The principles-and-parameters approach A comparative syntax of English and Japanese

• Published in: Theoretical Comparative Syntax pp. 100 - 131
• Main Author: Fukui, Naoki
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United States Routledge 2006; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Grammar, syntax, linguistic structure; Subjacency Condition; Maximal Projection; Spec Head Agreement; Major Typological Differences; Chomsky 1986a; Complex Np Constraint; Lexical Categories; Complex Predicate; Functional Elements; Functional Head; VP Internal Subject Hypothesis; Optional Movement; CP Whoi; Sov Word Order; Subject Aux Inversion; Major Functional Categories; Multiple Subject Constructions; Noun Phrases; Church Turing Thesis; Cross-linguistic Variation; Lexical Parametrization Hypothesis; Restrictive Theory; Heavy Np Shift; Overt Expletives
• ISBN: 0415341035; 0415860121; 9780415341035; 9780415860123
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203479179-7

Since around 1960, constant efforts have been made in the theory of generative grammar to factor out certain general principles that govern rule application in the grammars of particular languages, attributing them to the initial state of the language faculty, i.e., Universal Grammar (UG), thereby allowing the rules of the language to remain in the simplest form. The extracted general principles gradually eliminated the need for rules of particular languages entirely, deducing the effects of the apparent rules in the sense that the interaction of these invariant principles yields the phenomena of particular languages which the rules were constructed to describe. Around 1980, work along these lines converged to form a conception of the nature of language called the "principles-and-parameters" theory in which the biologically determined mental organ UG is conceived as the set of principles each of which is associated with an open parameter whose value is to be set by experience (cf. Chomsky 1981a, b). The postulation of such parameters in UG is mainly motivated by the fact that there are various superficially diverse languages in the world, a fact that is fairly obvious but none the less is rather surprising under the biological approach towards the human language faculty assumed in generative grammar, since there is no known biological reason why the mental organ UG, unlike other organs such as the faculty of number, the faculty of spacio-temporal perception, etc., should end up with different steady states (different core grammars) as it grows through experience. See Chomsky (1988) for some interesting discussions on this general question.