Some Concepts Of Principles And Parameters Theory

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Principles and parameters theory embodies the difference between underlying and surface structure as the relationship between three levels, as we have already seen briefly in the discussion of movement. D-structure specifies the underlying structure of the sentence, say:

"john went where"

Or, as Chomsky and Lesnik ( 1991) put it, ‘D-Structure express lexical properties in a form accessible to the computational system’. S-structure express the relationships in the sentence involving movement, including traces (t) that show the places from which movement takes place;

"Where did John go t"

Surface structure is the actual form of the sentence as spoken or written"

"Where did John go ?"

As always, the theory represents a declarative state of knowledge, not a procedural model of processing, that is to say, competence rather than performance.

Phrase structure is handled through X-bar syntax’, also employed in slightly different ways in other contemporary theories of syntax (Sells 1985). All phrases have ‘heads’ such as Nouns or Verbs, around which everything in the phrase revolves. Phrases have three levels, symbolized by ‘bars’ and usually printed as": the three levels of the NP are then N", N’ and N. The Noun phrase is a Noun with two bars, abbreviated to N" or NP, for example "his fear of the dark". This N" consists of a determiner ‘his" acting as ‘specifier’ and a Noun head with one bar (N") "fear of the dark". This N’ in turn consists of a lexical Noun (N) with no bars, "fear", and a pre-positional phrase (PP or P") ‘of the dark" acting as complement as seen in the following tree.

The Linguist provides this tree diagram to explain the concept.

N" (NP)

Determiner N’

His

N P" (PP)

Fear of the dark

All phrases have the same structure of heads, specifiers and complements: a Verb Phrase is a VP (V") consisting of a specifier and a single bar V" ; a V’ consists of a V head and a Complement. A prepositional Phrase (PP) is a double-bar P’, and an adjective Phrase (AP0 is A", both with the same internal structure. X-bar theory reduces phrase structure to the principles that every phrase (XP) contains one level at which it may have specifier (specifier X") and another level at which it has a head and possible complements.

The Pro-Drop Parameter and The Inflection Phrase

A further principle called the Extended Projection principle claims in part that all sentences have subjects ( Chomsky, 1982, p. 100; that is to say, the NP specifier is compulsory in the IP. Languages such as English permit declarative sentences with subjects.

"He speaks"

But not declarative sentences without subjects:

**Speaks".

However, languages such as Italian allow sentences with out apparent subjects in seeming branch of this principle:

"Parla" (He speaks).

Principles and parameters theory maintains that such sentences nevertheless have a ‘null’ subject in the underlying d and s-structure given the name of pro, which does not appear in the surface structure of other sentences. The s-structure of the Italian sentence in therefore;

"pro Parla" ( he speaks)

With the subject specifier position filled by a pro that does not appear in the surface structure.

In a group of languages that includes Italian and Arabic, a declarative sentence can have the invisible pro as the subject; in a second group of languages that includes English and French, a surface subject must appear. Principles and parameters theory therefore postulates a pro-drop parameters that has two settings; pro-drop in which pro is permitted as subject, and non-pro-drop in which pro is permitted as subject, and non-pro-drop, in which pro is not allowed.

Like other parameters, the pro-drop parameters has a range of effects on different constructions

Subject – Verb inversion

"Parla lai" ( Speaks he )

(*"Smoked he a cigar")

The Pro-drop Parameter and Second Language Acquisition

The person who has acquired a first language has set the pro-drop parameter appropriately and knows whether ACR may govern the subject or not. Do L2 learners start from scratch, do they transfer the parameter setting from their L1, or do they not use parameters at all/ The initial research into pro-drop in L2 learning carried out by White (1986) investigated whether L1 setting of parameters has to be ‘deactivated’ in L2 learning that is, learners start by applying L1 settings and gradually switch over. She also tested the hypothesis that all properties of a parameters are mastered simultaneously-lact of subject, inversion, and that-trace. Her method was to see the differences between two groups of intermediate L2 learners of English with different pro-drop settings in their L1s.

The learners had to settings had influenced their L2 learning, maticality judgement on 28 English sentences by saying whether sentences such as

"It is very cold outside"

and

"In winter, snows a lot in Canada.

Were ‘correct’, incorrect’, or not sure’. If they are transferring the L1 setting, Spanish and Italian learners should be more tolerant of null subject and Verb Subject sentences in English. The other task was turn 12 English sentences into questions by questioning a particular constituent such as "Mark’ in.

Through both groups performed rather poorly, the Spanish and Italian speakers had a higher proportion of in correct that-trace left in place than the French speakers.

The effect of the L1 setting were apparent. The Spanish/ Italians wrongly accepted more Null Subject sentences and made more that-trace mistakes than the French speakers. But this is a matter of percentages rather than absolute difference; after all, even the French had 42 per cent mistakes with "that". Moreover, there were no differences between the groups on verb-Subject sentences. The conclusions were that L1 parameters influence the adult learner’s view of the L data, at least for a while, leading to transfer errors’ (White, 1986, p.69). L2 learners tend to start from their L1 setting rather a than from scratch. It is harder to decide whether the three aspects of the pro-drop parameters go together; the L1 affects the null subject sentences to a large extent, and that trace to some extent, but had to appreciable effect on Subject-Verb inversion.

