adaptation arose (although that is a research question of the paradigm) since an adaptive explanation can easily become a fairy stoV Al1 we have to go on to create one is the fossil evidence, any supporting indirect evidence, and logic. Thus theories of language origin are dismissed by Pinker as being mainly speculative (Dunbar (1996) for example argues that language development promoted social cohesion through gossip). But we don't have any fossilized brains, and we are not able to dissect pickled ones in such a way as to be able to Say "This bit is the lexicon".

Pinkefs point is that selection works on individuals. 1 am what I am because my ancestors were able to reproduce, and each generation differed slightly (on account of sexual reproduction) from the previous generation, But it is not always clear what is an adaptation: bones are considered an adaptation, but their whiteness is not. And traits may disappear by accident: a person who is stmck by lighniing before they have reproduced is not (given our present knowledge of how lighaiing operates) any less fit than anyone else, just unluckyi Or they rnay become dominant by accident. In itself, being left or right handed probably doesn't matter; but if 95% of the population is right handed, it probably does. Pinker also brings in the idea of adaptive complexity: any genetic change in a generation is minuscule, but the raw material of generation is the sum total of the minuscule changes effective over a11 previous generations.

The point is that it is pretty unlikely that Eve suddenly got a giant brain and was able to talk in words and sentences, but that a family that understood each others' gnints had a bemchance of avoiding sabre tooth tigers and marauding neanderthals than one which didn't. And probably had better sex. And eventually better gossip. And so survived over thousands of generations, incrementaily changing over each one.

The story of how language developed has been told many times in many different ways. Frequently it is supposed that it developed hand-in-hand with tool use. Any adaptation that helps you get better sex has a lot going for it. But adaptational explanations are in a large part stones, so the criteria to be used for them are plausibility, consistency and coherence. But if we look at the evolutionary tree, we could wonder why bonobos, who certainly like sex, and who seem to communicate amongst themselves, did not develop a language facilicy like that of humans, and this seems to suggest that while Pinker's story is plausible, coherent and consistent with what we know of how evolution occurs it lacks something in terms of being a complete explanation of why we have language. 71 Section 6 The Relationship between Language and the Mind

Pinker's conduding chapter is to examine what the ideas he has put forth about language tell us about the rnind. It is also his last kick at the SSSM cat. Central to his explanation is the clairn that the hurnan brain is a collection of imate psychological mechanisms, which include the mechanisms which give us the ability to learn. These are inherited, and as with most inherited characteristics or traits, have a range of expression. The individual's environment provides input to these mechanisms: we perceive, we learn. We also develop skills, knowledge and values as we are exposed to them in other people. AU of this is expressed in our behaviour. Pinker has shown this in action as he has taken us through his argument chat language is an instinct; heredity gives us, through parameters, the ability to identify the type of language that surrounds us, our linguistic environment. We, through contact with more expenenced language users than ourselves and in conjunction with our ability to learn words, acquire these skills. What we now have is a view of language that is consistent with the Integrated Causal Mode1 of Tooby and Cosmides, a view of the mind that is consistent with Evolutionary Psychology. Such a mind is based on the notion of universals underlying human behaviour and development and a basic hard-wiring for certain things: counting, classibng, distinguishing, creating a world view: a mind of "adapted computational modules."

In short, Pinker is making the point that the language instinct he has argued for in the book is in keeping with research into the mind, whether in the field of Cognitive Sciences or that of Evolutionary Psychology. He also claims that it is in keeping with evolutionary biology. In short, al1 hurnans have the same mind, and they al1 work in the same way. The mind is a set of evolutionarily adapted modules for which a story can be made up to demonsuate its adaptive advantage.

Most irnportantly however Pinker is placing humans firmly in a Darwinian and namiistic framework. CHAPTER 4 THE REV0LUTI:ON

The Longuage htinct is a work of science popularization, intended ro persuade the general reader that language is not something we learn (in the Skinnerian behaviouralist sense) but something that is instinctive. This daim, that language is an instinct, is a claim about linguistics but it is also a claim about humans and Our evolution; thus it is a daim of Darwinism. It has to be considered against the theory it supersedes, the SSSM, and against the theory of evolution by natural selection.

1 emphasize that this is a scientific clairn. First, it has become a daim of biology, of evolutionary biology if you will, and so is ipso facto scientific. Second, it is a claim of linguistics which is practiced in al1 respects as a science as far as Kuhn's analysis is concerned. In order for it to be characterized as a science for Nagel it must be practiced hypothetico-deductively, and although 1 have not argued this strenuously, most linguists wodd assert that this is how they ply their trade.

