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THEORETICAL ESSAY

PROBLEMS WITH VARIABLE

PROPERTIES IN SYNTAX
David W. LIGHTFOOT
Department of Linguistics — Georgetown University

ABSTRACT
Like those birds born to chirp, humans are born to parse; children are
predisposed to assign linguistic structures to the amorphous
externalization of the thoughts that we encounter. This yields a view of
variable properties quite different from one based on parameters defined
at Universal Grammar (UG). Our approach to language acquisition makes
two contributions to Minimalist thinking. First, in accordance with general
Minimalist goals, we minimize the pre-wired components of internal
languages, dispensing with three separate, central entities: parameters,
an evaluation metric for rating the generative capacity of grammars, and
any independent parsing mechanism. Instead, children use their internal
grammar to parse the ambient external language they experience. UG is
“open,” consistent with what children learn through parsing. Second, our
understanding of language acquisition yields a new view of variable

OPEN ACCESS properties, properties that occur only in certain languages. Under this
open UG vision, specific elements of I-languages arise in response to new
EDITORS
– Miguel Oliveira, Jr. (UFAL) parses. Both external and internal languages play crucial, interacting
– René Almeida (UFS)
roles: unstructured, amorphous external language is parsed and a
REVIEWERS structured internal language system results. My Born to parse (Lightfoot
– Janayna Carvalho (UFMG)
– Cilene Rodrigues (PUC-Rio)
2020) explores case studies that show innovative parses of external
language shaping the history of languages. I discuss 1) how children learn
DATES
– Received: 10/09/2020 through parsing, 2) the role of parsing at the two interfaces between
– Accepted: 10/12/2020 syntactic structure and the externalization system (sound or sign) and
– Published: 01/13/2021
logical form, 3) language change, and 4) variable linguistic properties
HOW TO CITE
seen through the lens of an open UG. This, in turn, yields a view of variable
LIGHTFOOT, David W. (2021). Problems
With Variable Properties In Syntax. properties akin to that of evolutionary biologists working on Darwin’s
Cadernos de Linguística, v. 2, n. 1, p. 01-
19. finches; see section 7.

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RESUMO
Como as aves canoras, que nascem para gorjear, os humanos nascem
para processar informação linguística. As crianças apresentam
predisposição para atribuição de estrutura às externalizações amorfas
de pensamento que encontram no decorrer do desenvolvimento. Isso nos
dá uma visão de propriedades variáveis bem diferente daquela baseada
em parâmetros definida na Gramática Universal (GU). Nossa abordagem
da aquisição da linguagem oferece duas contribuições para o
pensamento minimalista. Em primeiro lugar, em consonância com as
metas do Programa Minimalista, minimizamos o componente pré-
programado da linguagem (Língua-I(nterna)), dispensando três entidades
centrais separadas: parâmetros, métrica avaliativa da capacidade
gerativa de gramáticas, mecanismos independentes de processamento.
Contrariamente, as crianças usam a gramática interna para processar o
ambiente linguístico externo que experienciam. Isto é, a GU é “aberta”,
sendo consistente com o que as crianças aprendem por meio do parser.
Em segundo lugar, nosso entendimento da aquisição da linguagem leva
a uma nova visão sobre propriedades variáveis, propriedades
particulares de certas línguas. Dentro dessa visão aberta da GU,
elementos específicos da Língua-I emergem como respostas a
processamentos inovadores. Desse modo, tanto a língua-I como a língua-
E(xterna) desempenham papéis fundamentais e interativos: línguas
externas amorfas, não estruturadas, são processadas, tornando-se um
sistema linguístico interno estruturado. No livro Born to parse (Lightfoot
2020), exploramos estudos de caso indicadores de processamentos
inovadores de línguas externas, que moldam a história das línguas.
Discutimos 1) como as crianças aprendem por meio do processamento, 2)
o papel do processamento nas interfaces entre estrutura sintática e
sistema de externalização (som ou sinais) e forma lógica, 3) mudança
linguística, e 4) propriedades linguísticas variáveis vistas através das
lentes de uma GU aberta. Essa proposta nos fornece uma visão de
propriedades variáveis similar à perspectiva da biologia evolutiva sobre
os tentilhões de Darwin; ver seção 7.

KEYWORDS
Open UG; Parsing; Parameters; Internal Languages. Minimalism.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE
GU Aberta; Processamento; Parâmetros; Línguas Internas; Minimalismo.

