Humans vs. Apes: The Power of Syntax

Syntax is a human convention not found in the Symbolic Communication of the Apes. ● ● ● ● ● ● Syntax: For those of us who have suffered through a Grammar class or worse yet a course in Linguistics, its hard to imagine anything being exciting about syntax. And yet there are four rather interesting things about it that arouse my curiosity. First of all, syntax is peculiarly human. We used to say that symbolic behavior was exclusively human. Now it appears that some Gorillas and Chimpanzees have learned symbols and have used them to communicate. Indeed Koko, the gorilla, has a vocabulary of 2000 words! True, it takes some vigorous training on the part of the care-takers to a develop this skill in primates. This is in stark contrast to human children for whom it would take vigorous steps just to suppress any kind of symbolic communication. The fact that all known Languages employ syntax is used to support the genetic origins of Language Development. ● ● What appears to be missing, however, from the symbolic communication of primates is true syntax. When answering a question (please note that their symbolic communication is all through the visual modality), the gorilla will mimic the syntax of the questioner. ● ● ● ● ● But when they generate a spontaneous sentence, there appears to be no structure to their word order. Syntax, then is what separates the men from the gorillas. A second interesting fact is that there is no culture known in the world, present or past, that has a language without syntax! Nor has there ever been found a language with a primitive syntax. Even the language of the aborigines in Australia has a syntax that is no less complex than any other language. This encourages natavists like Chomsky to predict a genetic link to language development. We use Syntactic Rules without being able to articulate what those rules are. ● ● ● ● A third interesting fact about syntax is that we all employ syntactic rules very effectively, if not even effortlessly (How many morphemes in that word?). But when asked to describe what those rules are, we are nearly speechless. We must enroll in convoluted English Grammar courses to even have a notion of what the rules are that we are following. How, the natavists ask, can we learn something without knowing what it is we learned? I'll pass on answering that question. ● The fourth interesting feature about syntax is the amount of linguistic information that can be packed into a short simple sentence. Take, for instance, a short three word question like, "Can't I play?" A three word sentence can demonstrate a wealth of linguistic competence. ● ● ● ● ● ● When this sentence is spontaneously generated by a child, as opposed to being merely an imitation of another childÈs speech, it demonstrates a wealth of linguistic knowledge. In addition to including a precise word order, it demonstrates the childÈs competency with about 4 transformational rules (we will discuss these later). We would not be aware of this if it were not for the discipline of Linguistics. Hence, I recommend to all teachers of young children or children with language delay to include linguistic and grammar courses in their professional continuing education plan. The following discussion of Syntax, therefore, is not intended to be in anyway a course in Grammar or Linguistics. Our purpose here is only to underscore the complexity of the task facing the child who is involved in acquiring his/her first language. Grammar includes Syntax (rules of sentence structure) and Transformations (the rules to change that structure). ● ● ● ● ● ● When I think of Grammar, I think of two things-Syntax, the rules of Structure; and Transformations, the rules to change that structure. Structure Rules: In the real world, we are often wanting to communicate about someone who is doing something to someone else or something, somewhere at sometime. There are two structural systems that languages may use to communicate these relationships. These are Inflectional and/or Analytic systems. Inflectional Languages: One method is by using bound morphemes to create different word endings (inflections) to reflect these relationships. Languages that rely heavily on this are called Inflectional Languages. Russian is a fine example of a language that is highly inflectional. For example the word cat (kashka) has the inflection "a" on the end. This means the cat is the actor. The Structure of Analytic Languages, like English, puts emphasis on Word Order, an Auxiliary System and Prepositional Phrases ● ● ● ● ● If the sound "oo" were there (kashkoo), then something happened to the cat. The bottom line is that the words can appear anywhere in the sentence and be understood. For example, "Kashkoo bites mouse," would clearly indicate that the mouse bit the cat. Analytic Languages: English, on the other hand, is a fine example of a language that is highly Analytic. Instead of depending greatly on word endings, English employs a triad of grammatical conventions to communicate relationships. These include: o Word order o An Auxiliary system o Prepositional Phrases Word orde in English is very important in differentiating the agent (subject) from the object. Take for example,"The cat bites the mouse." Deep Structure in English divides the thought into Two Constituents: the Noun Phrase the Verb Phrase. ● ● ● ● ● The first noun "cat" in the sentence is the agent, and the first noun after the verb "mouse" is the object. Change the order of the words and, unlike Russian, the meaning is significantly changed. "The mouse bites the cat." This structure of English comes down right from the top (Deep Structure) and can be traced through levels of constituents (intermediate units). Take for example the first level of constituents after the deep structure which, we will call "S." This includes a Noun Phrase (NP) and the Verb Phrase (VP). This