1 have chosen two models for exploring change in scientific theones. Thomas Kuhn argues that scientific theories change in a revolutionary way, sudden, violent, irraaonal, and not necessarily logical, while Ernest Nagel holds that science is above al1 a rational activity and proceeds by logical steps which reveal more and more of the tmth about the world.

Setion 1 The Relationship between SSSM and Language is Instinct

The phrase Language is Instinct is neat and pithy. In Kuhn's terms it is a paradigm, for Nage1 it is an axiom. The SSSM does not have such a concise foundational statement, but perhaps 'We are Informed by our Culture" comes close. For the Kuhnian, the transition from one to another is simply explained: rhey are totally different, they explain different things; however, for those who, like Tooby and Cosmides, believe that scientific change is rational and smooth, we need to see if there is some link between them. in the hypothetico-deductive model, the hypothesis is simply an intellemial enti~It need not be based on anything. Its function is to serve as a basis for deduction. The theory gains in strength and confirmation when observation and prediction are in line with the logical deductions of the theory However, the theory may be junked in favour of another theory which somehow does better. Thus Newton's mechanics and gravity can be cast aside to make way for Einstein's relativiw, and there is little dissent because rationally Einstein's is the better theory to explain how the universe is. And of course we can still use Newton effectively when playing snooker.

Similarly then for Tooby and Cosmides' lntegrated Causal Mode1 and for Pidcer's Language is Instinct. This latter can be considered as a hypothesis which replaces We are uiformed by our Culture because it explains the way we are in some better way. Thus there would seem to be no difference between Kuhn and Nagel: for whatever reason, it is a case of out with the old and in with the new because the new does a better job, no matter whether we cal1 it a paradigm or a hypothesis.

But there is a difference, and it is bound up with Kuhn's notion of incommensurability, something which Nagel denies (see chapter 2 section 2.4). Incommensurability is an extra-theoretical concept, so in obse~ngit or discussing it we are not committing to one theory or the other. Under the SSSM, language is what we speak; it is what we learn (to fiIl up our blank slates) as children, it is subject to (meaning-related) rules of syntax which may be arbitrated by Fowler Bros, William Safire or the Académy Français. For Pinker on the other hand language is to describe what is in our heads. These are not two ways of looking at the same thing, they are two different things. As Chomsky puts it, language is a namlobject, and so we need to smdy it as we would study the heart. Ruse (1989) argues that the revolution in geology which resulted in the acceptance of plate tectonics was not in fact a revolution in the Kuhnian sense because, despite the change in viewpoint the basic facts did not change: earthquakes and volcanoes remained the same. With language we were looking at a skill, a Iearned behaviour: we are now looking at an expression of our genes. The facts have changed. At the nsk of belabouring incommensurability 1 want to summarize the evidence for it by showing how certain key words have been transformed in meaning. For Pinker, language is something we use to convey thoughts fiom one head to another: rny statement that the cat sat on the mat is not intended to convey a fact about the real world that can be determined to be true or false, but it is intended to make you think what 1 think. In nini, we do not learn laquage, but we acquire it: at a certain age our brains and bodies develop in such a way that we are impelled to start speaking (or signing). Language complexity is seen not as a measure of cultural or experiential richness, but as a measure of our ability to express any idea or sensation that we have. Grammar (syntax) has changed so that it is not a set of prescriptive rules pecuIiar to the particular tongue we speak, but part of our brains. For a sentence to be grammatically correct does not depend on the meaning of the sentence. The meaning of a word is not to be found in the external world but in the interna1 world of Our minds. The desof language are no longer the meaning-dependent syntactic rules of a language, but universal rules of how our brains develop.

But most important is the change in what is the mind. Fundamentally the mind is no longer a blank slate to be written on by our sensations and experiences, but a living, growing organ with a need to express itself. No more is language ability tied to some notion of general intelligence. Most important, the relationship between language and thought has changed: language is now a rneans of conveying and expressing thought, not thought itself.