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INVARIANT PRINCIPLES

For decades, generative syntacticians have been discovering invariant principles holding of
all internal language systems and, for the last twenty-five years, proponents of the Minimal-
ist Program have been seeking to minimize and naturalize those principles in ways that
make them biologically plausible. One version appeals to invariant computational opera-
tions of Project and Merge, which build hierarchical structures bottom-up and combine two
elements, a head and a complement (1) or a phrasal category and an adjunct phrase (2).
These two skeletal structures suffice for all languages when supplemented by the results of
parsing external language, as we shall see.

(1) (1) VP VP (2) (2) VP VP

3 3 3 3
V V DP DP VP VP PP PP
g 3g 3 3 3
2 2
saw Dsaw D NP NP V V DP DP DP
P P DP
g g 2 2 g g2 g 2 g g g
a aN N
PP PP saw saw D D in NP LA
NP in LA
g 2g 2 | g| g
man man P DPP DP a Na N
g 4g 4 g g
with awith
jacket a jacket man man
So in (1) the verb saw “projects” to a Verb Phrase also containing a direct object, the
Determiner Phrase a man with a jacket. The Merge operation brings saw and a man with a
jacket together, forming the VP saw a man with a jacket. Similarly, Merge unifies with and
a jacket, creating the Preposition Phrase (PP) with a jacket. All internal systems draw on
these operations, accounting for the binary branching structures that are everywhere.
Merge applies recursively to yield complex structures.
Language systems typically have three recursive devices: relativization, complementa-
tion, and coordination, each of which may yield structures of indefinite complexity (3-5).

(3) Relativization: This is the cow that kicked the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat
that caught the mouse that nibbled the cheese that lay in the house that Jack built on
the street where Maria lives.

(4) Complementation: Ray said that Kay said that Jay thought that Fay said that Gay told …

(5) Coordination: Ray and Kay went to the movie and Jay and Fay to the store, while Gay
and May worked where Shay and Clay watched.

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And, of course, these three options may all be used in one expression: Gay and May said
that the man who loves Maria also likes ice cream. These simple, invariant options permit
the generation of expressions of indefinite complexity, and in all language systems: English,
Japanese, Quechua, and Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Let us explore some challenges for English internal language systems and begin to
get a sense of what this biolinguistic enterprise consists in. European languages have inter-
rogatives where the interrogative word is pronounced at the beginning of the expression
and is understood in a wide range of positions marked with a strike-through in (6). In ac-
cordance with the Minimalist Program, building these expressions involves multiple re-ap-
plications of Merge (yielding relative clauses, complements, and coordinate structures), plus
copying and deleting the wh-phrase.

(6) a. Who did we see who?

b. Who did we speak to who?

c. Who did she say who left?

d. Who did she say that she saw who?

e. Who did she say she saw who?

f. Who did she see pictures of who?

In all these expressions the interrogative word is pronounced in sentence-initial posi-

tion and is understood in the strike-through position, so it is copied into the higher position
and deleted from its understood position, expressing the thought “who is the person x such
that we saw x?”
Things become interesting when we note a set of expressions that no speaker of English
would say (7) (* indicates an expression that does not exist).

(7) a. *Who did she say that who left?

b. *Whose did she see whose pictures?

c. *Who did she wonder whether who left?

d. *Who did she wonder whether Bill visited who?

e. *Who did she meet the woman who knew who?

f. *Which did she read [which books]?

g. *How many did she see [how many cars]?

h. Combien a-t-elle vu de voitures?

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The key question here is what principles do the non-existent forms of (7) violate; put
differently, what principles prevent English speaking children from using the non-existent
forms of (7)? To sharpen matters, how is it that certain expressions are well-formed in
French but the word-for-word translation in English is never said and why do English and
French speaking children learn differently (7g,h)? There must be systematic differences that
predict why French differs from English.
There are proposals that seem to have the right properties but, rather than giving read-
ers those details, I will let you discuss the issues with well educated graduate students at
your local university.
The Principles-and-Parameters model has been around for forty years, since Chom-
sky 1981, and postulates a set of invariant principles and a set of option points, param-
eters, defined in UG, allowing the child to select one of two parameter settings. (8) illus-
trates this with the ideas behind two principles (deletion and a locality restriction) and
two binary parameters accounting for variable properties (head directionality and an-
other locality restriction).

(8) Principles

- something may be deleted, if it is (in) the complement of an adjacent, overt word.

- nothing may move across more than one bounding node.

Parameters

- {YP, X}

- CP and/or IP are bounding nodes.

