A FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH TO GRAMMAR AND ITS EvoLUTION

In considering the question of how the human capacity to learn and use grammar could have evolved, a great deal depends on the characterization of the nature of grammar. In recent years the debate has been dominated by those who believe that grammar consists of rigid, categorical rules and structures of such a remove from the spoken language that children could not learn them from the input available in the environment (Pinker and Bloom 1990; Chomsky 1975). Led by Chomsky, linguists at MIT, and those associated with them, have accepted the view that abstract grammatical principles are lodged in an innate Language Acquisition Device, a module of the mind that supplies the child with the basic principles of grammar. This device, containing as it does, all the principles of Universal Grammar, is meant to explain how children acquire their language rapidly and without formal instruction, and in addition, it is meant to encapsulate the core features that all languages have in common (Bickerton 1981; Chomsky 1965; Pinker 1994). In this view, grammar is highly abstract knowledge which is autonomous and not reducible to concepts outside the system (Newmeyer 1990). This means that grammar does not relate directly to meaning or function or indeed to the uses to which language is put, but rather it constitutes a purely abstract system. Possession of this innate system makes language acquisition possible for homo sapiens, while the lack of such a device precludes language acquisition by our close relatives in the great ape family. Given this theory of grammar, the question for evolution is how such a specialized device could have evolved, since as far as we know, none of our