Jan Koster

How Natural is Natural Language

Publisher Summary This chapter examines whether human language is natural or conventional. According to the modular view of mind, the mind is not one integrated whole, but a structure composed of various more or less autonomous components. Almost all systems of a certain degree of complexity are modular in this sense. Likewise, the language faculty is not a unitary system, but something composed of relatively independent subsystems. One of the most fascinating aspects of our language system is that it has the property of discrete infinity. Other systems of animal communication of infinite range lack this property of discrete infinity. The capacity to handle discrete infinities in connection with conceptual content is unique to humans. The chapter illustrates that the link between the computational structures found in human language and the conceptual systems is not intrinsic, but accidental. This means that the crucial link that makes human language so powerful is not a matter of biological necessity, but of human culture.

The Configurational Matrix

One of the basic problems of the theory of core grammar is the determination of the levels of representation for the sentences of a language, and the characterization of the mappings that interconnect these levels of representation. Traditionally, a distinction was made between deep structure and surface structure, which were thought to be connected by transformational derivations.