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{\LARGE Linguistic Bootstrapping: 
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Nativists {\it versus} Empiricists}
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{\Large 9.00 Paper II (Double-strength)}
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{\large Juliet C. Bourne 
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November 16, 1989}
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{\narrower\sspace\noindent\it ``One of the important goals of modern
linguistic theory is to explain how it is that children can acquire
their first language. On many accounts the `evidence' that children
receive to learn language is quite impoverished and reinforcement by
adults is haphazard. Yet the process of first language acquisition
seems relatively easy and strikingly uniform.'' (Berwick~2) \par}
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How do we learn our language? When we are very young no one ever tells
us the different parts of speech or the structures of sentences, and
yet we are able to form sentences before we are formally taught
`grammar'.  Do we learn the fundamentals of our language by imitation?
If that is so, how can children ever come up with the very original
sentences that they utter? Do we learn by positive or negative
reinforcement? This is a behaviorist theory of language. Some
linguists say that we already have some predisposition for language
when we are born.  So are certain fundamental parts of language
hard-wired into our brains?  Another theory is that we learn the
meaning of language through non-linguistic signals which we innately
have the ability to interpret. In either case some part of language or
language construction system is built-in even before we enter the
world. The question is what, and how much, is built-in.

Two main theories dominate the study of language acquisition. One is
an empiricist theory and the other is nativist. The empiricist theory
involves the acquisition of language through non-verbal methods such
as gestures, eye contact, and pointing. The linguists who purport this
theory deny that any knowledge of language is built-in. Rather,
language is learned by non-linguistic methods. On the other hand,
nativists state that the fundamentals of language are innate. All
humans have the innate ability to construct their native tongue just
by listening to it being used. This theory involves the concept of
hypothesizing language by means of a universal grammar that details
the fundamentals of all languages. These two very different theories
have dominated the study of language acquisition for decades.

In 1958, Noam Chomsky ``postulate[d] a biologically programmed,
species-specific universal model of language'' (Golinkoff~2) with the
creation of his `generative transformational grammar'. Chomsky's
theory of a universal grammar became very popular and in 1967 an
influential book by a linguist named Lenneberg ``argued for the
universality of the order and timing of acquisition across radically
different languages, as well as mastery of language essentials among
all children regardless of intelligence.'' (Golinkoff~2) The dominant
theory of language acquisition was that the child was ``an hypothesis
tester and solitary constructor of a language which mapped onto
pre-existing concepts.'' (Golinkoff~6) During the 1970's, language
acquisition was seen ``by some researchers as the inevitable
by-product of 18 or so months of social and communicative interaction
where much shared meaning had been constructed between the infant and
its caregivers.''  (Golinkoff~7) In effect, the problem of language
acquistion was reduced to a problem of understanding communicative
social interactions between mother and infant. (Golinkoff~8) But again
the nativist theory of language acquisition came into popularity, this
time as a result of studies in artificial intelligence and computer
simulations of language acquisition. So today,

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{\noindent\narrower\sspace Linguists appear to be grouped into
different camps, reflecting the type(s) of explanation to which they
are sympathetic.  Some argue for the innateness of general linguistic
principles housed withing a language acquisition device (LAD) which
enables the new-born child to acquire the particular language of
his/her community with remarkable speed and despite impoverished
input. Others argue for a more social, rather than biological,
foundation to language: the communicative (discourse-pragmatic)
functions that language users perform are in linguistic structure.
(Hawkins~3)\par}
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Chomsky's revolutionary Universal Grammar theory is the main focus of
the nativist theory of language acquisition. The theory of Universal
Grammar involves formal and substative universals, a set of parameters
allowing variation (which accounts for different languages), and the
innateness hypothesis. Briefly, formal universals are ``those that
determine the form and the shape of the grammar.'' (Hawkins~6)
Substative universals are the contents of the formal universals. These
principles are claimed ``to be innately represented in the human
species and to be a part of our genetic endowment.'' (Hawkins~6) In
addition,

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{\noindent\narrower\sspace Chomsky argues that the innateness
hypothesis also explains the fact of language acquisition,
specifically the remarkable rapidity with which children of all
cultures learn language, despite (it is argued) insufficient data as
input on the basis of which to learn the highly complex adult grammar.
(Hawkins~6)\par}
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The innateness hypothesis is based upon the uniformity with which
``humans master the complex system of rules [of their language]
without any instruction.'' (Hoekstra~34) This uniformity of language
acquisition suggests that the device for acquiring language is
universal and innate.

