Jackendoff Ray, Wittenberg Eva
Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 02155, USA.
Departments of Linguistics and Psychology and Center for Research in Language, University of California-San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Feb;24(1):219-224. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1073-y.
We suggest that one way to approach the evolution of language is through reverse engineering: asking what components of the language faculty could have been useful in the absence of the full complement of components. We explore the possibilities offered by linear grammar, a form of language that lacks syntax and morphology altogether, and that structures its utterances through a direct mapping between semantics and phonology. A language with a linear grammar would have no syntactic categories or syntactic phrases, and therefore no syntactic recursion. It would also have no functional categories such as tense, agreement, and case inflection, and no derivational morphology. Such a language would still be capable of conveying certain semantic relations through word order-for instance by stipulating that agents should precede patients. However, many other semantic relations would have to be based on pragmatics and discourse context. We find evidence of linear grammar in a wide range of linguistic phenomena: pidgins, stages of late second language acquisition, home signs, village sign languages, language comprehension (even in fully syntactic languages), aphasia, and specific language impairment. We also find a full-blown language, Riau Indonesian, whose grammar is arguably close to a pure linear grammar. In addition, when subjects are asked to convey information through nonlinguistic gesture, their gestures make use of semantically based principles of linear ordering. Finally, some pockets of English grammar, notably compounds, can be characterized in terms of linear grammar. We conclude that linear grammar is a plausible evolutionary precursor of modern fully syntactic grammar, one that is still active in the human mind.
我们认为，探讨语言演变的一种方式是通过逆向工程：即思考在语言官能的所有组成部分尚未完全具备时，哪些组成部分可能是有用的。我们研究了线性语法所提供的可能性，线性语法是一种完全没有句法和形态学的语言形式，它通过语义和音系之间的直接映射来构建话语。一种具有线性语法的语言不会有句法类别或句法短语，因此也没有句法递归。它也不会有诸如时态、一致关系和格屈折等功能类别，也没有派生形态学。这样一种语言仍然能够通过词序传达某些语义关系——例如规定施事应先于受事。然而，许多其他语义关系将不得不基于语用学和话语语境。我们在广泛的语言现象中发现了线性语法的证据：洋泾浜语、第二语言习得后期阶段、家庭手语、乡村手语、语言理解（即使是在完全有句法的语言中）、失语症以及特定语言障碍。我们还发现了一种成熟的语言——印尼廖内语，其语法可以说接近一种纯粹的线性语法。此外，当要求受试者通过非语言手势传达信息时，他们的手势利用了基于语义的线性排序原则。最后，英语语法的一些部分，尤其是复合词，可以用线性语法来描述。我们得出结论，线性语法是现代完全句法语法一个合理的进化前身，并且仍然活跃在人类思维中。
