Grammar through Spontaneous Order
Nick Chater, Morten H. Christiansen · 2022
How do the algebraic regularities in natural language, described by generative grammar, emerge? One traditional viewpoint has been that these are encoded with a species-specific and innately specified universal grammar, which has somehow come to be part of the human biological endowment. From this point of view, the strange mix of regularities, subregularities, and downright exceptions observed across languages and levels in linguistic analysis are somewhat puzzling. An alternative perspective is that language begins through attempts to solve immediate communicative problems between specific people on specific occasions; but each new communicative exchange draws on precedents from past exchanges, and sets precedents for future exchanges. Over time, specific linguistic patterns will become entrenched, and layered upon each other, to create a complex spontaneously ordered system, analogous to case law. From this point of view, the algebraic patterns in language are always various, partial and subject to exceptions.