order is preserved right to the surface structure and is intuitively perceived by young children. The Noun Phrase and the Verb Phrase also break down into their Constituents, which provide a template for word order. ● The Noun Phrase in turn breaks down into a Noun (mandatory), preceded by an Adjective (optional), and a Determiner (sometimes). The Verb Phrase includes an Auxiliary (mandatory but not always evident), a Verb (mandatory), and another Noun or Noun Phrase (optional). Surface structure, the final sentence, reflects the word order dictated through the hierarchy of constituents. ● Some texts do not show the Auxiliary as we have done here. This is not an exact science so you should expect to find many variations in these descriptions in the literature. ● The final breakdown includes the actual words. This is, at last, the level of the surface structure--what is actually said, or written or signed. There are many and varied routes from Deep Structure to Surface Structure. ● ● ● ● These diagrams which trace in detail the structure of an English sentence (or any language), of course, can get very esoteric and very very numerous. Some scholars spend their lives studying and describing them. Children intuitively learn them in four years without really trying! Maybe there is something in Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device (LAD). An English teacher once remarked that you can reduce all the stories in the world into about five themes. I believe there is an element of truth to this. ● ● My favorite movie hero was John Wayne, but I noticed that all his movies followed just about one of those themes. Whether he was a Mongol Warrior, an Indian Rebel or a World War II Hero, the story always seemed (to me) to be the same. All English Sentences can be reduced to five Kernel Sentences. ● ● ● ● ● He would meet a girl; they would be separated through a misunderstanding; and then they would be reunited after a period of time, but not before he had engaged in a lusty fist fight with his rival in view of the girl. That same English Instructor also suggested that all English sentences could be reduced to five Kernel Sentences which hold the basic word order of the language. The rudiments of these Kernel sentences can be heard during Brown's first three Stages of language development. These five Kernel Sentences bring out some interesting aspects of English so lets examine them briefly. They are as follows: o 1. N + Vi (e.g., "I cry.") The verb here is intransitive, so the action simply ends after the verb. The Verb "To BE," is in itself, a Special Class of Verbs in English called the COPULA. o ● ● ● ● 2. N + Vt + N (e.g., "He hit me.") Here the verb is transitive so the action continues on (unfortunately in this case) to another Noun, the object. The last three Kernel Sentences use a special verb in English. Some grammarians list it by itself as an alternate category of verbs; and they give it a special name--the Copula. The Copula (C) is conjugated differently than any other verb in English. o 3. N + C + N (e.g., "I am Napoleon.") o 4. N + C + Adjective (e.g., "I am crazy.") o 5. N + C + Adverb [of location] (e.g., "I am here.") With these five sentence structures, we can discuss the universe--albeit very pedantically and laboriously. Transformational Rules change the basic structure of the Kernel Sentences in English ● ● Transformational Rules: There are many ways to change the basic structure of these Kernel sentences-- to streamline them and make them fit the intent of the communication more efficiently and effectively. The rules for changing them are called Transformations. There are many of them and they can be quite complex. The Yes/No Question Transformation is a good example. ● ● ● ● Take the rather simple sentence: "I go." How would you change that sentence into a question without adding to the meaning? If you said, "Can I go?" you are pragmatically correct, but semantically incorrect, because you have changed the meaning by adding the notion of "capability." I was thinking of the sentence, "Do I go?" The Yes/No Question Transformation Adds an Auxiliary (like the word "do") to the sentence and Moves it to the front. ● ● ● ● ● The word "do" in "Do I go," incidentally, comes from the category of words we call Auxiliaries. In this case it's name is the Dummy Auxiliary because it does not add any meaning to the sentence. So why use it at all, you ask. Because in the rule we call the Yes/No Question Transformation (in other words to ask a question that requires a yes or no response) we must move the auxiliary to the front of the sentence. Since the statement, "I go," contains no visible auxiliary, it is necessary to insert one first, as in "I do go." (transformation #1). We then move it to the front of the sentence, as in "Do I go?" (transformation #2). Now suppose I want to change that same statement to a negative sentence. We add two auxiliaries -- the dummy "do" and the negative "not" (transformation #3,) as in "I do not go." A simple three word question like, "Do I go," demonstrates Four Transformational rules. ● ● ● ● Notice that there is a required order to these modals. You can't say, "I not do go." And now, to change "I do not go," into a question, we must move both modals to the front, as in "Do not I go?" But its rare in conversational speech to say it that way. We usually contract the modals "do" and "not" (transformation #4) and say, "Don't I..." The point here is that if a child spontaneously (i.e, is not simply mimicking someone else) generates the three word sentence, "Don't I go," look at the wealth of linguistic knowledge that has been demonstrated here! In addition to the lexicon, there has been demonstrated four transformational rules and the observance of the proper word order in the sentence, and within the modals. These rules would be lacking the the sentences made by Koko, the