Computing the Sentence: A Relevance-Theoretical Model of Syntactic Development

This book approaches syntactic development from an unusual point of view. Our chosen linguistic framework is Relevance Theory, a theory of pragmatics with a strong commitment to a cognitive conceptualization of linguistic competence. The theory’s architecture of linguistic information acknowledges the existence of procedural instructions as part of the content of words, covering various processing acts, including syntactic combination. The unusual linguistic framework and methodology of this study represent a break with present-day approaches in developmental psycholinguistics and maybe even with the teachings of mainstream linguistics. The major methodological strategy of the project is to employ computer programming algorithms as heuristic models for the cognitive combinatory processes of syntax. Computer programs are a close analogue to mental plans for solving computational problems. We propose a procedural syntax of the central patterns of English. The constructs covered are argument-structure constructions; phrasal and clausal combinations of function words and content words; wh-questions; relative clauses; and coordination and gapping. This modelling solves significant issues that have been eluding linguistic theory for decades. In the second part of the book, we describe the development of certain syntactic procedures in English-speaking children. Employing a microgenetic analysis, we find that syntactic learning is guesswork by trial and error. Despite the apparent chaos, the many different attempts children make to arrive at some syntactic construct belong to a single learning process, and gradually converge on the adult algorithm. Defining syntax as combinatory procedures provides a novel perspective on our ‘predictive brain’, on language structure, and on crosslinguistic variation.