The principle governing deletion accounts for the undeletability of the strike-through
who in (7a), because who is not the complement of the adjacent that. The parameters re-
quire that initial structures have VPs consisting of either V DP order, like English, or DP V
order like Dutch, German, Japanese, or Korean.
Consider now VP ellipsis, another construction of English. Just as displaced interroga-
tive elements may be understood in a wide range of positions (6), (9) illustrates the wide
range of contexts where VPs may be deleted but the empty VP is always the complement of
the overt, adjacent word to its left, as required by the deletion principle in (8), and always
understood as “leave for Rio.” (9a) shows two conjoined clauses, (9b,c) shows a main clause
and a subordinate clause in different orders, (9d) shows separate sentences, (9e) shows the
ellipsed VP embedded within a very complex structure, and (9f) shows an ellipsed VP with
no spoken antecedent at all; the syntactic condition is met; the ellipsed phrase is licensed
by the overt, adjacent don’t, of which it acts as the complement, perhaps understood to
mean “Don’t tickle me.”

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(9) a. Max left for Rio today and Kim did VPe as well.

b. Max left for Rio, although Kim didn’t VPe.

c. Although Max couldn’t VPe, Kim was able to leave for Rio.

d. Max went to Rio. Yes, but Kim didn’t VPe.

e. The man who left for Rio knows the woman who didn’t VPe.

f. Don’t VPe.

Again we see a wide range of possibilities but there are limits and our invariant principle
(8) explains why and where.
English (and some other languages) allows subject pronouns to occur with a quantifica-
tional word, all or often, either preceding or following it (10). Using VP ellipsis and a quantifi-
cational word shows interesting effects that follow from our analysis so far.

(10) a. They all had read it.

b. They had all read it.

c. They often had seen it.

d. They had often seen it.

However, an ellipsed VP may only occur where licensed by an adjacent, overt word of
which it serves as a complement (8). Hence the well-formed (11a, b) but not (11c, d).

(11) a. They denied reading it, although they all had VPe.

b. They denied reading it, although they often had VPe.

c. *They denied reading it, although they had all VPe.

d. *They denied reading it, although they had often VPe.

Two fundamental properties of internal language systems are that, first, they embody
much variation; indeed, it is possible that no two I-languages are identical. I have two daugh-
ters, both aged within 18 months of each other, raised under very similar circumstances, at-
tending the same schools, etc, but I know within seconds which one is making the telephone
call. The second fundamental property of I-languages is that they are acquired by children in
very similar ways. Minimalists have had very little to say about both these fundamental prop-
erties. Lightfoot 2020 changes that in ways that I will sketch briefly here.

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1. VARIATION AND PARAMETERS

Linguists, Minimalists or not, have no biologically coherent, general approach to variable

properties that occur in some I-languages but not in others, nor about how they are ac-
quired. Furthermore, we study them in silos. Some of us work on parameters, others on var-
iable rules, and others on constraint re-ranking, and we don’t talk to each other about pos-
sible commonalities or generalizations. Such things are largely ignored by Minimalists. For
proponents of the Principles-and-Parameters approach, our success with parameters
comes nowhere near what we have achieved with invariant principles. Beyond this, our two
fundamental properties are related: Variable properties, being language-particular, must
be learned, triggered by language particularities experienced by children. So it is no surprise
that researchers who do not work on acquisition do not focus on variable properties, and
vice versa. Nonetheless there has been much recent discussion on problems with parame-
ters; among others, one thinks of work by Theresa Biberauer, Cedric Boeckx, Fritz New-
meyer, Marit Westergaard, and people working in the Cambridge, UK ReCos group (Re-
thinking Comparative Syntax) under the leadership of Ian Roberts.
Discussion has focused on the fact that we have no generally agreed theory of pa-
rameters. It is sometimes suggested that the so-called “Borer-Chomsky conjecture” pro-
vides a basis for such a theory, stipulating that parameters are linked to functional cate-
gories. However, that simply transfers the problem and emphasizes the fact that we have
no general theory of functional categories. Even worse, we have no theory of how param-
eters are set, except by the deeply flawed approach of grammar evaluation and input
matching. Gibson & Wexler (1994) and Clark (1992) developed such approaches in the
1990’s through their (respectively) Trigger Learning Algorithm and Fitness Metric. The TLA
sought to identify the grammar with minimal “errors” in parameter setting or the fewest
“violations,” instances of misgeneration of structures not represented in the child’s corpus
of expressions generated by the most fit. The TLA encouraged children to seek a better
fit between what current parameter settings generate and what children have experi-
enced. One (huge) problem with such attempts is that they postulate that children can
remember the totality of what they have experienced and perform elaborate calculations
on the full set of possible grammars, each of which generates an infinite number of ex-
pressions; children rate the fitness of grammars by counting what those grammars can
and cannot generate.
Another approach seeks to treat as triggers for elements of I-languages what those I-
languages can generate but this introduces a vicious circularity and obligates investigators
to distinguish what the child hears as distinct from negative data concerning what does not
occur, which are generally treated as not available to language acquirers. This also entails

