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L'argument De La Pauvreté Du Stimulus Linguistique Et La L’argument de la pauvreté du stimulus linguistique et la construction des questions fermées en anglais Jérôme Puckica There is recent work suggesting that languages may indeed be learnable, but if so, that’s an empirical discovery. It is not a conceptual necessity. N. Chomsky (1996, 35) Depuis maintenant plusieurs décennies, le linguiste américain Noam Chomsky et les tenants de la grammaire générative promeuvent une hypothèse radicalement innéiste ou «nativiste» de la compétence linguistique suivant laquelle cette dernière serait «un savoir sans apprentissage véritable» (Pollock 1998, 11), largement inné. L’être humain serait génétiquement doté d’un module cognitif autonome spécialement dédié au langage, la Faculté de Langage (FL), dont l’état initial est nommé Grammaire Universelle (GU), et ce module lui permettrait d’acquérir, «sans véritablement l’apprendre», une quelconque langue humaine. Il faut souligner la spécificité de l’Hypothèse Innéiste (HI) ici considérée, qui va bien au-delà de l’observation triviale que les aptitudes langagières des êtres humains ont un certain fondement génétique. Le locuteur anglophone, par exemple, n’aurait pas à apprendre que he et Bill peuvent être coréférentiels dans Bill said he would come, mais pas dans He said Bill would come (Chomsky 2000, 93) : cet aspect de son savoir linguistique découlerait d’un des principes formels de la théorie du liage (Binding Theory), que GU est supposée contenir. De façon plus surprenante, peut-être, les significations lexicales seraient elles- mêmes largement innées (Chomsky 1996, 49 ; Smith 2004, 39). Il faut cependant noter que les présentations de GU, dont le contenu a souvent paru nébuleux (cf. Tomasello 2007), ont beaucoup évolué au cours des dernières années. L'époque où les faits linguistiques étaient «expliqués» par des propriétés, toujours plus nombreuses, de GU semble révolue, ou proche de l’être. Dans le Programme Minimaliste de la grammaire générative, Chomsky (2004, 2012a) ne suggère plus qu’une version extrêmement appauvrie de GU, bien éloignée du «very richly structured innate system» (Chomsky 1984, 429) qu’il postulait autrefois. Ce postulat semblait pourtant constituer un élément essentiel de sa théorie linguistique formelle. De fait, on voit mal comment une «thèse minimaliste forte» de GU pourrait être compatible avec celle d’un savoir linguistique sans véritable apprentissage (cf. Clark & Lappin 2010, 7-8). Université Stendhal - Grenoble 3, LIDILEM. Courriel : [email protected] Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 09:31:51PM via free access 92 Jérôme Puckica Divers arguments – souvent, de simples affirmations – compatibles avec l’Hypothèse Innéiste (HI) ont été avancés au fil des années, dont certains ne semblent plus vraiment d’actualité (cf. Pullum & Scholz 2002, Dabrowska 2004, Sampson 2005, Fortis 2008). Par exemple, Chomsky (1959, 28) soulignait la «remarquable rapidité» (nous traduisons) avec laquelle l’enfant acquiert sa langue maternelle, ajoutant : «this task is accomplished in an astonishingly short time».1 Désormais, il note que FL attendrait un état dit stabilisé «peut-être dès l’âge de six à huit ans» (Chomsky 2000, 118), soit une durée considérable au vu des circonstances (motivation, disponibilité, milliers d’heures d’exposition et de pratique, sollicitations, etc.), d’autant qu’il paraît maintenant établi que l’expérience (pré)linguistique de l’enfant commence avant même sa naissance.2 Cette durée ne légitime plus vraiment l’hypothèse d’importantes connaissances linguistiques innées, pas plus que celle d’une acquisition du langage qui serait facile ou «sans efforts» (Chomsky 1975, 144), autre affirmation fréquente. C’est au plus célèbre et, peut-on penser, au plus fondamental des arguments en faveur de HI que nous nous intéresserons ici : l’argument de la pauvreté du stimulus linguistique (APS), thème sur lequel Chomsky a donné une série de conférences en 2010 (cf. Chomsky 2012a). Dans sa formulation la plus générale, l’APS est l’argument suivant lequel le savoir(-faire) linguistique des locuteurs est sous-déterminé par les données linguistiques auxquelles ils ont été exposés. Cette formulation, toutefois, est trop vague, car on peut reconnaître au moins deux versions bien distinctes de l’APS.3 D’une part, une version faible, que personne ne conteste : il ne suffit pas d’être adéquatement exposé à une langue humaine pour pouvoir l’acquérir pleinement, puisque ni les rochers, ni les oiseaux, ni même les (autres) grands singes n’y parviennent (Chomsky 1986, 4) ; encore faut-il être humain et disposer de certaines aptitudes physiques et psychologiques qui, inévitablement, sont en partie génétiquement déterminées. C’est là une évidence qui n’implique aucunement l’existence de connaissances linguistiques innées. Même des activités qui n’ont rien de particulièrement «naturel», comme conduire une voiture, impliquent certaines prédispositions biologiques ; on en conclurait pas pour autant que l’être humain est génétiquement doté d’un module cognitif dédié à la conduite automobile (cf. Aitchison 2011, 5). C’est donc uniquement la version forte, spéculative et controversée de l’APS (ci-après 1 Chomsky (1962, 529) écrit encore : «Mere exposure to the language, for a remarkably short period, seems to be all that the normal child requires to develop the competence of the native speaker.» Chomsky & Halle (1968, 4) soulignent de même la grande vitesse («great speed») de ce phénomène. Toutes les citations traduites le sont par nos soins. 