Gorilla. The Auxiliary System in English is a major player in some important Transformations. ● ● ● The complex auxiliary system plays a large role in many transformations, as you can see. So far, we have talked about two: the Dummy and the Negative Auxiliaries. A third important group is the Aspect Auxiliary. When I say, "I go," I am declaring that to be something I do. But suppose I want to convey the idea that I am in the process of doing it right now? ● ● ● I say, "I am going." English structure does not allow for two consecutive verbs in a sentence. But here we apparently have the Copula "am" and the verb "going" back to back! Shakespeare, of course, was not referring to grammar, but he might well have been, when he wrote, "...to be or NOT to be...that is the question!" In this case, is "am" really the Copula or not? The Bound Morpheme "ing" is a Marker that identifies "to be" as an Progressive Aspect Auxiliary and NOT a Verb. ● ● ● ● ● In the sentence "I am going," the word "am" is NOT the copula but an Auxiliary, specifically called the Progressive Aspect. How do we know when it is or is not the copula? If you look at the Verb "go," you note it has an "ing" ending. This bound morpheme is a Marker, which identifies "am" as as the Progressive Aspect auxiliary. Remember we talked about Markers on slide 14 entitled: "Bound Morphemes are used to change the function of some words and to identify the function of some others." So here is a short quiz for you. Which of the following sentences contains the auxiliary? o "I am sick of you." o "I am sicking my dog on you." (Answer--The second sentence) ● There is also a Perfect Aspect--the auxiliary word "to have." In the example, "I have jumped," the "ed" is the marker that identifies "have" as the Perfect Aspect Auxiliary and not a verb. The Modal word "will" is used to express future events and must be in the proper sequence if other auxiliaries are used. ● ● ● ● ● Another important Auxiliary are the Modals. They do a hodge-podge of things including express future events. For example, "I will go." The word "will" is a modal. You can combine Auxiliaries to express nuances of time. For example, "I will have gone." (Notice that "...one" in the word "gone" is an allomorph of "...ed," (as in jumped) and many children struggling with this concept might use the word "goed,' instead of "gone.") You can even add the Negative Auxiliary and the Progressive Aspect to say, "I will not have been gone very long." Notice how delicate the word order is here. Which of the following is acceptable: o "I not will been have gone..." o "I been will not have gone..." o "I will have not been gone..." o "I been have will not gone..." o "I have not will been gone..." (Answer--The third sentence) How does anybody learn this! Try explaining the proper word order to a deaf child. There are many kinds of Modals, and very many more important Transformations to be learned. ● ● ● ● Modals express other notions too. For example: o I may go (permissibility) o I might go (possibility) o I should go (responsibility) o I could go (opportunity) o I would go (opportunity) o I can go (capability) It's no wonder that English as a second language is very illusive and frustrating, but as a first, for children, it seems simple and natural. The list of transformations to be learned are very long. When sentences are conjoined ("I went to the store and bought a cookie"); or embedded ("I, jumping headlong into my car, rushed off the store.") or turned into relative clauses ("I, who just bought my car, drove recklessly to the store.") they are instances of transformations. Another important one is the Passive Transformation. For example, "I paid the clerk." is transformed into "The clerk was paid by me." The Indirect Object Transformation is complicated because it contradicts the Proximal Rule in English. ● The Indirect Object Transformation will be our final example to underscore the complexity of this grammatical system that the children are trying to learn. ● ● ● ● Take for example the simple Kernel sentence (Type II), "Mary brought Billy." In English, we know it was Mary who did it (the Subject), because she is the noun before the verb. Billy, we know, is the recipient of the action (the Object) because he is the noun after the verb. But what about the sentence, "Mary brought Billy to George." Now there are two nouns after the verb. The Proximal Rule, however, tells us that the closest noun to the verb ("Billy") is still the object in the sentence. Children understand the Indirect Object Transformation as early as five years. ● ● ● ● "George," on the other hand, is the object of the preposition "to" in the adverbial prepositional phrase in the sentence, "Mary brought Billy to George." For verbs in English which describe a reasonably rapid transference (e.g., "brought"), of something ("Billy") away from the subject ( "Mary"), we can do and often do a grammatically contorted thing. We remove the preposition ("to") and reposition the object of the preposition ("George") between the object and the verb, and say, "Mary brought George Billy." Notice how the word "George" violates the proximal rule. Under normal circumstances "George" should be the object, but in this transformation, he is the adverbial indirect object. Children, by age 5 years can understand this transformation. The next topic will be the Rules of Semantics, which relate the units of linguistic expression to the real world. ● ● ● ● ● The structure of the sentence... "Mary brought George Billy," is a little easier to recognize if we substitute the noun phrase "the pencils" for "Billy," as follows: "Mary brought George the pencils." So let us bring ourselves away from this "can of worms" that we call grammar, and leave it for the kids to figure out. We will now turn our attention to the rules of Semantics, that relate the units of meaning to the real world.