macroparameters and microparameters. So you get Janet Fodor's serious work on this. You get these kinds of things thatMark Baker is talking about – head-final, polysynthesis [which Bakersuggests are among the best candidates for macroparameters]. It's probable that there's some small store that just may go back to computational issues [hence, mapping to the SEM interface]. But then you get into the microparameters. When you really try to study a language, any two speakers are different. You get into a massive proliferation of parametric differences – the kinds of stuff thatRichard Kayne does when you study dialects really seriously. Very small changes sometimes have big effects. Well, that could turn out to be one of the ways of solving the cognitive problem of how to connect these unrelated systems. And they vary; they could change easily.
JM: So you think that with the possible exception of the head and polysynthesis parameter, they're all going to have to be shifted over to the PHON mapping?
NC: Well, but take the head parameter – it looks like the most solid of the macroparameters (reinterpreted, if Kayne is right, in terms of options for raising), although it's not really solid because while there are languages like English and Japanese where it works, a lot of languages mix them up and one thing works for noun phrases and something else with verb phrases, and so on – but even that, that is alinearization parameter, and linearization is probably in the externalization system. There's no reason why internal computation should involve linearization; that seems to be related to a property of the sensory-motor system, which has to deal with sequencing through time. So it could be that that too is an externalization parameter. The same is true of polysynthesis, Mark Baker's core parameter. It has to do with whether a sentence's arguments – subject, object, and so on – are internal to the syntactic structure, or are marked in the syntactic structure just like markers, kind of like pronouns, and they hang around on the outside. But that is also a kind of linearization problem.
So it may turn out that there aren't any [computation-]internal parameters; it's just one fixed system.
JM: What happens then to parameter setting?
NC: That's the problem oflanguage acquisition, and a lot of it happens extremely early . . .
JM: AsJacques Mehler's work indicated . . .
NC: All the phonetic stuff, a lot is going on before the child even speaks.
JM: Familiarization with the native tongue . . .
NC: It's known that Japanese kids lose the R/L distinction before they can even speak. So some kind of stuff is going on there that is fine-tuning the sensory apparatus. The sensory apparatus does get fine-tuned very early, in other areas too.
JM: So in principle, it's possible that you don't have to set (‘learn’) any parameters – that it all happens automatically and at an extremely early age, even before the child speaks .
NC: Certainly no kid is conscious of what is going on in his or her head. And then you get a three- or four-year-old child who is speaking the language mostly of their peers.
JM: OK. How doesearly and automatic acquisition fit with the kind of data that Charles Yang comes up with, data that suggest that when children ‘grow’ a language, they go through a stage at around two and a half where they exhibit a kind of parameter-setting experimentation: their minds ‘try out’ computational patterns available in other languages that are extinguished as they develop a pattern characteristic of, say, English . . .
NC: There is interaction, but it's not so obvious that the feedback makes much difference, because most of the interaction is with children.
I don't know about you, but my dialect is [that of] a little corner of Philadelphia where I grew up, not my parents’ – which is totally different. What about you?
JM: I grew up speaking both English and Tamil .
NC: How's that?
JM: I was born
JM: So you think that with the possible exception of the head and polysynthesis parameter, they're all going to have to be shifted over to the PHON mapping?
NC: Well, but take the head parameter – it looks like the most solid of the macroparameters (reinterpreted, if Kayne is right, in terms of options for raising), although it's not really solid because while there are languages like English and Japanese where it works, a lot of languages mix them up and one thing works for noun phrases and something else with verb phrases, and so on – but even that, that is alinearization parameter, and linearization is probably in the externalization system. There's no reason why internal computation should involve linearization; that seems to be related to a property of the sensory-motor system, which has to deal with sequencing through time. So it could be that that too is an externalization parameter. The same is true of polysynthesis, Mark Baker's core parameter. It has to do with whether a sentence's arguments – subject, object, and so on – are internal to the syntactic structure, or are marked in the syntactic structure just like markers, kind of like pronouns, and they hang around on the outside. But that is also a kind of linearization problem.
So it may turn out that there aren't any [computation-]internal parameters; it's just one fixed system.
JM: What happens then to parameter setting?
NC: That's the problem oflanguage acquisition, and a lot of it happens extremely early . . .
JM: AsJacques Mehler's work indicated . . .
NC: All the phonetic stuff, a lot is going on before the child even speaks.
JM: Familiarization with the native tongue . . .
NC: It's known that Japanese kids lose the R/L distinction before they can even speak. So some kind of stuff is going on there that is fine-tuning the sensory apparatus. The sensory apparatus does get fine-tuned very early, in other areas too.
JM: So in principle, it's possible that you don't have to set (‘learn’) any parameters – that it all happens automatically and at an extremely early age, even before the child speaks .
NC: Certainly no kid is conscious of what is going on in his or her head. And then you get a three- or four-year-old child who is speaking the language mostly of their peers.
JM: OK. How doesearly and automatic acquisition fit with the kind of data that Charles Yang comes up with, data that suggest that when children ‘grow’ a language, they go through a stage at around two and a half where they exhibit a kind of parameter-setting experimentation: their minds ‘try out’ computational patterns available in other languages that are extinguished as they develop a pattern characteristic of, say, English . . .
NC: There is interaction, but it's not so obvious that the feedback makes much difference, because most of the interaction is with children.
I don't know about you, but my dialect is [that of] a little corner of Philadelphia where I grew up, not my parents’ – which is totally different. What about you?
JM: I grew up speaking both English and Tamil .
NC: How's that?
JM: I was born
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