REVIEW

Making Sense. Geoffrey Sampson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Tell me about the resurrection, says Anticus to Jason. After some centuries, Jason replies, the theory of Innate Ideas has been disinterred, and enthroned as the only adequate explanation for some striking facts concerning human linguistic proficiency. So Nelson Goodman (1967) begins his amusing yet serious, discussion of the renascence of philosophical rationalism in the field of linguistics (see also Chomsky 1966). The chief culprit, of course, is Noam Chomsky. His 1957 work Syntactic Structures and its successor volumes have largely gained the field for a rationalist approach [which] holds that beyond the peripheral processing mechanisms, there are innate ideas and principles of various kinds that determine the form of the acquired knowledge in what may be a rather restricted and highly organized way (Chomsky 1965, p. 48). Not surprisingly, those perennial foes of rationalism, the empiricists, have sought to refute the innateness hypothesis. Most of the researchers rallying under the empiricist banner, though, have been behaviorists, and the battle has not gone well for them. B.F. Skinners assay into linguistic theory, Verbal Behavior (Skinner 1957), was rather rudely dismembered by Chomsky in his now legendary review (Chomsky 1959). In the face of the data on child language acquisition generated in mass quantities by the relatively new field of psycholinguistics, the behaviorists have largely retreated from the simplistic position exemplified in Verbal Behavior, but still fight gamely on (see, for example, Staats 1971). However, it is easy to forget that there were empiricists centuries before Pavlovs dogs and Little Albert. Geoffrey Sampson, whose book Making Sense is the subject of this review, to some extent harks back to an older outlook on the human mind. Sampson, reader in linguistics at the University of Lancaster, has published three books prior to this one (Stratificational Grammar, 1970; The Form of Language, 1975;Liberty and Language,1979), and a fifth is on its way(Schoo1s o f Linguistics, forthcoming). This reviewer was only able to obtain Stratificational Grammar and Liberty and Language. The former is a theoretical text applying the said grammar to the system of numerals in the English language. Chomskys theories do not receive direct attack, and the innate hypothesis is not mentioned at all, save in a

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guardedly worded rebuke of linguistic universals (p. 14). With Liberty and Language, Sampson makes his opposition to rationalism in general, and Chomsky in particular, manifestly apparent. Of concern to Sampson in this work is Chomskys outspoken advocacy of left-wing socialist causes (see, for example, Chomsky 1969, 1970, 1971,1973). Since this most well known of contemporary linguists has expressed himself on political matters, and cited his research into the nature of language (and hence the nature of man) as evidence for his views, Sampson feels impelled to respond. As things stand, only the professional linguist is in a position to evaluate the premises of Chomskys argument from language to politics (p. 8). This reviewer does not intend to dwell too extensively on Liberty and Language, except to point out those matters relevant to the discussion at hand. The rationalist/empiricist dichotomy, as mentioned earlier, would place the behaviorists on the same side of the fence as Sampson. To delineate his position more clearly, then, Sampson introduces the distinction between the creative and limited view of mind. The limited view is ascribed to Chomsky and his fellow rationalists, despite their frequent affirmation of the creative aspect of normal language use. A Chomskyan speaker is creative in that his utterances are usually new examples of a range defined by general principles, rather than being copies of a familiar limited stock of prototypes (Sampson 1979, p. 107). The creative view of mind espoused by Sampson is as follows: Creativity is the distinctively human capacity of inventing things-of producing thingswhich are novel, not merely in the sense that they did not previously exist, but in the sense that they were not previously conceived o f (Sampson 1979, p. 42). Therefore, if humans are constantly conceiving novel things, then at any given time the possibilities of which we are aware must be trivially few by comparison with the possibilities waiting to be thought of. This is why the notion of describing the faculty of creativity by means of the scientific method is an instance of the fallacy of scientism. The essence of science is prediction; but it is intrinsic to the notion of creativity that the nature of creative acts cannot be predicted, they can only be described after the event (Sampson 1979, pp. 45-46). This contrasts sharply with Chomskys view. The same [learning theories] that provide for the vast and impressive scope of scientific understanding must also sharply constrain the class of humanly accessible sciences. . . . Thinking of humans as biological organisms in the natural world, it is only a lucky accident if their cognitive capacity happens to be well matched to scientific truth in some area. It should come as no surprise, then, that there are so few sciences, and that so much of human

