北外语言学考博复试卷

Oral Interview for Ph.D. Candidates

(刘润清)

Read the following passage in 40 minutes and be prepared to answer questions on it.

It is arguable that much of Noam Chomsky's thinking (1965, 1993, 2002 and elsewhere) about the nature of linguistic inquiry is in line with Popper's thinking about science. Like his immediate predecessors in the United States, Chomsky believed that the kinds of linguistic inquiry he was engaged in (generative linguistics) were scientific in nature. But, unlike them, Chomsky adopted scientific realism: he argued that science is not limited to observables. It is Chomsky's scientific realism that allowed him to embrace mentalism in the study of language: freed from the insistence that science concerns itself only with that which is observable, Chomsky could allow that there are linguistic realities that are mental in nature, in stark contrast to the antimentalistic stance of his immediate predecessors. He went further than this: he insisted that linguistic realities are exclusively mental. More specifically, they are mental states, not processes, and they are strictly internal to individuals. Thus, linguistic inquiry was a branch of individual psychology for Chomsky. This clearly flies in the face of any social conception of the object of linguistic inquiry, which Chomsky labeled 'E-language,' where the 'E' means 'external to individual minds.' In contrast, he insisted that the object of inquiry in linguistics is 'I-language', where the 'I' stands for both 'Individual' and 'Internal" (to the mind). This is Chomsky's 'internalism'. Connected with this is Chomsky's insistence that language is not designed for use. This is not intended to mean that language is not, in fact, used for communication (no one could deny that it is); rather, communicative use is not what language is for. This is Chomsky's 'antifunctionalism'" in his view, language is not driven by communicative function. Rather, language is for thinking: language and thought are intimately connected, for Chomsky. Connected with this is the long-standing distinction between 'competence' and 'performance': for Chomsky, the object of inquiry is not observable utterance phenomena (performance), or acts of online mental processing of utterances (which also falls within performance), but the knowledge (competence) that allows performance (use of that knowledge) to take place. The choice of terminology was unfortunate, since in everyday parlance, 'competence' denotes the ability to perform in some domain, as in Johns' competence as a manager is unquestionable. But Chomsky long since insisted that his conception of linguistics knowledge was not to be interpreted as knowing how to do something; nor was it to be interpreted as knowing that something is the case. Rather, linguistic knowledge was an unconscious mental state that grew in the mind of the child. This notion of growth is a biological one: according to Chomsky, language 'acquisition' (the term is inappropriate in discussing Chomsky's view, since, for Chomsky, language is not acquired -- it is innate) was not something that a child did: it was something that happened to the child. In this view, 'language acquisition' is a process of biological growth. This constitutes Chomsky's 'naturalism: the view that language belongs to the natural world and not to culture, view that is controversial. A central component of Chomsky's naturalism was his claim that human beings are born with linguistic knowledge, that there is innate cognitive content that is specifically linguistic. This is often referred to as the 'innateness hypothesis'. In arguing for innate linguistic knowledge, Chomsky adopted a version of 'rationalism', often referred to as 'nativism', which is frequently associated with the work of Rene Descartes.