This innateness hypothesis gave rise to the `little linguist' theory
of language acquisition. Several linguists have suggested the metaphor
of ``the child as a little linguist who tests hypotheses to discover
the syntactic rules of his language.'' (Valian~188) There are four
parts to this `hypothesis-testing' theory of how children acquire
language. First, the child learns phrase-structure rules and
transformational rules. Second, there is ``an innate portion of the
language-acquisition device [which] contains principles expressing the
linguistic universals.'' (Valian~189) Third, the device tests
hypotheses that are expressed as candidate rules. Finally, the
analyzed utterances serve as evidence against which hypothesess are
tested. (Valian~189) Thus, the acquisition of language is modelled as
hypothesizing a possible grammar, predicting the structure of
utterances, and then testing the hypothesis against the input. The
hypothesizing of the possible grammar is in turn derived from the
principles laid down by the innate Universal Grammar.

In summary of the nativist theory of language acquisition, some
knowledge of language is innate in humans. Humans can be said to be
predisposed to acquire language. The universal structure of language
in general is in some fashion hard-wired into the human brain. Thus,
just by listening to the language spoken around him, a child can
quickly acquire the structure of his native language. What the
Universal Grammar actually is and how the language-acquisition device
really works are still mysteries which are being researched today.

In contrast to the theory that humans have some inborn linguistic
ability that only needs input to construct a specific language, there
are several empiricist theories of the acquisition of language.  These
theories all involve non-linguistic methods or devices for acquiring
language. One of these theories is that children learn language first
through non-verbal devices such as gestures. The idea is that ``a
child learns a language by determining the speaker's intentions
independent of language and then using this knowledge as a clue to
understanding the language.'' (Pylyshyn~42) Basically, when given a
structured sensory experience and structured communication (verbal and
non-verbal) codes, children will learn language by recognizing
occurrences of speech acts and then mapping this linguistic event to
some non-linguistic event (such as a gesture).  (Pylyshyn~38) There
are several types of intentions which ``a child may learn to infer at
an early age and which might serve as a way of bootstrapping further
language development.'' (Pylyshyn~40) These intentions include the
intention of establishing a signaling relation with another individual
(usually achieved by eye contact), communicative-functional intentions
(such as general expressions not requiring a response and expressions
of want or need that do require a response), and, finally,
``attitudinal and social intentions signaled by a variety of gestural,
postural, and paralinguistic variables, as well as a set of
fascinating intention-signalling devices used in dialogue.''
(Pylyshyn~42) Through all of these intention signals, children can
begin to learn language by coupling the meaning inferred from
non-verbal signals to the speech acts that happen concurrently.

Some empiricist linguists go even farther than this theory. They
include the notion of learning or developing a language by imitation. 

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{\noindent\narrower\sspace What would develop into a language as we
know it now, would be {\it a tradition, among the young, of a playful
imitation of the adult social communication in its own species}. The
children of an early ancestral ape or perhaps early human children,
developed a certain tradition of playfully imitating adult social
communication. As this tradition developed, it `caught on', and
evolved into our present language.'' (Hattiangadi~192)\par}
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At the base of this theory is the fact that since human infants have
such long childhoods, they are able to develop a fairly complicated
system of imitation of the adult social communication. Hattiangadi
goes on to imply that this imitation of the adult communication is a
common element in other species of animals and that if these species'
infants had a longer childhood, they too would develop a complex
language. Thus, this is the extreme of the empiricist view in that it
claims that what is innate (i.e. imitation) is not unique to humans.
Therefore, language can be said to be learned rather than being an
endowed characteristic of humans.

In summary of the empiricist theory of language acquisition, humans do
not have any innate {\it linguistic} ability. Rather, humans acquire
language though non-linguistic devices such as gestures and intentions
and also, in a few opinions, through imitation. Another possibility
not discussed above is the behaviorist theory of reinforcement. In
this theory, children acquire language by being positively reinforced
when they say something correctly. In general, all of these theories
deny the innateness of acquiring language; language is instead {\it
learned} through one method or another.