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that children store what they have heard, a matter that raises huge feasibility issues for
claims about childhood memory, to which we shall return.
However, for a Minimalist, seeking to minimize information postulated of the linguis-
tic genotype (i.e. what linguists call “UG”), parameters constitute a more fundamental
problem: if parameters are stated at UG (8), they violate the aspirations of the Minimal-
ist Program. Those aspirations encourage us to find an alternative to UG-defined pa-
rameters, as I shall advocate below. These input-matching accounts are rendered un-
feasible when one factors in the numbers of I-language systems to be rated, roughly a
billion if there are about thirty independent, binary parameters, and roughly a trillion if
there are forty parameters. Children are “batch learners” and need to know which ex-
pressions are in the batch of expressions generated by each I-language system; each
of those systems includes an infinite number of expressions generated. The calculations
required of children under this parametric view are vitiated by the vast numbers in-
volved, including infinite numbers. This hardly looks feasible.
These difficulties with parameters encouraged Chomsky (2001) to imagine an approach
where there are no variable properties, hence no parameters. He postulated the “Uniformity
hypothesis;” ‘in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, assume languages to
be uniform, with variety restricted to easily detected properties of utterances’ (my em-
phasis – DWL). So, we all speak Human and the task of investigators is to find an abstract
level of representation where an utterance in Japanese has the same logical form as the
equivalent utterance in Quechua. That may be possible one day but, until we have clear pro-
posals along those lines, we need alternative approaches.
Berwick & Chomsky 2016 postulated that the “basic property” of I-language systems is
that they have the Merge computational operation. A complementary basic property is to say
that fish are born to swim, certain birds are born to chirp, and, in the same sense, the basic
property of humans is that they are born to parse, born to assign linguistic structure to what
they hear (Lightfoot 2020). Under this view, parsing is central and children invent new variable
properties. This exploits a fundamental distinction drawn by Chomsky (1986): E-language is
parsed and I-languages result from that parsing. Under that view, we adapt an approach of
Colin Phillips (2003), whereby there is no independent parser but rather the I-language itself
is the parsing mechanism and yields what is parsed: people parse by assigning linguistic
structures made available by their emerging I-language, i.e. what is provided initially by UG
and then also by the results of early learning, by the effects of Label and Project. So a child’s
parsing capacity becomes richer as his or her I-language develops.
Children parse E-language and postulate specific I-language elements required of as-
pects of the parse. The aggregation of I-language elements constitutes the complete I-lan-
guage. When E-language shifts, children may parse differently and thus attain/invent a new
I-language, as revealed in work on syntactic change and as we shall discuss in a moment.

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Children invent variable properties of their I-languages through parsing; there is no evalu-
ation of I-languages and no parameters or distinct cognitive entity of a parser. UG is open
but some things are learned.
Learning paths emerge: a child cannot determine whether an I-language has verb-ob-
ject VPs until she has identified phrasal categories. Representations are elaborated step-
by-step in the course of acquisition, and the structures needed become increasingly ab-
stract and grammar-internal. The emerging learning path is part of linguistic theory, a func-
tion of the way in which the structures are stated, as shown by Elan Dresher (1999).
A child discovers the structures and categories needed for parses, using what their cur-
rent I-language makes available to analyze their ambient E-language. Children learn irreg-
ular past tenses, plurals, and that [V+past PP] is a structure. They do this by identifying
VP

contrasts and conducting a kind of distributional analysis familiar through the work on pars-
ing initiated by Roman Jakobson (1941) and, more recently, by Janet Fodor (1998). Those
contrasts enable a child to build its mature I-language and structures like (12) for an expres-
sion The cat sat on the mat.

(12) DP[Dthe Ncat] VP[Vsit+past PP[on the mat]]

Individuals develop their own, private, internal language, building on genetically pre-
scribed principles, with its elements triggered by the ambient external language, which may
shift, as we shall see in the next four sections. I-languages are discrete, biological entities,
finite but ranging over an infinitude of recursively enumerable structures, represented in
people’s brains, and generating expressions and their structures. In all likelihood, no two I-
languages are identical. E-language, on the other hand, is a mass sociological notion, amor-
phous and not a system, in constant flux and appearing differently to different children, and
not recursively enumerable.
Under this view, new E-language may yield new parses. There is no restructuring, just
new acquisition. Let us examine four new parses that affected the history of English I-lan-
guage systems.

2. FIRST NEW PARSE: MODAL AUXILIARIES

First, in early English the words can, could, must, may, might, will, would, shall, should, do,
(and sometimes dare and need) behaved like verbs and were parsed (categorized) as verbs
projecting to a VP (13).