A major difference between Kuhn and Nage1 is in their view of what a scientific theory is, and Nagel's hypothetico-deduciive mode1 is difficult to apply in this case because the axioms of linguistics are no longer well defined (this is not to Say that they were never well-defined: the historicism of the early european school operated under very well defined des) due to the inherent circularity of meaning-dependent desof syntax, even though it was practiced on hypothetico-deductive lines. The daim that language is an instinct places it firmiy in the field of teleological modek (in Nagel's sense that the snidy is of a part of a whole with no assumption of purpose or design in the whole) . 75 A fwther difficulty with using Nage1 is in the nature of bridging rules. Even if we agree that linguistics is practiced hypothe tico-dedudvely, and that the SSSM is reducible to Language is Instinct, 1 am at a loss to hdany empirical observation that wodd enable a bridge to be built which would reconcile al1 the differences between the SSSM and Language is Instinct.

Section 2 The Relationship with Darwinism

The claim that some quality, characteristic or mit is an instinct places the claimant fimily in the Darwinian camp. 1s there more to Language is Instinct than the assertion of nanualism (the docmne that we are natural organisms subject to the forces of evolution through natural selection and explicable by the laws and theones of the naml sciences)?

At one level the answer is a resounding NO! Darwin forces us to explain ourselves in natualistic terrns. We cannot Say that evolution applies to everything except humans. But we study genetics and evolutionary biology and botany and zoology and evolutionary psychology as sciences in themselves, and 1 do not believe we will suddenly see the incorporation of linguistics into any of these disciplines, the reason being that there is a form of reduction (not in the sense that Nage1 uses that tem but in the sense of reducing something cornplex into simpler parts to facilitate study and understanding) that seems to work. So given that linguistics is likely to remain an identifiable discipline, perhaps with a different hypothesis/paradigm, what then?

The fundamental hypothesis and the laws of linguistics have changed, whether we prefer Kuhn's change in paradigm or Nagel's rejection of an old hypothesis for a better one. What are the new laws? According to Pinker they are laws which devolve from Chomsky's innate super-des such as "If a language is Subject-Verb-Object (detennined by a super-mie) then it will have prepositions." Inasmuch as an innate super-rule is part of Darwin's theory, then linguistics can be seen as reducible to Darwinism. But the rules are conditional, depending (presumably) on the environmental determination of genetic expression-how the language switches are set-and this does not really seem to be the sort of scientific theory that Nagel is concerned with. Conceivably we could set up some sort of n-dimensional rnatrix so that we could select a subset of niles that apply in a partÏcular case, but this wodd give us any number of different scientific theories. It would seem then that linguistics is not reducible in Nagel's sense, and nor is it in some way bridgeable to DaMnism.

Nagel's discussion of emergence or emergent propemes does however provide some link. Essentially the concept of emergence is that it is not possible to predict hm properties of pam properties of the whole. Linguistics as described by Pinker is a study of one of the pam of the organism (possibly in the belief that it will better enable us to understand the whole), as is the mapping of the hurnan genome. Nagel asserts that there will be properties of the organism as a whole that wiil not be deducible from linguirtics. This is not to deter us from the study of parts, it is to recognize that there is a limit to how much it will increase our knowledge and understanding of the way the world is and the way our minds are. But as in die preceding section I find it difficult to apply Nagel's analysis in a way that throws much light on the relationship between linguistics and Darwinism.

Kuhn's analysis provides an alternative way of linking linguistics with Darwinism. Crisis anses when the cclims of competing paradigms are such that one or the other must be ditched, and Kuhn's argument is that this decision is by no rneans made wholly rationally According to Kuhn, no paradigm is wholly consistent (or there would be no anomalies) and there is no reason to suppose that it will ever be the case that we corne up with a paradigm that is totally consistent. This is not to Say thar we do not on the whole operate as if a paradigm is consistent, by either ignoring or attempting to explain the anomalies. But some paradigms are more important than othen, and the DaNvinian paradigm amongst the most important. Under the Darwïnian paradigm we must see ourselves as individual organisrns that are subject to natural selection, and this forces us to explain the innate in terms of adaptations and selection. Clearly any paradigrn of a science that deals with the nature of humans, such as Linguistics, must be subsurnable within the Darwinian paradigrn.

Section 3 Who Wï Win the Revolution?

The value of Kuhn's work is that it recognizes that the science and the scientists are inseparable (in the same way that we now recognize that any organisrn is always in some environment with which it will interact and so cannot be studied in isolation). Thus science always takes place in some social context, and the forces of change in science are not only scientific. This is in keeping with the revolutionary metaphor chosen by Kuhn. For Nagel, on the other hand, it seems that science exists almost in vanio.

