Empiricism, innateness, and linguistic universals

Linguistic diversity and universals

On the question of linguistic universals

This article offers a general discussion of the concept of universals in linguistics (and in general), spelling out different ways of understanding claims to universality and connecting such claims to other (often familiar) related distinctions, terminology and approaches such as competence and performance or I-language and E-language, evolutionary explanations, deep and surface universals, rat...

Quantitative Standards for Absolute Linguistic Universals

Absolute linguistic universals are often justified by cross-linguistic analysis: If all observed languages exhibit a property, the property is taken to be a likely universal, perhaps specified in the cognitive or linguistic systems of language learners and users. In many cases, these patterns are then taken to motivate linguistic theory. Here, we show that cross-linguistic analysis will very ra...

The Difficulty of the Baldwinian Account of Linguistic Innateness

Turkel [16] studies a computational model in which agents try to establish communication. It is observed that over the course of evolution, initial plasticity is significantly nativised. This result supports the idea that innate language knowledge is explained by the Baldwin effect [2][14]. A more biologically plausible computational model, however, reveals the result is unsatisfactory. Implica...

Linking Meaning to Language: Linguistic Universals and Variation

To use natural language, speakers must map the participants in events or states in the world onto grammatical roles. There remains considerable disagreement about the nature of these so-called linking rules (Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 2005). In order to probe the nature of linking rules, we investigate verbs of psychological state, which demonstrate complex linking patterns both within and betwee...