linguistic structures - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland ...

The obvious reason that human languages do not contain rules based on principle (29) is that human
beings cannot count and speak at the same time. Try, for example, to reread the present sentence
at normal speed and count the number of words as you reread it. What is the ninth word?
Sometimes languages have rules that position elements initially or finally in sentences. For
example, in a direct question in English, the auxiliary unit (helping verb) comes first as in Will he
do it? Languages even contain rules that position elements in a specific order after an introductory
structural unit. For example, German has a rule that says the verb must be the second structural
element when a sentence begins with a unit other than the subject. But such rules as these are highly
constrained. It is never the case that a language contains a rule for positioning a unit after, say, six
other units. The reason is rooted in human memory constraints. The rules of human language are
based on structural units because human short term memory (STM) is severely constrained.
It is a well known fact that humans can only remember about five to seven bits of information
immediately presented to them; for example, no more than the amount in a local telephone number.
In early childhood, the amount is much less than in adulthood. Gradually, during early development,
as children’s cognitive capacities mature, their ability to operate within STM constraints increases.
But there is an upper limit for all humans. If the information is organized into units or chunks, then
more can be remembered. Read each of the following strings of words at normal speed and then try
to recall them from memory.
(32) a. criteria performance high establish may institutions some
b. some institutions may establish high performance criteria
(32b) is much easier to remember than (32a), and the reason is clearly that (32a) has no structure;
it is simply a list of words. (32b), on the other hand, contains units which chunk or organize the
words. We can diagram (32b) as follows:
(33)
As a result of many considerations like these, linguists have concluded that the difference between
grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in human languages is not generally arbitrary. The
ungrammaticality of sentences like (23e) (*The eventually president will resign) is due to the fact
that they violate some principle such as (34).
(34) The rules of human language are structure dependent.
33