Test of General Linguistics for English Graduate Students
2012.12
Answer the following two questions. Please give a brief account of the basic views before commenting on them.
1.What is your view on Chomsky’s “innateness hypothesis”?
The Innateness Hypothesis holds that children are born with LAD. They have already mastered a system of UG since they were born. And this is the unique physiological phenomenon of human being, which obtained through inheritance.
Although it seems to be the most perfect theory to explain how children learned their mother tone in Chomsky's opinion, yet from where I stand, I reckon there really exist a lot of problems that is unreasonable in this theory.
A most thorny problem would be that the wolf-child can not speak as ordinary children do. According to the innateness hypothesis, the children should create a kind of language which we called UG, but the fact is that the wolf-child can only make noise like wolves. Besides, if all children are born with the same LAD, there would be no development on language which goes against the evolutionary theory. Last but not least, we all know that there is a process for the children to learn to speak, sounds- words-- single word sentences-- double words sentences-- full sentences. This shows that learning language is a process which started with the easiest ones not something children are born with.
In the above , the given examples have shown the most controversial views on innateness hypothesis that I concern:
1.Chomsky’s theory lays too much attention on innateness that he becomes idealism. He ignored the importance of acquired learning. We can suppose that everyone are born with LAD, then master a language should be a piece of cake, it may just takes a few months even a few day for a child to master a language, this is totally fantastic talk. What's more, grammar system still needs to be fulfilled even when individual grow up.
2.Chomsky's theory is lacking in biological foundation. He believes in innateness but his statements on human brain is more mechanized than biological. For example, he said that it works through rules and operational parameter just as the CPU of a computer. We can't explain why and how UG generated in human brain according to Chomsky's statements.
Take all things into consideration, to err is human. There is no need for us to criticize or even accuse Chomsky's theory. What we need to do is to correct error and make the theory a more perfect one. And also with the development of human-cognition, the innateness hypothesis is being complete gradually. Now people have studied parameters innateness hypothesis, module innateness hypothesis, predisposition innateness hypothesis and initial knowledge innateness hypothesis. What we need to pay specially attention to is that we can't simply comprehended innateness hypothesis as The theory of god himself or the theory of innate genius or overstate the uses of innateness hypothesis while ignore the affect of acquired disposition.
2.There are four main approaches to the study of syntax: the traditional,
structural, generative and functional approach. Please comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the structural approach.
The Structural approach to the analysis of Language was started by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in the beginning of the 20th century.
In a sense, all the linguistic theories after his are structural in that they all regard linguistic units as interrelated with each other in a structure (or system), not as is isolated bits. At that time, however, Saussure pays more attention on phonetics and phonemics rather than syntax. That is to say for rather a long time, the research of linguists focused only on phonetics and phonemics. Thanks to the American structuralists that the syntax have been treated as equal important object of study later when the school springed up.
When it comes to structural approach in syntax study, we have three points:
1.Syntagmatic and paradigmatic;
2.IC analysis;
3.Endocentric construction and exocentric construction
(只说了建构方法，还没说好处坏处)。