Having seen how that L1 parameter setting may n part be carried over to the L2, we need to see where the original L1 setting came from. It might be that one or other of the settings for a parameter is the default from which all l1 children start, or it might be that they effectively start from no setting and can use either.

Binding Theory

A further area that was central to the principles and parameters theory in the 1980s was the Binding theory. In conventional grammatical terms binding is concerned with the possible antecedents fro anaphors such as "himself’ and pronominals such as ‘her". In the sentence.

"Geoff said Steve helps himself".

The reflexive anaphor "himself must be bound be "Steve’; this is shown conventionally by the subscript appearing after Helen rather than Helen helped Mary nothing in the sentence itself shows the speakers’ error. A sentence with the wrong binding is always interpretable by a listener with the correct binding, whatever the speaker intends.

Like the pro-drop parameter above, the basic facts of binding are easy to understand; the SLA research on binding can be grasped to some extent without looking at the extremely complex syntactic theory necessary to explain them. The following gives a sketch on the Binding Theory; fuller accounts in an acquisition context can be found n Goodluck ( 1991 ) . Aktinson (1992), or Cook 91990b). Binding theory claim there is a ‘governing category’ in the sentence within which anaphors such as "himself’ must be bound but pronominals such as "him" must not, that is, they are ‘free’ inn the sentences used so far, the governing category has been the sentence ‘Steve helps him ’himself." These restrictions on interpretation are captured through three Binding Principe that define the binding possibilities not only for anaphors and pronominals but also for referring expression (that is, nouns):

Principle A: An anaphor is bound in a governing category. Principle B:A pronominal is free in a governing category Principle C:A referring expression is free.

Binding Principle A state that amphoras such as "himself" must be bound within their governing category. "Himself" is bound to "Steve" in:

"Geoff said Steve, helps himself".

Because it is within the same governing category("Steve helps himself").

Binding Principle B states that pronominals such as "him" must not be bound n their governing category. "Him" is not bound to ‘Steve’ in

"Geoff said Steve helps himself"

Because it is within the same governing category" ("Steve helps him"). "Him’ may refer to the person called "Geoff" or to someone not mentioned in the sentence.

Binding Principle C covers the case of referential NPs by starting that "Geoff" and "him" are not bound in *’he, said that Geof, had lied:.

That is "Geoff’ cannot be linked to pronominal that are higher than it in certain configurations of the sentence ( technically a relationship called c-command ).

Thus far we have seen what can be called ‘classical’ Binding Theory consisting of three invariant principles based on Chomsky (1981a); indeed, much language acquisition assumes this classical model. Yet some sublet differences between languages cannot be explained and have led to a version of binding that uses parameters as well as the three principles. In a Japanese sentence such as;

"John-wa Bill-ga zibun’0 nikunde iru to omotte iru"

John Bill self hates that thinks

John thinks that Bill hates himself.

The anaphor ‘zibun" may be bound to "John", or to "Bill", even though the English equivalent would have to be bound to "Bill", as is within the governing category "Bill hates himself

SYNTAX AND SLA RESEARCH

Binding theory and the pro-drop parameter also illustrate some dangers in utilizing the most current version to linguistics. Principles and parameters theory has an extraordinarily swift rate of change. However much agreement there is one the ‘facts’ of the pro-drop parameter or of binding, current work is revising both binding (for example, Saleemi, 1990). Research that is specific to one particular syntactic analysis has a short shelf-life. This book has indeed often made the point that the syntactic framework for one or other piece of research is no longer valid and the research is consequently hard to interpret. This problem is acutre in principles and parameters theory; any research carried out by an SLA researcher is out-of-date in terms of syntactic theory more or less by definition, since the theory will have already moved on in the few months or years before the L2 research could take place and will have moved on even further by the time the research is published. To stand on it own feet, SLA research theory; SLA researchers have a difficult task in ensuring that their work is still compatible with the theory by time it appears in print, if they wish to make valid contributions to linguistics as well as to SLA theory.

There iks also the danger that second language researchers may forget that their purpose is to discover how people learn L2s, not see if the latest fashion in linguistics can be applied to L2 research. Hageman ( 1991, p.20) claims ‘recently linguists in the generative tradition have also started to investigate whether the model of first languages acquisition that they advocate could be applied to the acquisition of a second languages’. The traffic should also go in the other direction: SLA researchers should investigate whether the model of syntax used by linguists is appropriate to the acquisition of second languages: however good the syntactic theory, it hs not been devised with SLA in mind or based on SLA types of evidence. For the goal of SL research is to answer the three multi-lingual questions of knowledge, acquisition, and use. Rather than to advance syntactic theory itself. It needs to use syntax that is appropriate to its own needs, and to stay with it for long enough to produce properly researched answers. Principles and parameters theory by virtue of its scope and its model of linguistic knowledge has very clear attractions for SLA research. To some extent its practitioners have to decide between being linguists who use the second language field or SLA researchers who use linguistics.