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(13) Kim VP[Vcan VP[visit London]]

(14) Kim InflP[Ican VP[visit London]]

However, this changed and these verbs came to be parsed differently, categorized as
Inflection elements and projecting to an Inflection Phrase (14). We know this, because cer-
tain expressions ceased to occur in the language, the b forms of (15-19), and indeed they
cannot be generated by systems with (14) as the basic structures. For example, if could is an
Inflection element and if Infl elements occur above a VP and only once per clause, then (15a)
can be generated and (15b) cannot. Similarly, if (17a) can be generated with to as an Infl
element, then (17b) cannot be generated if can is also an Infl element.

(15) a. He has seen stars.

b. *He has could see stars.

(16) a. Seeing stars, she looked for planets.

b. *Canning see stars, she looked for planets.

(17) a. She wanted to see stars.

b. *She wanted to can see stars.

(18) a. She will try to see stars.

b. *She will can see stars.

(19) a. He understands music.

b. *He can music.

No new relevant constructions were introduced into the language but if words like can
and must ceased to be categorized as verbs, they ceased to have the distributional syntax
of verbs. The obsolescence of the b forms in (15-19) is the evidence of the new parse. The
fact that those forms dropped out of the language at the same time (on the death of Sir
Thomas More) suggests that there was a single change in the internal system. That explains
how the new parse was structured but not why the change took place.
Under the approach we have adopted, there can only be one explanation for the new
acquisition, namely emergence of new external language: the new E-language entailed the
new parse, hence the new I-language.

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The major change in the language heard by young speakers, E-language, was the
loss of the rich morphology of Old English verbs: verbs had many different forms depending
on the tense or the person of the subject DP and the conjugational class of the verb, as is
typical of highly inflected languages (20).

(20) Verb morphology

Present: fremme, fremst, fremþ, fremmaþ
Past: fremed, fremedest, fremede, fremedon
Present: sēo, siehst, siehþ, sēoþ
Present: rīde, rītst, rītt, rīdaþ
Past: rād, ride, rād, ridon

Many of these inflectional endings were lost, apparently first under the influence of the
Scandinavians living in the north east of England, often in bilingual homes with Norwegian
fathers and English mothers. The result was that verb endings became used less and less.
However, the antecedents of the modern English modal auxiliaries, sometimes called the
“premodals,” never had the third person -(e)th ending typical of verbs in early English. In very
early English that was one distinction among very many but after centuries of Scandinavian
influence, it became distinctive, characterizing verbs: that’s where verbs occurred, with
third person singular inflections. Lexical elements without these third person endings were
not verbs but Infl elements, projecting not to a VP but to a IP.

3. SECOND NEW PARSE: ENGLISH VERBS CEASE

TO RAISE

A similar change, also reflecting the loss of inflectional morphology, is another new parse
that affected English systems but not those of most other European systems, English taking
its own path forward. Early English verbs used to raise to higher positions in negative and
interrogative constructions, as in most other European languages like French, German,
French, Spanish, Italian, etc. We found expressions like (21a-d) up until the eighteenth cen-
tury and even beyond.

(21) a. Sees Kim stars?

b. Kim sees not stars.

c. Kim sees always stars.

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d. I like not that.

e. Does Kim see stars?

f. Kim does not see stars.

These expressions indicated that the structures of (22) were part of early English I-lan-
guage systems, where the finite verb moves up to the Infl position, as is standard in most
European internal language systems (22a). In later English, the morphological elements
lower into the VP, as in (22b).

(22) a. Kim InflP[Infl[Vsaw] VP[saw stars]]

b. Kim IinflP[Inflpast VP[Vsee+past stars]]

Early English systems, along with the systems of Dutch, Spanish, and French, allowed
verbs to raise to the Infl position, InflV. Unlike with our first new parse, new expressions en-
tered the language that had not occurred in earlier generations, namely new forms with the
“periphrastic” do (21e,f), spreading from the south west, under the influence of Cornish ac-
cording to John McWhorter (2009). As a result, for every periphrastic do form that occurred
in the texts, a verb raised to the higher Infl position might also have occurred, yielding ex-
pressions like (21).

4. THIRD NEW PARSE: PSYCH-VERBS

The most striking change that lends itself to our parsing approach concerns a complex
structural shift involving the syntax and meaning of so-called psych-verbs. Early English I-
language systems contained psych-verbs like chance, must, grieve, irk, dream, need, repent,
think, and forty or so others, which typically occurred with an initial dative experiencer fol-
lowed by a nominative theme acting as the subject of the verb (23).

(23) Gode ne licode na heora geleafleast

God [dat.] not liked their faithlessness [nom.]

‘Their faithlessness did not please God.’

