糖心视频

(糖心视频Org.com) -- On the surface, English, Japanese, and Kinande, a member of the Bantu family of languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have little in common. It is not just that the vocabularies of these three languages are vastly different; many of their rules of grammar diverge too.

Consider that in English, verbs must agree with their subject: We say, 鈥淚 write,鈥� or 鈥渉e writes.鈥� But Japanese has no need for such agreement, while in Kinande, agreement rules spread beyond subject-verb couplings to objects of a verb as well.

Despite such differences, English, Japanese, and Kinande share deep and previously unrecognized similarities pertaining to the way sentences are formed, says Shigeru Miyagawa, the Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture, and a professor in MIT鈥檚 Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Miyagawa describes these commonalities in a new book, 鈥淲hy Agree? Why Move?鈥� published by MIT Press this fall.

The existence of similar structures in such otherwise disparate languages, Miyagawa asserts, provides strong evidence that all human languages have a common origin. Miyagawa believes we have an innate faculty for language that shapes the form all languages take, an argument MIT鈥檚 Noam Chomsky developed in his theory of Universal Grammar, in the 1950s.

In this view, we do not invent languages from scratch. Rather, their eye-catching variation 鈥� from English to Japanese to Kinande 鈥� has evolved historically within specific limits. 鈥淟anguages have this wonderful diversity,鈥� says Miyagawa, who is also head of the Foreign Languages and Literatures section at MIT. 鈥淏ut language is a biological system. It doesn鈥檛 vary in some wild way. It cannot just be anything. Language is diverse within a highly defined pathway.鈥�

Linguistic layer cake

Miyagawa鈥檚 book argues that a linguistic phenomenon known as 鈥渕ovement鈥� reveals language鈥檚 universal nature. Think of a simple sentence, such as 鈥淛ohn ate a pizza.鈥� We have numerous ways to manufacture more complex variations of that sentence. For example: 鈥淲hich pizza did John eat?鈥� The subject, verb, and object remain the same. However, the word order changes; that movement helps provide the new meaning of the new sentence.

鈥淚f there were no movement in human language, you could not ask questions,鈥� says Miyagawa. 鈥淲e would go around all day just making statements: 鈥業 drink coffee. It is a nice day.鈥� Movement happens so that human language has this rich expressive power, like asking questions, or giving orders. Without movement, human language would be just a shadow of itself, impoverished.鈥�

Movement provides the same general function across languages. 鈥淲hen you look closely at sentences in any human language, there is a hierarchical structure, like two layers of a cake,鈥� Miyagawa explains. The bottom layer is the 鈥渁rgument structure鈥� of a sentence, and contains its core meaning (the fact that John ate a pizza). The top layer is the 鈥渆xpression structure鈥� and adds complexity (as in, 鈥淲hich pizza did John eat?鈥�). Movement is one way sentences can distinctively express those more complex ideas.

As a basic rule, says Miyagawa, where there is movement, there are also changes in agreement. In English and Kinande (and the Indo-European and Bantu language families they represent), shifts in agreement are an essential part of a sentence鈥檚 movement toward greater complexity. For instance, note the way the verb changes from 鈥渁te鈥� to 鈥渄id eat鈥� in our pizza example. In Kinande, the sentence 鈥淎bakali ba-ka-gul-a esyongoko鈥� means, 鈥淭he women buy chickens.鈥� But an alternate version, Esyongoko si-ka-gul-a bakali,鈥� introduces movement, and a slightly altered Kinande verb (the middle word in both sentences). This means 鈥渢he WOMEN buy the chickens.鈥� By emphasizing 鈥渨omen,鈥� the second version adds information: The person forming the sentence finds it especially important to note who is buying chickens.

That leaves a question: If movement is universal and almost always enabled by agreement, how does movement occur in Japanese, which has no agreement? In a novel argument, Miyagawa claims that although agreement does not exist in Japanese, movement occurs through two alternate facets of the language, 鈥渢opic-marking鈥� and 鈥渇ocus-marking.鈥� Topic-marking is the mechanism by which a phrase is placed at the head of a sentence; focus-marking uses intonation to do the same thing. These tools allow for greater sentence complexity in Japanese, as agreement does in English or Kinande.

Take the Japanese sentence 鈥淭aroo-mo hon-o katta,鈥� which means, 鈥淭aro also bought a book.鈥� In this case, mo is a focus-marking word, emphasizing that it is Taro who bought the book. (鈥淗on鈥� means book, and 鈥渒atta鈥� means bought. Verbs come last in Japanese.) An alternate version of the sentence, however, is 鈥淭aroo-ga hon-mo katta.鈥� Here, mo comes after 鈥渂ook鈥� and changes the sentence鈥檚 meaning to, 鈥淭aro bought a book, too.鈥� In this case the alternate construction adds complexity in Japanese by telling us Taro bought a book in addition to other activities.

While topic-marking and focus-marking have long been recognized parts of the Japanese language, other linguists have regarded them as optional parts of sentence composition. Miyagawa believes they are essential in order to generate the full complexity of Japanese, a hypothesis he developed after realizing that topic-marking and focus-marking are considered necessary for movement in Hungarian, too. So although 鈥淛apanese seems to be out in left field,鈥� as Miyagawa puts it, by lacking the link between agreement and movement, it also has a 鈥渃ore computational system鈥� that generates movement in other ways.

A case for universalism

Colleagues say 鈥淲hy Agree? Why Move?鈥� is a significant contribution to comparative linguistics. 鈥淲hat I particularly liked is the three-way comparison,鈥� says Mark Baker, a professor of linguistics at Rutgers University. 鈥淗e鈥檚 one of the leading experts on Japanese syntax, and it鈥檚 the first time somebody like that has looked at the Bantu languages in such depth.鈥�

If Miyagawa is right, his argument would provide more evidence in support of the Universal Grammar theory. That position has been fiercely debated in recent years, following claims by linguist Daniel Everett of Illinois State University, who contends the Piraha people of Brazil have a uniquely impoverished language, lacking numbers and other standard attributes. The Piraha language, in Everett鈥檚 view, stems from a unique culture, not a universal language facility. In a 2007 paper, MIT linguist David Pesetsky, along with the linguists Andrew Nevins of Harvard and Cilene Rodrigues of Emmanuel College, disagreed with Everett鈥檚 claims, arguing many features of Piraha exist elsewhere.

Miyagawa says he thinks the response to Everett 鈥渋s quite compelling and convincing.鈥� Still, he acknowledges, 鈥淪cience is such that we鈥檙e always challenged. And whatever we say about the Universal Grammar has to be provisional, with more and more research that we must do with other languages.鈥�

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( : )