The Price ofLinguistic Productivity:
Language and Cognition2018 年18月日［月］

1013 : 00 〜18 : 30
場 所日［水］

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慶應義塾大学三田キャンパス
北館３階

定 員

Day 1

大会議室

80 名・会場にて参加者カード記入必要［ 主催 ］ 慶應義塾大学言語文化研究所
The Keio Institute of Cultural & Linguistic Studies［ 協力 ］ 慶應義塾大学次世代研究プロジェクト推進プログラム
基礎学術研究型
The Program for the Advancement of
Next Generation Research Project, Keio University

講 師Charles Yang 氏

1/8Rules and Exceptions
While it is obvious that language has both rules and exceptions,the absence of a principled boundary between them has been thesource of endless anxiety and controversy. Taking inspirations
from language acquisition, that children unfailingly succeed atteasing them apart, I introduce a formal model of productivity,
dubbed the Tolerance Principle. Following the general designprinciple of computational efficiency, I suggest that children
postulate a productive rule only if the number of exceptions falls
below a precise threshold; otherwise lexicalization ensues.
Psycholinguistic evidence for the Tolerance Principle, including
artificial language studies with young children, will be reviewed.

Day 2

1/9Productivity and theArchitecture of the Grammar
Most modern theories postulate, as primitives, distinct
mechanisms and representations for encoding general andidiosyncractic processes in language. Focusing primarily onmorphology and its interface between phonology and syntax, Isuggest that these formal devices have little explanatory power,
as long as children can discover the scope of linguistic
generalizations with independent means. I will examine several
long-standing puzzles in theoretical and experimental research,
including English nominalization, German noun inflections, andparadigmatic gaps in a variety of languages. Along the way, I willfamiliarize the audience with the quantitative methods to analyze
these problems can be approached and analyzed, and I especiallywelcome applications to similar problems in Japanese linguistics.

Day 3

1/10Merge, Infinity, and Numbers
Charles Yang received his PhD in computer science at MIT and isProfessor of Linguistics, Computer Science, and Psychology, and theDirector of the Program in Cognitive Science at the University ofPennsylvania. He is interested in theories of language acquisition,variation, and change, and the place of language in the broad cognitivesystem. He is the author of three books and is writing a new one on
evolutionary models of language change.

お問い合わせ先〒108 - 8345 港区三田 2 - 15 - 45 慶應義塾大学言語文化研究所
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URL：http://www.icl.keio.ac.jp

At a most fundamental level, Merge is the creative source of
infinity: the composition of two categories entails that all
members of the categories can be combined. I first review
evidence from home signs that Merge is spontaneously available
to children without an input linguistic model. I then provide a
detailed analysis of the English dative constructions (“Baker’sParadox”) to show that the scope of language-specificgeneralizations can, and must, be established on the basis of afinite sample of experience. Finally, I turn to the cognitive
domain of natural number, which has long been thought as a
derivative of the language system. Examining children’s counting
and associated numerical abilities in several languages, I suggestthat the natural number system is entirely linguistic and its
infinity derives from the productive application of Merge, and isthus expected to be subject to cross-linguistic variation andlearning.