Middle English dictionaries show licode meaning to “please” but that changed in ways
that we can now understand. As the case endings of Old and Middle English disappeared,
expressions like (23) showed up not only without case endings but also with the clause-initial

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DP occurring as the subject of the clause and the clause-final DP serving as experiencer
and licode meaning “enjoy” instead of “please.” Given the changes in the syntax and mor-
phology of the expression, (23) could only mean what it meant for early English speakers if
the verb meant “enjoy” instead of “please.”
The before and after analyses of expressions like (23) were quite different. But once the
case endings were lost, it is easy to understand why the new parse was adopted. Given the
complexity of the changes, it is hard to imagine how one might describe the relevant binary
parameters that might characterize the changes in morphology, syntax, and semantics.1

5. FOURTH NEW PARSE: ATOMIC BE

Another change that challenges the parameter based vision of variable properties is an in-
novation identified by Anthony Warner. Warner identified some ways in which the speech
of Jane Austen differs from Present-Day English. He noted, for example, that the verb be
showed some surprising behavior: the past tense for regular verbs like sleep behaves quite
differently from that of past forms like was. For example, (24a) shows normal behavior,
where the gapped verb to the right of will is understood to be sleep. However, the past tense
of be, was, seems not to be amenable to a comparable analysis: (24b) does not exist and the
gapped verb following will may not be understood as was. In Present-Day English, the only
way to externalize the relevant thought is (24d), with be and no gapped verb.

(24) a. Kim slept well and Jim will, too.

b. *Kim was here and Jim will, too.

c. I wish our opinions were the same. But in time they will.

(1816 Jane Austen, Emma)

d. Kim was here and Jim will be, too.

This suggests that the logical form of slept in (24a) is the bi-morphemic
V [sleep+past], where the antecedent for the understood verb “sleep” in the right con-
junct is the bi-morphemic form indicated, containing “sleep” in the left conjunct. This
suggests that in Present-Day English parses slept as V [sleep+past] but was is not
treated bimorphemically as be+past; rather, was is monomorphemic or “atomic.” For

1 For a similar approach, see Allen 1995, Roberts 2007: ch 2.

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expressions comparable to (24a), instead of a gapped verb in the right conjunct, the
overt be is needed: Kim was here and Jim will be, too. In Jane Austen’s informal
speech, was was parsed like slept, as be+past, and the gapped verb of the right con-
junct had an antecedent, capturing the well-formedness of (24c).
So was was formerly parsed as two morphemes, be+past, but came to be treated
atomically. This casts light on another new property of forms of be: individual mor-
phological forms developed their own syntactic subcategorization frames: been is the
only form that may be followed by a directional Preposition Phrase, She has been to
Paris but not *She was being to Paris nor *She was to Paris. Likewise, only finite forms
may be followed by a to infinitive to express obligation, She was to visit Monet but not
*She has been to visit Monet.
Our vision of variable properties is not that children select from a modest number of
parameter settings. Rather, variable properties are less disciplined than parameter enthu-
siasts visualize and we understand that children parse what they hear and invent elements
of I-language that will generate, including categorizing words like will and would as Inflec-
tion elements rather than as verbs, like their translations in other European languages. We
do not expect internal languages to fall into narrow classes defined by parameters provided
at UG. Indeed, we are not surprised to see internal languages being less disciplined, falling
into a wider kind of variation and with more unusual properties, for example particular mor-
phological forms with idiosyncratic syntactic properties, as just discussed. So English has
developed complex expressions like [ [The man from LA] D‘s[NPspeech to us]] and other
DP DP

Germanic languages have not, in the same way that English has developed “stranded” prep-
ositions, unlike other European internal language systems, The author was spoken to but
not L’auteur a eté parle à.

7. CONCLUSION

Children use those structures that are expressed by the external language they hear, i.e.,
required for the analysis of the expressions experienced. The full set of structures used con-
stitutes the mature I-language. Meanwhile, UG is open; we have over-theorized limits on
variable properties through binary parameters. Rather, there are no binary, UG-defined pa-
rameters and no global evaluation of grammars. Children parse their ambient E-language
and invent I-language elements, using what is provided by UG and early learning. English I-
language systems have developed idiosyncratic properties; we need an approach to varia-
tion that makes this understandable; E-language shifts, leading to new parses, new I-lan-
guages. UG is open and some things are learned by children through parsing.