Returning to the nativists' view of language acquisition, the theory
that humans have some general knowledge of language hard-wired into
their brains has regained some popularity in the last decade mainly
because of research in artificial intelligence and computer
simulations of language acquisition. It has been found that a computer
program must be given some bare-bones abilities from which to work if
it is going to achieve a working understanding of language in the same
time frame as children. Golinkoff and Gordan explain:

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{\noindent\narrower\sspace It has been demonstrated that there are a
tremendous number of linguistic rules which could be induced from a
limited corpus [of example sentences]. Therefore, it appears that
unless the computer can be given {\it a priori} constraints to guide
its induction of grammatical rules, learning a language requires more
than a human lifetime. Just selecting the right set of rules would
require much time since incoming linguistic data must be tested
against each successive model which the processor constructs. In
reality, the processor (be it the computer or the child) must have
some built-in predilection to construct certain rules over others.
(Golinkoff~10) \par}
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So again, the theory that humans have some knowledge of language
already built-in before they are born gained some plausibility.
Through the use of computer simulations, it can be shown that, given
``a rudimentary ability to classify words as nouns or verbs and a
crude representation of the semantic content of sentences,''
(Berwick~10) a computer can achieve a fairly high level of parsing
ability. In the computer model that Berwick devised, the system was
given an initial set of parsing abilities and a knowledge of what
counts as a valid rule of parsing. (Berwick~10) Also, a set of
constraints was placed on possible parsing rules. Berwick states that
``it is these constraints that make learning possible.''  The system
only receives {\it positive evidence} or examples and no {\it negative
evidence} or correction. In Berwick's opinion, these constraints on
the system ``mirror corresponding constraints in human language
acquisition.'' (Berwick~11) Thus, from Berwick's computer simulation
of language acquistion, it can be seen that some initial state of
knowledge must be present in order for language acquisition to take
place. Although no computer simulation thus far has acquired language
as quickly and as well as a human child does, what the simulations are
able to achieve (and not achieve) gives some idea as to the nature of
language acquisition.

After examining both nativisit and empiricist theories of language
acquisiton, it seems more plausible that language acquisition is
really a combinations of nativist and empiricist arguments and not
just one or the other since neither can fully explain language
acquisition. Humans must have some form of built-in knowledge of
language as well as the ability to acquire parts of language through
non-liguistic methods such as intentions. As in other philosophies,
the great debate between nature and nurture overshadows the
possibility that a combination of the two views could result in the
revelation of the answer. Indeed,

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{\noindent\narrower\sspace Historically, in psychology and in
philosophy, the question that was asked in debating the nature/nurture
issue was {\it Which one?} As a result, an either/or tradition had
grown up as people sought to establish that {\it either} nature (the
biological endowment of the child) or nurture (the social context)
determines development. (Bloom~81)\par}
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Thus, how humans bootstrap themselves into acquiring language is a
combination of several methods and abilities. In order to separate
ourselves from animals who do not have language capabilities, we must
have some innate predisposition to language. However, all of lanaguage
cannot be preprogrammed into our heads. Rather, the universal
structure that {\it all} languages share must be hard-wired in some
way. What this Universal Grammar includes is yet to be discovered. We
also must have some non-linguisitic methods by which we can acquire
the semantic part of language as opposed to the structural part. These
methods seem to include gestures and intentions through which
pre-linguistic children and their caregivers communicate. Even though
parts of linguistic bootstrapping can be explained, it still remains a
complicated and controversial issue. This is not surprising since it
is partly our ability for language that makes us unique and thus the
study into how we acquire language in the first place is bound to be
long and complicated.
 
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{\bf Bibliography}
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\sspace
Berwick, Robert C. {\it The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge}.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.

\vspace*{.20in}
Bloom, Lois. ``Of Continuity and Discontinuity, and the Magic of
Language Development''. {\it The Transition from Prelinguistic to
Linguistic Communication}. Roberta Golinkoff, Ed. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1983. pp 79-92

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Golinkoff, Roberta M, Laura Gordon. ``In the Beginning Was the
Word: A History of the Study of Language Acquisition''. {\it The
Transition from Prelinguisitic to Linguistic Communication}. Roberta
M. Golinkoff, Ed. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1983.
pp 1-25 

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Hattiangadi, J.N. {\it How is Language Possible?} La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1987.

\vspace*{.20in}
Hawkins, John A. ``Explaining Language Universals''. {\it Explaining
Language Universals}. John Hawkins, Ed. New York: Basil Blackwell,
Ltd, 1988. pp 3-28

\vspace*{.20in}
Hoekstra, Teun, Jan G. Kooij. ``The Innateness Hypothesis''. {\it
Explaining Language Universals}. John Hawkins, Ed. New York: Basil
Blackwell, Ltd, 1988. pp 31-55

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Pylyshyn, Zenon W. ``What Does It Take to Bootstrap a Language?'' {\it
Language Learning and Thought}. John Macnamara, Ed. New York: Academic
Press, 1977. pp 37-45

\vspace*{.20in}
Valian, Virginia, Judith Winzemer, Anne Erreich. ``A `Little Linguist'
Model of Syntax Learning''. {\it Language Acquisition and Linguistic
Theory}. Susan Tavakolian, Ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.
pp 188-209 

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