Essays on Linguistic Neurocircuitry
AI, Recursive Networks, and a Merge-based Theory of Early Child Syntactic Structure
Joseph Galasso
California State University, Northridge
One of the leading questions burning in the minds of most developmental linguists is: To what extent do biological factors such as brain maturation play a role in the early stages of syntactic development? The proposed theoretical framework―a 'Merge-based Theory' of Child Language Acquisition―is applied here to the earliest observable stages of child syntax which demonstrates a complete absence of movement operations. The working hypothesis throughout these essays is that young children's syntactic parsers―as delimited by neurological underdevelopment, perhaps specifically pegged to the basal ganglia region of the brain―are initially unable to advance MOVE up the syntactic tree (whereby MOVEment would thus save the derivation from being sent off immediately to early semantic transfer). Hence, we might suggest, as a metaphor of sorts owing to this lack of movement, that 'Small children's sentences are “Dead on Arrival”' (as the author claims elsewhere, JCLAD, 2015, vol. 3). The general tenor of these essays―coupled with findings relevant to discussions of 'How the brain works' (both at algorithmic and neuro-network levels)―supports an initial 'merge-only' stage of child syntax which can account for a rather wide spectrum of implications leading to the impoverished state of early child syntax. Using Chomsky's current Minimalist Program (MP) framework, Joseph Galasso adopts a 'Merge-based Theory' of child syntax. Given 'neuro-maturational' delay of MOVE, one can account for inter alia, mixed word order, lack of inflection, and misreading of syntactic compounds as found in the data.
This new volume of essays can be seen as a follow-up to the author's earlier 2024 volume 'Speaking Brains' (04, LSNL). The essays provide extended insight into the aforementioned volume by expanding on topics related to neurocircuitry, artificial intelligence, as well as the very recursive nature of MOVE itself, as it relates to child development.
Contents: 1. A Brief Note on Dynamic Antisymmetry, ‘Merge-based Theory’, and its Implications to Early Child English Possessive {‘s} and the Setting of Word Order. 2. ‘Problems of Projection’: A Note on Chomsky’s (2013) Lingua paper. 3. Remarks on a Minimalist Approach to Early Child Syntax. 4. A Note on Artificial Intelligence and the critical recursive implementation: The lagging problem of ‘background knowledge’. 5. Why Move? Preliminary Thoughts and Overview: <> How ‘Merge over Move’ informs Early Child Syntax.
ISBN 9783969392409. LINCOM Studies in Neurolinguistics 05. 188pp. 2025.
