Origin of grammar

1. June 2007 Origin of grammar Caroline Lyon, Science and Technology Research Institute, University of Hertfordshire, c.m.lyon@herts.ac.ukhttp://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk Pre-language communication Paratax: utterances or communicative gestures independent, not linked Evolved language Syntax: compositional structure, hierarchical grammar, dependencies between components Intermediate step Protosyntax Candidates for earliest forms of protosyntax: negation, conjunction, interrogation • Negation • Primitive utterances, can be negated, by concatenating negating term. • Negation can be verbal, non-verbal or both. • More informative to negate an existing utterance than to produce an unrelated new one. • Compositional structure links related concepts. • Can be applied to events: “not touch”; objects: “not food”, descriptors: “not good”. • Simplest form of compositional structure, combining 2 elements. Does not need other • grammatical features, e.g. part-of-speech categorisation The term “protosyntax” is used in Logic by Quine as syntax less the concept of membership. Other simple compositional structures Conjunction: concatenation of 2 elements Interrogation: conversion of assertion to question by adding interrogatory marker (e.g. “est-ce que” in French) • Why should compositional structure evolve? • Learning from sparse data is enabled (Kirby 1999, Vogt 2005) • Semantic cohesion aids comprehension – related concepts are linked • Expressive power – a limited number of elements combine to give an • indefinite number of expressions • Linear sequencing – predisposition in humans (Lyon 2007)