Ecole d'été: L'émergence des universaux du langage et leur statut cognitif

Dans l'approche typologique fonctionnelle issue des travaux de Joseph Greenberg, les universaux du langage émergent à la suite de processus diachroniques qui se répètent d'une langue à l'autre et donnent naissance aux constructions en question. Bien que ce point de vue évolutionniste soit largement partagé, ses conséquences pour la recherche empirique sur les universaux du langage sont encore à explorer. Quelle est la nature des processus neurocognitifs qui amènent les locuteurs à créer de manière récurrente les mêmes constructions d'une langue à l'autre? Y-a-t-il de mécanismes généraux qui déterminent la propagation de ces constructions dans des différentes communautés de locuteurs (par exemple des mécanismes d'interaction sociale)? Y-a-t-il des mécanismes généraux dans l'acquisition du langage qui favorisent certaines constructions? Comment distinguer entre les effets de facteurs différents (développement de constructions particulières, transmission de ces constructions à l'intérieur de la communauté des locuteurs ou d'une génération de locuteurs à l'autre) pur des universaux particuliers? L'objectif de l'école thématique est de réunir de spécialistes de ces questions afin de faire le point sur l'état de l'art et de tracer des perspectives futures de recherche. Cours Theresa Biberauer (University of Cambridge) : Language variation and change: 21st century generative perspectives This class aims to give participants an overview of current generative perspectives on language variation and change, and a sense of how these have developed from the classic Principles and Parameters model. Topics to be discussed include: the shift from the classic two- to the current three-factors approach; the conceptualisation and significance of parameters then and now; the deepening understanding of the nature and significance of linguistic input; the role of general-cognitive (‘third') factors, neo-emergentist generativism, and convergence with insights from other cognitively oriented research traditions; new perspectives on and predictions for acquisition (first and further), diachrony, contact and typology. John A. Hawkins (University of California Davis & Cambridge University) : Processing Efficiency in Language Universals and in Contact-induced Language Change This course will introduce students to an interdisciplinary research program on language universals and change that I have been pursuing for some years. Its basic premise is that major patterns of variation that we see in the grammars of the world's languages today have been structured by general principles of efficiency in language use and communication. Evidence for these principles comes from languages permitting structural options from which selections are made in performance, e.g. between competing word orders and between relative clauses with a resumptive pronoun versus a gap. The preferences and patterns of performance within languages are reflected in the fixed conventions and patterns across grammars, leading to a “Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis”. This work provides a more empirical and grammar-external alternative to the explanation of language universals than the grammar-internal and UG approach of traditional generative linguistics, and it offers a long-standing foundation for the so-called “third factors” of more recent generative theorizing. The course will illustrate three major principles of processing efficiency that are clearly visible within and across languages, Minimize Domains, Minimize Forms and Maximize Online Processing, and give illustrative supporting data, including recent extensions of these principles and their applications in both psycho-linguistics and language typology. The course will also explore how language change occurs from this efficiency perspective. The preferences visible in language use can provide, on the one hand, a “language-internal” motivation for grammatical change, but an increasingly important determinant of change can be seen in language contact and bilingualism and the course will provide an efficiency-based approach to explaining when changes occur in these circumstances and when they do not. This will incorporate both psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic considerations, and a key efficiency principle of Maximize Common Ground in bilingual learning and use will be proposed. A reading packet will be provided for students. The following are foundation papers and chapters: Hawkins, J.A. (2014). Cross-linguistic Variation and Efficiency, ch.1 ‘Language variation and the performance-grammar-correspondence hypothesis', ch.2 ‘Three general efficiency principles', pp.1-45, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hawkins, J.A. (2012). ‘Les relations entre competence et performance en syntaxe'. In: J. François, ed., L'Eventail des Compétences Linguistiques et la (Dé)valorization des Perfor- mances, Mémoires de la Société Linguistique de Paris Tome XXI, Peeters, Paris, 13-33. Hawkins,J.A.&L.Filipovic (2024). ‘Bilingualism-induced language change:What can change, when and why?', Linguistics Vanguard. Martin Haspelmath (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig): Universals of grammar and cultural evolution There are three main types of grammatical universals: word order universals, universals of co-expression (or polysemy), and universals of asymmetric grammatical coding. In this course, I will discuss a range of universals of coexpression and of coding (leaving aside word order) and and I will propose explanations in terms of cultural evolution. The latter is a fashionable term for what used to be called “diachrony”, but I will show how the analogy with biological evolution and adaptation provides additional insight. I will argue for the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding that I have been working on over many years, providing a range of examples from different languages. This theory relies on the idea of diachronic change as cultural evolution and adaptation. In addition, I will also highlight the importance of distinguishing between natural-kind concepts (as in generative grammar) and comparative concepts for cultural-evolutionary explanations. Informations pratiques : Frais d'inscription : Tarif étudiant : 100 Euros Tarif général : 120 Euros Ces frais couvrent les cours, les matériels de cours, les déjeuners et les pauses café.