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Language Acquisition in the Animal World
In the mid- to late 1970s, linguists seemed, at least publicly, fascinated by language acquisition. Chomsky was no exception, and applied himself to distinguishing between animals and humans by means of his theory of innate language ability. A 25 September 1975 New York Times article, "Experts Labor to Communicate on Animal Talk," outlined the basic issues involved and brought them into the public domain. It also cited experts from various fields commenting on the possibility that chimpanzees, baboons, and even laughing gulls communicate in unexpectedly complex ways (but, as Chomsky notes, "don't all living beings?"). Efforts to teach animals to speak captured the scientific and public imaginations (perhaps because of the central role that cute and fuzzy animals play in children's stories, fables, and myths). The work referred to in the article, however, like much heavily hyped scientific research, was considered, in Chomsky's words,"an absurdity by every serious biologist I know of" (31 Mar. 1995). Indeed a 7 July 1980 London Times article by Michael Leaman, called "Diary of the Clever Me Phenomenon," addressed the hype surrounding the talking-animals issue; Leaman remarked that "experiments in teaching chimpanzees and gorillas to communicate using sign language or coloured bits of plastic to denote words, have become some of the most publicized in modern science." Chomsky was quoted in the 1975 New York Times article as saying, "chimpanzee communication differed fundamentally from human speech, particularly in mode of use, structural properties and mode of acquisition. `Human language is acquired by exposure, not training . . . just as breathing is.'" His opinion did not change in the ensuing years, although the 1980 London Times reports his observations on the public's concern with the issue:"for reasons that are unclear to me . . . this topic has aroused considerable emotion, at least in popular discussion." More recently, he has added,"this work has not the remotest relation to science, though people in white coats and with equipment sometimes do it" (31 Mar. 1995). The London Times also reported, in an article entitled"Chomsky Debate Absorbs the Royal Society," that during a 1981 Royal Society conference on human acquisition of language, the question of innate abilities and universal grammar was linked to a variety of practical projects for researchers"seeking to perfect machines for automatic language translation, to develop computer systems with artificial intelligence, or simply to make vending machines that will dispense tickets at a spoken command." Chomsky, who in fact only attended the conference briefly, preferring to spend his time engaged in the subject in the context of"talks to popular audiences," insists that the Times misrepresented what had occurred at the meetings: "There was scientific interest, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with language translation (MT) and artificial intelligence (AI). MT is a very low level engineering project, and so-called classic strong ai is largely vacuous, dismissed by most serious scientists and lacking any results, as its leading exponents concede" (31 Mar. 1995). Entire research projects, on language acquisition and other topics, were now being conducted with the aim of either establishing or disproving Chomsky's theories. Chomsky himself fuelled these enterprises by maintaining a high level of productivity: he published Reflections on Language (1975), Essays on Form and Interpretation (1977), Rules and Representations(1980), and Modular Approaches to the Study of the Mind (1984). These works include essays and lectures that expand and clarify previous work, address issues raised by his critics, and update grammatical theory based upon his own recent work and that of others. All the while, he was developing a thesis that he had articulated some years earlier: "language (and other mental abilities) should be seen as `growing' in the individual's mind, under genetic control, rather than as `learned' by organisms lacking any initial predisposition to develop the particular kinds of mental faculty which are eventually acquired" (Sampson 14). Chomsky's remarkable output reflected his constant interaction with professional milieus, such as the glow circle in Europe and their counterparts in the United States. The acronym glow stands for Generative Linguistics in the Old World(s). The organization's aim is to ensure that the intellectual and social issues that are of concern to transformationalists are communicated to other. Participants include Hans Bennis, Anneke Groos, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Jean-Yves Pollock, and they produce a GLOW newsletter in Amsterdam that is circulated worldwide. The GLOW manifesto includes this passage: "In our opinion, generative linguistics acquired a new momentum in Europe after Chomsky's `Conditions on Transformations' (1973). This epoch-making paper shifted the interest of linguists from rather arbitrary rules to simple well-constrained rules operating under general conditions. A significant number of members of GLOW have found their common ground in the research programme that grew out of `Conditions'" (qtd. in Otero, ed. 1: 345).
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Lectures on Government and Binding provides rewarding new directions for linugistic studies |