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inquiry fails to attain an intellectual depth. Investigation of human cognitive capacity might give us some insight into the class of humanly accessible sciences, possibly a small subset of those potential sciences that deal with matters concerning which we hope, vainly, t o attain some insight and understanding (Chomsky 1975). Sampson argues quite eloquently from his definition of creativity in favor of a classical liberal (in present-day use libertarian), limited-government political system, in opposition to Chomskys Yugoslavian-style socialism. But in the introduction t o Liberry and Language, Sampson states, Although I disagree with Chomskys political conclusions, I agree with his linguistic premisses. Indeed, . . . with respect to the very specific limited linguistic theses which are all that are relevant as premisses for the argument to politics I might claim to be more of a Chomskyan than Chomsky himself (Sampson 1979, p. 9). Yet even as Making Sense went to press, Sampson reconsidered his position. I have come t o realize that even aspects of linguistic theory which I was then content to accept at face value involve what now seem to be fatal flaws (Sampson 1980, preface). Sampson sets about proving his point methodically. He restates his position on creativity, first in general terms, then in specific reference to language: Scientific description of aspects of language which manifest human intellectual creativity is an impossibility (1980, p. 13). It is apposite to note that Sampson draws heavily for his theory of creativity on the writings of the Austrian-born British philosopher Sir Karl Popper. Popper is an empiricist and perceives knowledge acquisition as an active process of data reception, formation of a hypothesis based on the data, assessment of the hypothesis in light of further evidence from the outside world, and confirmation or revision of the original hypothesis. This applies to all learning, from the most advanced to simple matters of perception (Popper and Eccles 1977, p. 45). This theory of hypothesis formation is first contrasted with one of the more popular theories in the field of semantics, features analysis. Various forms of features analysis have been current, but the common link is the postulation of a conceptual language underlying each natural language, consisting of semantic primitives. Each word in the natural language can be, in theory, resolved into its component primitives (e.g., husband = MARRIED + MALE + HUMAN). Some linguists, such as Postal (1966), argue further that the relation between the semantic primitives and their combinations . . . and the world is not learned but innate. Sampson argues

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that the rigid lexical boundaries implied by features analysis do not reflect actual language use. We encounter a noun applied in practice . . . and we guess as best we can how to extend the noun to others objects (1980, p. 48). We are never given a guarantee that our ideas mirror our world faithfully, but experience sooner or later winnows out those of our ideas which distort reality (1980, p. 83). Indeed, indeterminacy of word-meaning is a necessary condition for the growth of individual thought;and it is the fact that individual humans can think creatively, rather than being tied from birth to fixed instinctual patterns that remain rigid in the face of an unpredictable world, that places Man in a position so much superior to brute beasts (1980, p. 61). The best evidence Sampson can cite is the experimental work of Jeremy Anglin (1970) in regard to indeterminacy of semantic boundaries; his invocation of creativity places that issue, by definition, beyond the scientific method. The cornerstone of Making Sense is its attack on Chomskyan syntactic theory, in particular the claim that the syntactic structures of all natural languages can be observed to conform t o common principles, and that these syntactic universals (which cannot be explained away as making the languages which possess them relatively efficient or useful) constitute strong empirical evidence for the limited view of mind (1980, p. 112). Before dealing with the universals themselves, Sampson confronts the issue of first language acquisition. Chomsky and others frequently assert that children acquire their mother tongue in a remarkably short period of time. According to McNeill (1971), the bulk of the syntax is acquired by age four; hence, the assumption that they know the broad outlines of syntax, which are common to all languages, before they begin, so that only details remain to be filled in from experience (1980, p. 113). Sampson responds that this seems wholly empty unless we are given some quantification of maximum rate at which things in general can be learned and degree of overall complexity of a natural language . . . I find it easy t o see children as surprisingly slow at picking up their parents language (1980, p. 114). The point is certainly well taken. Many linguists seem to have been going in circles debating this issue. For example, Hilary Putnam (1967) contrasted the four or five years of a childs language acquisition with the 600 hours or so of directmethod instruction required for an adult to attain fluency in a foreign language. Chomsky replied by reversing the argument: Only the innateness hypothesis could explain the adults success at a second language in so little time (Chomsky 1972, pp. 183-184).

