Contains research objectives and summary of research on one research project.National Institute of Mental Health (Grant 5 P01 MH13390-10

Halle, Morris

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XX. LINGUISTICSProf. Roman JakobsonProf. Morris HalleProf. Noam ChomskyProf. Joan W. BresnanProf. Sylvain BrombergerProf. Jerry A. FodorProf. Merrill F. GarrettMark R. BaltinJanet M. BreckenridgeLuigi BurzioJill L. CarrierCheryl ClarkSarah G. CumminsDavid B. DuncanLeland M. GeorgeHarrold W. GrayWilliam J. HawkinsBruce P. HayesAcademic and Research StaffProf. Wayne A. O'NeilProf. David M. PerlmutterProf. Krystyna PomorskaProf. John R. RossDr. Frederick B. D'AgostinoDr. Johannes Den BestenDr. Robert A. FreidinGraduate StudentsRobert J. IngriaOsvaldo A. JaeggliLaVerne M. JeanneJudy Ann KeglLaura E. KnechtAnn F. LekachDavid I. LesliePhilip S. LeSourdRochelle LieberMarcia LinebargerRobert C. MayJohn J. McCarthy IIIDr. Edmund GussmannDr. Mary-Louise KeanDr. Barbara KleinDr. David B. RosenfieldDr. Myrl E. SolbergDr. Wendy K. WilkinsDavid O. PettijohnDavid G. NashNicholas D. OstlerAlberto M. RivasJoel RotenbergTodd SjoblomYillah-Mohamed SorieCraig L. ThierschAnne P. TuckerNathalie Van BockstaeleAmy S. WeinbergMoira J. YipNational Institute of Mental Health (Grant 5 P01 MH13390-10)Morris HalleThe ultimate objective of our research is to gain a better understanding of man'smental capacities by studying the ways in which these capacities manifest themselvesin language. Language is a particularly promising avenue because, on the one hand, itis an intellectual achievement that is accessible to all normal humans and, on the otherhand, we have more detailed knowledge about language than about any other human activ-ity involving man's mental capacities.Scientific descriptions of languages have for a very long time followed a standardformat. A number of topics are almost invariably discussed; for example, pronuncia-tion, the inflection of words, word formation, the expression of syntactic relations,word order, and so forth. Moreover, the manner in which these have been treated hasalso been quite standard. While traditional grammars have many shortcomings, theirgreat practical utility is beyond question; generations of students have acquired adequatecommand of innumerable languages with the help of grammars of the standard type. Aplausible inference that might be drawn from this fact is that languages are somehownot very different from one another and the traditional standard format has succeededin capturing essential aspects of what all languages share in common. Accordingly,much of the research of our group has been devoted to studying the common frameworkthat underlies different languages, the general principles that are exemplified in thePR No. 119 111(XX. LINGUISTICS)grammar of different languages. Results strongly indicate that this assumption isindeed correct as far as the linguistic evidence is concerned.The preceding discussion leads quite naturally to the question, "What evidence fromoutside of linguistics might one adduce in favor of the hypothesis that all languages areconstructed in accordance with a single plan, a single framework? " It seems to us thatthe most striking evidence in favor of the hypothesis is, on the one hand, the rapiditywith which children master their mother tongue, and, on the other hand, the fact thateven a young child's command of his mother tongue encompasses not only phrases andutterances he has heard but also an unlimited number of phrases and utterances he hasnot previously encountered. To account for these two sets of facts, we must assumethat in learning a language a child makes correct inferences about the structural prin-ciples that govern his language on the basis of very limited exposure to the actual sen-tences and utterances. In other words, we must assume that with regard to mattersof language a child is uniquely capable of jumping to the correct conclusions in the over-whelming majority of instances, and it is the task of the student of language to explainhow this might be possible.A possible explanation might run as follows. Assume that the human organism isconstructed so that man is capable of discovering only selected facts about language and,moreover, that he is constrained to represent his discoveries in a very specific fashionfrom which certain fairly far-reaching inferences about the organization of other partsof the language would follow automatically. If this assumption is accepted, the next taskis to advance specific proposals concerning the devices that might be actually at play.The obvious candidate is the theoretical framework of linguistics, for while it islogically conceivable that the structure of language might be quite distinct from that ofthe organism that is known to possess the ability to speak, it is much more plausiblethat this is not the case, that the structures that appear to underlie all languages reflectquite directly features of the human mind. To the extent that this hypothesis is cor-rect - and there is considerable empirical evidence in its favor - the study of languageis rightly regarded as an effort at mapping the mysteries of the human mind.PR No. 119 112

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