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One concern that has motivated some linguists is that the Principles-and-Parameters
approach to variable properties is biologically implausible. However, work by evolutionary
biologists now suggests that our postulation of an “open UG” may enable us to link arms
with some biologists.
Charles Darwin lamented a number of times that neither he nor anybody else had ever
witnessed the evolution of a new species and he regarded that as a major failure of his
theory. However, many people have pointed to the work of Rosemary and Peter Grant on
what became known as Darwin’s finches (Grant & Grant Evolutionary dynamics of a nat-
ural population, 1989). The Grants identified thirteen species of finches, living on the various
islands of the Galápagos archipelago, and differing in the shape of their beaks. Some had
large beaks suitable for gathering the large seeds of the islands where they lived; others
had beaks suitable for gathering different shaped and different sized seeds from other is-
lands; some ate tree bark and had beaks suitable for gathering soft bark; vampire finches
peck the wings and tails of their victims, wounding them and sipping their blood, taking ad-
vantage of their sharp beaks. Galápagos finches typically have one of the thirteen beaks
the Grants identified, and the specific beak shape is the one suitable for picking up the
seeds of the island they inhabit. This specialization developed over time: initially the finches’
genetic material was neutral or “open” with respect to beak size and shape, but natural se-
lection led to further specifications such that the Grants’ correlations between beak char-
acteristics and feeding patterns emerged, reflecting new genetic information. The variation
we have seen in the syntax of different languages and in different historical stages of lan-
guages is typical of the kind of variation that inspired Darwin and the Grants. It is not the
kind of variation that is subject to genetically defined limitations characterized by syntactic
parameters. Rather, it reflects the openness of genetic information, the way in which the
environment might enhance genetic properties. That enables us to see at least twelve new
species of finch evolving in the relevant environments.
Of course, the enhancements we see in Darwin’s finches are different from those we
see in three-year-old children: the finch species have selected particular beak shapes, and
that selection is inherited by their offspring, whereas the three-year-old child selecting the
I-language of some form of English has selected new I-language elements, and each child
has to discover their I-language anew. There is no comparable inherited change.
So variable properties across the I-languages of the world may be seen as similar in
nature to the variable properties that we see elsewhere in the biological world. And in all
these cases, external factors have internal effects, whether on genetic makeup or on
emerging I-languages. Variation familiar to biologists is not fundamentally different from
what comparative linguists observe. Seeing the similarities may enhance communication
between linguists and evolutionary biologists and between different kinds of linguists who
have become used to working in their isolating silos. We view UG as open, with its effects

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complemented by the very specific effects of parsing. This is analogous to biologists seeing
the genetics underlying variation in beak shapes as open enough to be enhanced by the
effects of natural selection. This takes us into the world of complex adaptive systems, self-
organization, and variation stemming from apparently minor fluctuations and varying initial
conditions in evolutionary and cell biology, statistical biophysics, and other factors.
UG keeps languages similar to each other in conforming to invariant properties that
are part of our biological endowment. But UG is open, open enough to allow languages to
vary as parsing requirements demand, when children discover new contrasts and select
new I-language structures accordingly. Evolutionary biologists have found that same kind
of variation in the beaks of Darwin’s finches and we expect that the parsing-based anal-
ysis we have developed and the approach to learning that it entails will lead to a better
understanding of language variation than the Principles-and-Parameters vision has
yielded, one where information provided by UG is supplemented by information that
emerges through learning through parsing.

7. QUESTIONS

This paper is a written version of a lecture delivered from my study at home to a worldwide
audience by Zoom technology. People attending that lecture posed some interesting ques-
tions and observations, which I will address here.
Stephanne da Cruz Santiago asked whether lexical items are playing a more im-
portant role in theorizing these days. Lexical items have always played an important role in
the generative enterprise. Remember Chomsky’s Aspects of the theory of syntax. Virtually
all the new substantive, technical proposals of that book had to do with the nature of the
lexicon; certainly in the 1960s theories of the lexicon were hugely important and much was
written about the expressive power of transformations and what the balance of work was
between transformations and lexical operations. That matter became the major focus of
the beginnings of the so-called linguistic wars of that period and went on to establish its
own research paradigm, known now as Distributed Morphology.
Janayna Carvalho asked how, if we have no parameters, we could account for the fact
that several languages show similar properties with respect to verb-subject order, null ref-
erential subjects, and null expletives. With or without parameters, if a generativist is to com-
pare hypotheses, the hypotheses will need to be explicit and if the hypotheses concern the
acquisition of new systems, researchers will need to identify the trigger experience, what it
takes for a child to acquire the mature system identified and, for parametrists, that will en-
tail sketching what children need in order to set the parameters postulated. Janayna asks
about similarities between internal languages, particularly those similarities captured by

