Directionality in the architecture of the language faculty: Integrating with real time

Abstract

This chapter considers the valid representation of directionality in the architecture of the Language Faculty by recognizing that Universal Grammar (UG) is at one and the same time both (i) a theory representing the fundamental principles and parameters that underlie all possible natural languages; and (ii) a theory of what is biologically programmed in the Language Faculty, making language acquisition empirically possible. Thus it would explain at one and the same time how both head final and head initial languages come to exist (each accounting for roughly half of the world’s languages) and how they come to be acquired (each in roughly equivalent times with roughly equivalent ease). In both ways - cross-linguistic variation and cross-linguistic language acquisition - a Language Faculty, i.e., one critically informed by UG, must be expected to integrate with language processing, i.e., to integrate with language realized in real time. The question is how. In fact, current linguistic theory of UG has brought this issue front and center. In this paper, we will attempt to explicate this issue, articulating two currently distinct and disparate views of UG and suggest that these two differ precisely in their view of how the integration of UG with language in real time is effected. Recognizing this difference and resolving it is fundamental to developing a theory of UG as a veridical component of the Language Faculty. Presumably this difference also has implications for the development of language processing models that hopes to account for the equivalent efficiency of the Human Language Parser for both right headed and left headed languages. We suggest that in conjunction with further theoretical study, more precise predictions and further typological study, both language processing studies such as those in this volume as well as language acquisition studies can and should be brought to bear on this leading issue.