A crisis occurred in linguistics as the result of the publication of Chornslq's Syntactic Stiuctures (1957). It occurred because Syntactic Stmcnires presented a radically new interpretation of language and because Chomsky is well known outside linguistic circles for his political and social activities and views. Ic is possible that this crisis could have remained in the relatively rarefied field of linguistics, but (at the risk of sounding like James Burke) there were a number of other things happening in the sixcies and seventies: the development of cornputers and the publication of Turing's paper (1950) combined to create an interest in machines that could emulate hurnan thought and hurnan speech, the post-war baby boomers starting to enter universides cailing for an increase in faculty (even, 1 suppose, in linguistics] and university expansion funded in many places fiom the public pune, the rise of sociobiology, the emergence of paleobiology (theories of punctuated equilibrium and mass extinction entenng the public consciousness) and an increased awareness of Darwinism and growth of naturalism. The cnsis occurred because linguistics suddedy had to deal with a redefinition of itself.

The revolutionary rise of Chomskyism in linguistics is well documented by Koerner (1986) in which he recants some of his earlier (1977) claims and tries to downplay the effects of Chomsky's ideas, but what he actually shows is a revolution taking place as the new guard ousts the old, despite the latter's numerical superiori~,by being invited to give prestigious tah, by getting editorships and board appointments to penodicals and publications, by getting more funding, by gemng positions at universities-in fact, by taking control of the social organization of linguistics through obtaining positions of power and obtaining money-and by being able to write their own history.

But the triumph of the revolution is to explain what was previously unexplained, the unasked and unanswered question of ünguistics as practiced under the SSSM: how do we make the transition from being babbling infants to competent users of whatever language we call our native tongue? This was a question that could be ignored because it was not relevant to the discipline, which studied languages as they were spoken or as they had been spoken. Issues of the origin of individual language were exaaneous, they were issues of child development studied by Piaget rather than linguistic issues. Besides this, being subsumed under the SSSM it was well known that we al1 learned language from being exposed to it. In short, it was not a puzzle under the Saussurean paradigm.

The new paradigm brings with it a new set of research questions, particularly in the field of teaching languages. How should we teach second languages? Will al1 non-native- English-speakers who learn to express themselves in English sound forever like Maurice Chevalier or Zsa-Zsa Gabor? The difference between thought and language leads to a justification for the whole research program of cognitive studies. What is mentalese and how does it operate? Should we rationalize the spelling of English (1 recently heard a news report that the Germans have done precisely that)?

Setion 4 Conclusion

The nature or revolutions is such that we are forced to take sides: those who are not for us are against us; there is no neutrality, and there is often no time to make one's cboice. But review the evidence. First inguistics is a science which has experienced a crisis. Out of the blue, Chomsky (arguably not a mainsneam linguist) introduced ideas which were radically different from those that forrned the stams quo, and his ideas won acceptance amongst some of the scientific comrnunity These ideas resulted in the formulation of a new paradigm, "Language is an Instinct". Within the science, opinions polarized as to whether Chomsky and Generative Grammar was right or wrong.

There were a number of anomalies that were ignored in pre-Chomsky linguistics: the effects of cultural assimilation, the problems of studying one language through the distorthg lens of another, the emphasis on dualities resdting in no possibility of objectivity, the inability to explain thought in humans and other organisms without a developed language facilicy, the immensity of the learning a child experiences in the short time they "learn" language, the supposed relationships between thought and language and intelligence and language which are confounded by people who experience strokes, the ignoring of any evidence of hereditary factors on language, the difficulties of translation from one Ianguage to anothet As long as the ünguistic community could ignore these everything was fine, but the idea that language is a natural object points the way to explaining and resolving some of these anomalies-as Pinker has done-and thus makes Language is Instinct a more acceptable paradigm.

Throughout this work 1 have been identifjring incommensurabilities (see section 1). The following particularly have different and distinct meanings under the two paradigrns: language, word, cornplex, des, learn, meaning.

1 have also identified a number of research questions under the new paradigm, such as what is the best way of teaching a second language? how do we translate kom one language to another? why do parents speak of themselves objectiveIy when children are acquiring language? what is the connection between thought and language? how are the modules of the brain related? what is the physical basis of mind? These last questions indicate another change that has taken place: an increasing awareness that we are bound by evolution and a growth in naturalisrn in the social science. This essentially forms the new world view of linguistics.

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