CNL Lunch

Cecile van der Weert (U. of Reading, UK)

Native Elements of Discourse

Thursday April 5th, 12:30pm, 3416 Marie Mount Hall

Linguists working on the genetic determination of language specifics in human beings usually assume that the innate linguistic principles which constitute a universal grammar are either syntactic or phonological. However, there is no reason to assume that principles operating at other constituent levels could not be genetically determined. In this talk, it is shown how the innateness hypothesis is used to investigate particular discourse principles for the innateness property. Based on a poverty of stimulus existing at the inter-sentential level as well as early emergence of some of the discourse principles it is concluded that at least one of the principles operating at the inter-sentential - or discourse - level could be genetically determined.