Reflection On The Debate Between TG Grammar And CL By Exploring Early Language Evolution

The irreconcilable conflicts and debates between TG grammar and CognitiveLinguistics have been discussed for too much and too long. Scholars who spare noeffort in trying to find a solution to this problem still cannot settle it. TG grammarmainly studies the i-Language, namely the syntactic as well as the phonologicalstructures, limits its focus on pragmatic and social meanings. It emphasizes thelanguage faculty as special human cognition while CL puts language in a muchbroader framework and studies it as a part of human generic cognition. Therefore it isnecessary to solve the debate by referring to the essence of language. The purpose ofthis thesis is to solve the debate of the two paradigms from the language essencewhich can be better understood by exploring the early language evolution. In a wordthis thesis tries to untangle the contradiction between TG grammar and CL through anew way by exploring language origin. The issue of language origin has different butequally important meaning to both of these two schools.It is too challenging to talk about language origin and as early as1860s theLinguistics Society of Paris prohibited any discussion and speculation of languageevolution. This paper is not concerned about the very details but endeavors to find acombination of language origin and language essence, namely the existence oflanguage faculty (LF) and the evolution of language (continuity or discontinuity).Beyond TG grammar and CL there are numerous other theories concerning on thisissue, such as Pinker’s language instinct and Aitchison’s mosaic evolution, etc. Aftersummarizing these theories it can be concluded that there are two basic views of earlylanguage evolution: LF-Pop hypothesis proposed by Chomsky and Co-evolution-continuity claimed by CL.Based on this conclusion the thesis tries to support either of the two views bydiscussing a new theory-complex system and complex science. Through thecomparison and contrast with other complex systems it can be found that language isalso a self-organized complex system with non-linearity, self-similarity as well asother characters same to all the complex systems. The agent of language system islanguage faculty or a specialized human cognition proposed by Chomsky andlanguage evolved through mutation. It is not adequate to get a result with a theoreticalexplanation. Practical evidence is also indispensable. After proving the availability ofontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny in early language origin this thesis applies that theprocess of the child language acquisition is similar to that of early language evolutionand there occurs mutation during this process. It is known that Chomsky’s LF is the most influential and decisive theory in explaining child language acquisition and thefact also proves so. Comparatively CL is more convincing in explaining thedevelopment and evolution of language in different pragmatic, social and culturalcontexts. Therefore, TG grammar is more scientific in its proposition of earlylanguage evolution both theoretically and practically. It has been emphasized thatthere is no dichotomy of right-and-wrong in this thesis. The final conclusion is thatwith the exploration of early language evolution it can be found that TG grammar andits hypothesis of language faculty is more scientific and reliable than CL in explainingi-Language and language essence.