2 Cf. Kail & Fayol (2000), Karmiloff & Karmiloff-Smith (2001), Clark (2009), Boysson- Bardies (2010[1996]). Bien entendu, nombre de structures sont en place bien avant six ans. Inversement, d’autres ne le sont que plus tard, l’apprentissage se poursuivant jusqu’à l’âge adulte. Tout dépend de ce que l’on entend par acquisition. La définition qu’en donne Chomsky est demeurée sensiblement la même (i.e. lorsque l’enfant atteint un niveau de compétence comparable à celui d’un locuteur adulte), de sorte que l’évolution de sa position est notable. 3 Chomsky (2006, xi ; 2012a, 8) a souvent présenté la pauvreté du stimulus comme un truisme absolu (malgré sa récente série de conférences sur le thème), mais ceci ne peut raisonnablement s’appliquer qu’à la version faible de l’argument. Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 09:31:51PM via free access Pauvreté du stimulus et construction des questions fermées en anglais 93 «APSF») qui nous intéressera ici, celle qui est censée soutenir HI. Une des formulations les plus claires en a été donnée par Hornstein & Lightfoot (1981, 9) : «People attain knowledge of the structure of their language for which no evidence is available in the data to which they are exposed as children.» Il existerait un «gouffre» (Chomsky 1986, xxv) entre les données de l’expérience (stimulus linguistique) et les connaissances acquises, un écart tel que l’acquisition du langage ne pourrait s'expliquer sans faire l’hypothèse d'importantes connaissances linguistiques innées, soit de GU. Ci-dessous, nous nous focaliserons sur l’exemple «classique» de l’APSF, qui porte sur la construction des questions fermées en anglais. Suivant Chomsky (1975), les jeunes enfants anglophones acquièrent une règle d’inversion sujet- auxiliaire pour former les questions fermées qui ne peut pas être induite du stimulus linguistique auxquels ils sont exposés. Cette acquisition ne pourrait s’expliquer que par l’existence d’un principe de «dépendance structurale» inscrit dans GU, qui stipule que les règles grammaticales font toutes référence à l’organisation hiérarchique des phrases (§1). Toutefois, l’absence des données linguistiques supposées indispensables à l’acquisition de la règle postulée est discutable et il y a en fait des raisons de douter du caractère indispensable de ces données (§2). On peut également douter de la nécessité d’inscrire un principe de dépendance structurale dans GU : l’organisation hiérarchique des structures linguistiques pourrait être le produit d’une faculté de hiérarchisation qui n’a rien de spécifiquement linguistique et ne requiert donc pas l’hypothèse de GU (§3). Enfin, l’exemple classique de l’APSF présuppose la réalité psychologique d’une règle de transformation syntaxique et le «problème logique de l’acquisition» que cet exemple est censé poser semble largement résulter de l’adoption d’un modèle grammatical formel et transformationnel. Nous proposerons une approche alternative, constructionnelle et «fondée sur l’usage», que soutiennent des études empiriques sur les productions linguistiques des jeunes enfants anglophones (§4). En d’autres termes, nous arguerons ici que l’exemple classique de l’APSF n’en établit pas la validité et qu’il ne légitime donc pas l’Hypothèse Innéiste. 1. L’EXEMPLE CLASSIQUE DE L’APSF L’exemple «classique» de l’APSF – on peut parler d’exemple classique au vu du nombre de ses mentions dans la littérature depuis les années 1970 – porte sur la construction des questions fermées en anglais.4 Les faits considérés sont ici des énoncés tels que (1-2) : (1a) The girl is happy. (1b) Is the girl happy? 4 Voir, entre autres, Chomsky (1975, 30-33 ; 1988, 41 sq. ; 2006, 54-55 ; 2012a, 10), Chomsky in Piattelli-Palmarini (1980, 39-40), Crain (1991, 602), Pinker (1994, 40-42), Radford (1997, 14-15), Laurence & Margolis (2001, 222-3), Legate & Yang (2002), Boeckx & Hornstein (2003), Collins (2003), Berwick et al. (2011) ; ou encore, mais de façon critique, Cowie (1998, 178 sq.), Pullum & Scholz (2002, 36 sq.) et Clark & Lappin (2010, 34 sq.). Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 09:31:51PM via free access 94 Jérôme Puckica (2a) The girl who is smiling is happy. (2b) Is the girl who is smiling happy? (2c) *Is the girl who smiling is happy? Selon Chomsky (1975, 30-33), on peut envisager deux règles-procédures hypothétiques (R1) et (R2) au moyen desquelles l’enfant anglophone pourrait former des phrases interrogatives fermées à partir de déclaratives telles que (1a). Soit, en omettant divers détails : (3) (R1) : Repérer le premier auxiliaire contenu dans la phrase déclarative et le placer en position initiale pour former l’interrogative fermée correspondante.
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