Re: First language acquisition

John Flynn wrote:
....
If you think about that language-type, there will be features that
are heavily dependent on it and other features that apply only to non-
poly languages. If you have the Poly Parameter set to "yes" because
of the linguistic input of your environment, then it makes no difference
what settings you decide on for features that only crop up in non-poly
languages. In fact, you (or your language acquisition faculty) won't
ever have to decide on some features because you might never encounter
them. This means that the part of the innate genetic program that
allows us to decide on those features will never reach the surface;
they can drift about either being set to an arbitrary Parameter setting
or simply be ignored. Whatever happens to them, the important thing is
that are never exposed at the phenotypic level where selection keeps
them maintained. The genetic component that controls these unused
features can mutate and have copying errors hit it hundreds of times
and it won't matter to the surface product because the language being
learned does not need those features. Just like eyes in a subterranean
species. Natural selection is powerless to maintain an unexpressed
genetic sequence.

This is interesting, but there are a couple of things I don't
follow. The change from one language type to another in
the Parameter-settings view is attributed to changes in
settings, as I understand it, not to changes in the Parameters
themselves. But innate biological universal grammar is
connected with the Parameters, not their settings. So
changes in language type are not associated with biological
evolution. We don't see unused Parameters evolving away,
because on our observation scale, we don't see any biological
evolution at all.

And secondly, even aside from this, the idea that Parameters
are the sorts of things that should wither away through disuse
presupposes they are positive capacities. Consider this phon-
ological example: a language may devoice word-final obstruents
(like German) or it may lose all word-final consonants (as
Japanese almost does). If all word-final consonants are lost,
learners need not bother about whether to devoice the word-
final ones, obviously. Does that mean that eventually speakers
of languages like Hawaiian or Japanese would forget how to
devoice word-final obstruents? I think not, because it's
just not the sort of thing that could ever be forgotten. It's not
an ability, but rather the inability to maintain voicing against
the back pressure created by an obstruction in the mouth.

Greg

.

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