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parameters. I am skeptical about productive generalizations captured by parameters. We

have been postulating parameters for forty years but the search for actual parameters has
been something of a wild goose chase and we have very little making up the beginnings of
a general theory of parameters. Indeed, when one looks at careful examination of putative
parameters, one sees much variation within the alleged parameter. For example, work on
null subjects in Brazilian (see work by Acrisio Pires) shows a great deal of variation that does
not fall under the null subject parameter, different phenomena in different contexts. This is
the kind of thing that has led some syntacticians to postulate “micro-parameters.”
My friend from Georgetown’s Psychology Department, Fathali Moghaddam, asks the
fundamental question, to what degree may I-languages differ from each other? My answer
is that they may differ within the limits given by the invariant principles of UG but one has
to be careful. Counting grammars makes sense only as part of an effort to compare the
generative capacity of I-languages, seeking a system that matches the input, (i.e., generates
the expressions found in the primary linguistic data). If the Principles-and-Parameters vision
were along the right lines, variable properties being captured by binary parameters and
being independent of each other and there being perhaps thirty parameters, there would
be just over a billion I-languages; if there were forty such parameters, there would be over
a trillion grammars, each generating an infinite number of expressions. As a child compares
what number of expressions each grammar might generate, she would perform calcula-
tions over astronomical numbers, all of which would need to be stored in the memories of
these “batch learners,” which does not look feasible. Children need to remember everything
they have been exposed to and what batch it belonged to, that is which grammar generated
each expression. Particular expressions do not wear the flags of the I-language that gener-
ated them. These are some of the grounds for trying another approach. Under the approach
explored here, we might ask how many structural entities might need to be identified and
parsed and we would have no reason that I can see to hazard a single number that might
constitute a limit. Under our approach, children might vary in the complexity of the mature
I-language they invent.
Sayantani Bamerjee asks what parameters could be in play universally for nominative
morphological case markers but parameters inherently deal with variable properties and
principles deal with invariant properties. Careful examination of nominative case markers
across I-languages will distinguish variable and invariant properties, where invariant prop-
erties follow from UG principles while variable properties follow from aspects of I-languages
learned through the mediation of parsing.
Anderson Silva asks what linguists should change under the new paradigm advocated
here. Linguists should stop waving their hands at vague elements of UG that “explain” uni-
versal or parameterized properties of I-languages. Children can learn things by the kind of
distributional analysis presupposed by parsing and linguists need to identify what children

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learn in their I-languages and what expressions they parse to come up with the necessary
elements of I-languages. I believe that much can be learned about language acquisition by
examining historical changes that have taken place where we can identify the new parses
that have arisen, as I indicated here in sections 3-6. Whether one thinks in terms of UG-
defined parameters or in terms of I-language structures resulting from parsing of E-lan-
guage the clustering of properties will be quite different, as indicated by sections 3-6.
Jairo Nunes has made many important contributions to Minimalist analyses and I see
the work reported here as offering significant support for the aspirations of the Minimalist
Program. Minimalists seek to minimize the genetic information postulated, partly in order
to give a plausible account of how that language faculty might have evolved in the species,
as discussed by Berwick & Chomsky 2016 and by Ian Tattersall. In Born to parse I argue
against parameters, an evaluation metric, and an independent parser, and I expect that
these arguments will be welcomed by Minimalists. In addition to arguing against these en-
tities, I show how children can learn through parsing what others have attributed to a dan-
gerously enriched, non-Minimalist UG.
Children acquire their internal languages under quite different circumstances and our
children invent the elements of their I-languages aided by the invariant principles provided
by UG and by what they learn about their I-language through parsing their external lan-
guage, as we have illustrated in our sketch of new parses. This is true of children learning a
new language like a creole or even a pidgin; there is nothing exceptional about such circum-
stances, as Michel De Graff (MIT) and Enoch Aboh (University of Amsterdam) have argued
for many years. Indeed, we can learn a great deal about the acquisition of new languages,
including those that emerged many years ago, like Middle English or what some have pro-
posed to call Anglo-Norse. We have been privileged to live through the emergence of Nica-
raguan Sign Language over the last few decades and learned a great deal about the role of
biology in the emergence of this new language under unusual circumstances. On the other
hand, the notion of parameters, specifically, has not been particularly useful in understand-
ing the acquisition of such new languages and I agree with Cilene Rodrigues’ skepticism
about the usefulness of parameters in understanding the development of so-called partial
null subjects in the history of languages like Brazilian Portuguese. Parameters make predic-
tions about how phenomena cluster in acquisition and history and those predictions have
not been as fruitful as was hoped in the early days of parameters. That is the principal rea-
son why I have advocated that we need a new research paradigm. From the 1960s onwards,
several linguists thought in terms of language acquirers idealized as living in homogeneous
speech communities, ignoring the variation that is more often observed. On the contrary,
we can learn a great deal about normal language acquisition by studying carefully unusual
acquisition, where children are exposed to unusual triggering experiences.

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