Phrase Structure Rules 1957 -65

• How do children learn languages so quickly?• Isn’t there too much information?• Why does it get more difficult after a certain

time?

Innateness hypothesis

Be careful!

• What does the Innateness Hypothesis claim?

• We are innately better at learning languages than animals.

• Nobody disagrees with this.

We are innately superior to animals at languages

• Nobody disagrees with that• Nobody has EVER disagreed with it• Never in history• That’s NOT the innateness hypothesis!

OK, so what IS the INNATENESS hypothesis?

• Human language ability is SPECIAL PURPOSE• It is separate from other mental abilities• It works INDEPENDENTLY from other mental

abilities• The skills involved in language ability are

UNIQUE to language• Ordinary mental ability is NOT involved in

language ability

• Anyway, the Innateness Hypothesis became very popular

• Chomsky started looking for evidence of how our unique language ability works

1957, Syntactic Structures

Phrase Structure Rules

Phrase Structure Rules weren’t new

But now we were taking them REALLY seriously!

We are going to discover something new about our brains!!

In 1957, it was still pretty simple

S -> NP + VP

S -> NP + VP

S -> NP + VP

S – NP + VP

S -> NP + VP

VP -> Verb + NP

VP -> Verb (+ NP)

VP -> V + NP

VP -> V (+ NP)

VP -> V (+ Adv P)

NP -> Det + N

NP -> Det + N

NP -> Det + N

NP -> Det + N

Verb -> Aux + V

Why is aux BEFORE the verb?

It’s walk-ed NOT –ed walk

Well look at this!

Aux seems to come before the verb!

Maybe there’s some funny invisible movement!?!

See! It’s not THAT crazy!

Is it?

Anyway …

We are starting to see …

Funny invisible movement

Keeping the same structure

Universal grammar

By moving things around