What Language is Made From : Helen Keller, Some UG Residues, and the Strong Minimalist Thesis

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Reconsidering and reanalyzing a number of problems with first language acquisition and learnability within the framework of the Minimalist Program, the most recent linguistic theorizing on the part of generative grammar, the present paper ascertains some theoretical implications and consequences of the syntactic/learnability framework comprising Suzuki (2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006) for the purposes of explicating the long-standing problems: (i) the transition from "pidgins" to "creoles"; (ii) the emergence of a Nicaraguan sign language among deaf children who had no common communication means (presumably, involving a generational stage where something like the transition from "pidgins" to "creoles" may be observed); (iii) the emergence of what are called "home signs, " which are developed by deaf children who are not exposed to a signed language during the major part of the critical period; (iv) what the languages of specific language impairment (SLI) patients are like; (v) what the languages of wolf children such as Genie are like; and (vi) the outstanding case of Helen Keller, where a "tactile sign language" has been reported to have been involved (see Gill 1997). (Although I believe that resources present in the framework of Suzuki 2005, 2006 in particular possess the potential enough to cope with most major problems arising in the explanation of the questions in (i-v) above, I specifically take up in the present article the fifth question of what Helen Keller's language is like, submitting the more or less in-depth scrutiny and explanatory treatment (apart from some sporadic mentions of them during the course of theoretical developments appearing in the present paper) of the other five questions to (my) future work.) In view of its potential for locating the possible origins of important differences between the cases of the Japanese second language learner of English, for example, and of Genie, in both of which the learner seems to be forced to start her acquisition of her target language largely after the critical/sensitive period has passed, the present paper focuses on the fascinating feat of language acquisition on the part of Helen Keller, who was deaf, blind, and mute as a result of the high fever and severe stomachache that hit her when she was one year and nine months, the most interesting point of Keller's outstanding case being that Keller somehow appears to be located between the (normally developing) second language learner and wolf children such as Genie in terms of her linguistic abilities. The central concept here is Chomsky's (2000, 2001, 2004, 2006) strong minimalist thesis (SMT), possible requirements on the part of "efficient computation" and of the "evolution of language" being also considered. More specifically, the biolinguistic idea following from Chomsky (2004) should be that the initial state of language acquisition is not fully genetically-determined, but that it is also a function of the general property of organic systems and, more generally, it reflects the properties of the physical world. Further starting with some important similarities between the Unconscious (in the sense of Freud) and FLN/language and focusing on the term "compression" as a mental/linguistic vehicle between different dimensions (see Nakazawa 2004, Moro 2004), the present paper gives conjectures on the intriguing concept of a "dimension" and examines some empirical domains where the concept applies (see Uriagereka and Pietroski 2002, Uriagereka 1999/2002). And, rather importantly, some efforts are made (by following Chomsky 2006 in reducing the contents of FLN/UG to the minimum) to examine in some detail what I take to be two major UG residues, Case and the EPP, so as to attain "ontological adequacy" in the sense that the major current concern is to explain why languages are the way they are.

What Language is Made From : Helen Keller, Some UG Residues, and the Strong Minimalist Thesis

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