A Critical Analysis of Morphology and Its Implication S for Nativism (2013)

ABSTRACTIn this article I explore some of the arguments pertaining to word-structure used by the nativists to bolster the idea that language is part of our genetic endowment. The focal point of this analysis will centre primarily on the arguments put forth by Steven Pinker in his various works, regarding the morphological constraints supposedly imposed on language by our genetically hard-wired language faculty. Peter Gordon's work on English compounding will also be critically evaluated. I contend that these allegedly innate constraints are wrongly construed as such, and can easily be explained without postulating a 'language acquisition device', as contingent cultural and environmental factors suffice when trying to explain the morphological phenomena Pinker believes can only be explained by the innate constraints of universal grammar. Hence, this strand of the nativist's paradigm needs to be seriously re-evaluated as the original conclusions drawn by theorists like Pinker and Gordon are flawed.(ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.)IntroductionLinguistic nativism has been built on an edifice ranging from armchair philosophical argumentation to rigorous empirical data. There are numerous strands of nativism, but the focus here is on word-structure, and on how influential scholars like Steven Pinker have bolstered their case for linguistic innateness with reference to the phenomenon of how phenomena such as derivational and inflexional morphology are constrained by a genetically hard-wired language faculty. Peter Gordon (1986) argues along similar lines, citing research done on compound words, claiming that innate restrictions preclude the compounding of morphologically complex modifiers.Though this argument is only one strand of a particular theory with an increasingly parochial following, it is still a paradigm that is followed by the majority of linguistics scholars around the world. The concern here is that the mind-set that accompanies a theory of this kind can have negative consequences. In Grein and Weigand (2007), for example, Geoffrey Sampson explores some of the contentious upshots regarding a theory that tries to homogenise mankind, while ignoring the disparities. Language policy has also been informed the world over by this way of thinking. The belief is that if things as detailed as the rules pertaining to word-structure are part of a child's innate machinery, then the educator's role is merely to elicit this innate knowledge. This may have contributed to the rationale behind the failed outcomes-based education curriculum, which sees the teacher as a 'facilitator' who is not meant to teach, but merely to stimulate the expression of what is already innately there.In the pedagogical context of teaching English as a foreign language, adherents to the critical period hypothesis believe that teachers' jobs only ought to entail helping their students/learners to 'get by in the target language by aiming for a basic level of communicative competence. This aim is because educators are trained in a paradigm based on the belief that it is impossible to attain native speaker competence after a certain age - this is a biologically constrained phenomenon (cf. Lenneberg, [1967], on whose work Chomsky draws and which he explicitly endorses). The various strands of nativism alluded to here are used to inform policies that are damaging to the country; linguistic pedagogy draws on theoretical underpinnings in linguistics, and aside from the pedagogical implications of the theory, the nativist paradigm is taking linguistics as a whole away from its scientific standing in the academic world.Scholars such as Gordon (1986) and Pinker (1994; 1999) argue that phenomena such as compounding rules and the rules pertaining to morphological concatenation are not logically necessary, making their alleged ubiquity not only contingent, but in need of explanation. As mentioned, Gordon and Pinker explain the morphological restrictions found in their data by postulating a universal grammar that is part of our biological endowment. …