Samantha Tall
A Reanalysis of Chomsky’s Use of Internal and External Language
Noam Chomsky’s What is Language revisits his definition of Language. Chomsky reexamines his concept of universal grammar and concludes that the acquisition of Language is domain specific; meaning that the Language process is naturally endowed within the individual. He also defines Language as either internalized (I-Language) or externalized (E-Language). He argues that only internalized Language is important in regards to the study of Language. By doing so he rejects the branch of linguistics known as Corpus Linguistics. In this paper, I will argue that Chomsky’s idea that only internal Language matters hinders the domain specific perspective of Language that he presented. By arguing against the study of external Language, it weakens his argument considering that corpus studies, as seen through Charles Yang’s corpora experiments, have also suggested domain specificity. Thus, considering that other empirical studies have demonstrated that external Language also support the domain specificity argument, Chomsky is tasked with reexamining if Language only exists domain specifically at an internal level.
Chomsky defines Language as “two interfaces, sensorimotor for externalization and conceptual-intentional for mental process” (Chomsky, 2015, p. 4). He also defines internal Language as “I-language- “I” standing for internal, individual, and intensional” meanwhile “E-language” stands for “external language which many -not me- identify with a corpus of data or with some infinite set that is weakly generated” (Chomsky, 2015, p.4). Even though Chomsky attempts to say that he does not define external Language as corpora he contradicts himself later in the same paragraph by saying that “it is not clear whether” these “weak generations” from corpora are “even definable for human language” and corpora “at best” is a “derivative from the more fundamental notion of I-language.” (Chomsky, 2015, p.4). This contradiction by Chomsky suggests that because it is not definable for human Language it automatically falls into the E-Language category regardless of it derives from I-language. The reason he dismisses E-Language is because he believes that “most use of language use by far is never externalized. It is a kind of internal dialogue” (Chomsky, 2015, p.14). The internal dialogue is the Universal Grammar device he believes that all Language users are biologically endowed with. However, just because Chomsky viewed it as being biological he did not assume that all humans have full Language at birth but rather the Language acquisition device “operates on experience acquired in an ideal community and constructs from it, in a determinate way, a state of language faculty” which suggests the support of domain specificity (Chomsky, 1990, p.60). While Chomsky’s theory that Language acquisition is a domain specific process may be correct, his complete omission of external Language is problematic. His stance on the Language acquisition device requires that some input is necessary in order to gain complete competence in grammar. Thus, external Language is vital in both the production and study of internal Language, therefore by rejecting external Language he is establishing a logical paradox.
Ironically, even though Chomsky is not in support of the study of corpus linguistics it is perhaps one of the few empirical branches of linguistics that shows statistical support that Language acquisition is domain specific. Charles Yang’s study in Ontogeny and phylogeny of language evaluates ten language samples from young children and compares the diversity of noun-pairs to that of the Brown Corpus. He finds a “paradox” in which the ten children samples exhibit more grammatical diversity than that of the adult Brown Corpus (Yang, 2013, p. 2). Due to this finding, he then goes on to study a “memory model” from “1.1 million child-directed English utterances in the public domain” (Yang, 2013, p. 3). Ultimately, he finds that “some components of child language follow abstract rules from the outset of syntactic acquisition” and that “memorization in language” does not explain grammar patterns in children (Yang, 2013, p3.). Yang’s study supports Chomsky’s proposal of a domain specificity in acquisition. However, the manner in which Yang finds and presents his findings is exclusively through the external interpretation of Language which Chomsky rebukes as being definable for Language. This signifies not only that domain specificity may be a plausible theory, but it also suggests that Chomsky needs to reconsider his initial suggestion that only I-Language interpretation is important. It might be in Chomsky’s best interest to revise his interpretation of language and incorporate E-Language. He does not have to give E-Language the same amount of power that I-Language has but to absolutely reject E-Language is challenging in that it calls into question the legitimacy of the domain specific argument from Chomsky’s universal grammar perspective. Not only would the incorporation of E-Language into his definition strengthen his initial domain specific argument, but it would also legitimize the study of corpora. If he does not want to include E-Language, he can solve the problem by saying that corpus data is explicitly part of I-Language rather than ambiguously defining it and then contradicting himself.
In conclusion, Chomsky’s needs to incorporate E-Language into what he deems as important in terms of analyzing Language. As seen through Yang’s study, it is evident that domain specificity is present when analyzing E-Language. To strengthen his argument further, Chomsky needs to address the paradox, from the logical dilemma, he creates when he says that universal grammar requires input yet disregards E-Language completely. The best way to do so would be to integrate E-Language in into his definition to further strengthen, rather than weaken, his view.
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References:
Chomsky, N (2015) What is Language?. Columbia University Press, What kind of creatures are we?, (pp. 1-25)
Chomsky, N (1990) “Language in mind” in David H Mellor (ed.), 56-80.
Cook, V., & Newson, M. (1996). Chomskys universal grammar: An introduction. (pp.75-132) Oxford: Blackwell.
Mellor David (1990) Ways of communicating. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press
Yang, C. (2013). Ontogeny and phylogeny of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(16), 6324-6327; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1216803110