The Goals and Predictions of a Processing Typology of Languages John A. Hawkins |
Processing typology is a research program that examines cross-linguistic variation from the perspective of language processing and performance. It is based on the observation that the patterns of preference that one finds in performance in languages possessing several structures of a given type (e.g. alternative words orders or relative clause types) appear to be the same patterns found in the fixed conventions of grammars, in languages with fewer structures of the same type (e.g. with more fixed word orders). The central hypothesis is the "Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis" (PGCH) of Hawkins (1994, 2004). In this talk I give a brief overview of some of these correspondences, followed by a more detailed illustration of this research method at work (involving adjacency effects in performance and grammars). I argue that this kind of empirically-based performance account provides us with an independently motivated explanation for grammatical universals, as well as a better description of the cross-linguistic facts, since it accounts for general patterns, for exceptions to these, and for universal patterns that are not predicted by grammar-only principles. The PGCH may turn out to be wrong, or it may be correct in some cases and not in others. But there is a lot of support for it, and my reason for proposing it is to encourage people to gather relevant data and take seriously the possibility (which is still unfashionable in many branches of linguistics) that grammars have been profoundly shaped by performance, as a consequence of the fact that they are constantly accessed in language production and comprehension. Hawkins, J.A. (1994) A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency, CUP, Cambridge. |