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After dismissing the language acquisition matter (without discussing much ofthe relevant psycholinguistic data), Sampson turns to the central issue in the syntactic universals controversy: the notion of hierarchicality . This concept was not original with Chomsky; any grade school pupil who parsed sentences at the blackboard knew that sentences comprised clauses, clauses comprised phrases, phrases comprised individual nouns or verbs and their modifiers, and so forth. Chomskys contribution was to apply formal logical analysis to grammar and demonstrate that context-free phrase-structure rules underlie any natural language (see Chapter 2 of Chomsky 1965). Furthermore, this hierarchical structuring is not logically necessary for language (Chomsky 1975, p. 29). Examples have been given of nonhierarchical languages that are logically admissible (e.g., Langacker 1973), but which Chomsky claims could not be learned by humans. He appeals to the innate structuring of the human brain to account for the ubiquity of hierarchicality in natural languages, and Sampson admits that the nonnativist interpretations of linguistic universals he examined in 1975 have not stood up. But that was before he read The Architecture of Complexity (Simon 1969). Herbert A. Simon has written extensively in the fields of psychology, organization theory, and management. In The Architecture of Complexity he states that complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not. The resulting complex forms in the former case will he hierarchic (Simon 1969, pp. 98-99). Simon assumes that these evolving systems are fighting against the flow of entropy-that is, they are continually faced with the possibility of decomposing back into a less-ordered state. A nonhierarchical complex system of, say, one thousand components would degrade into a thousand separate pieces. A herarchical system of the same nature, with its thousand components arranged into ten subassemblies of a hundred pieces each, each of which further comprises ten sub-subassemblies of ten pieces, would be far less subject to total disintegration, since each sub- (or sub-sub-) assembly would be a stable entity in its own right. Simon illustrates that if the two systems were constructed side-by-side, with a one-in-a-hundred chance of disintegration during each assembly step, some four thousand hierarchical structures would be completed before the first nonhierarchical one (Simon 1969, pp. 90-92). Sampson draws two conclusions regarding language from this theory. First, nothing is more plausible a priori than to suggest that languages of the complex kind we know today arose through an evolutionary process from humble beginnings (1980, p. 148). That is, holophrastic utterances evolved

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into stable noun phrases, which were succeeded by prepositional phrases, and then to clauses (or simple sentences) which were succeeded by the complex and compound sentences we use today. It is important to note that each of these sub-sentential units was at one time an independent utterance (1980, pp. 148, 158-161). Sampson goes on to state that since the most inclusive syntactic categories in other languages known to me are broadly equivalent in complexity to our sentences . . . it is plausible to suppose that symbiotic evolution from the one-word-utterance stage to the sentence might have happened quite fast under the pressure of the need for more precise communication (1980, pp. 191-192). At the same time, in evolving new syntactic forms they are creating for themselves new patterns of thought (1980, pp. 150-151). (It is intriguing to speculate that this might correspond to the period of rapid brain evolution particularly of the frontal lobe in front o f the central sulcus said to occur around the time of the Magdalenian culture [Jaynes 19761 .) Sampsons second conclusion is that the child acquires language through a gradual process of formulating fallible hypotheses, testing and refuting many of them against the data of experience, formulating further fallible hypotheses which are at a hlgher level in that they exploit concepts established by those earlier hypotheses which have survived testing, and so on. In other words, on creative-mind assumptions the growth of knowledge (within the individual or within a society) is itself a Simonian evolutionary process, in which the analogue of stability is the ability of ideas to stand up to testing against experience (1980, p. 171). A child could, in principle, concoct a nonhierarchical grammar to explain the linguistic data presented to him, but the probability . . . is so remote as to be negligible (1980, p. 172). The Simonian hypothesis for language evolution has impressive explanatory force for linguistic universals attributed by the Chomskyans t o innate mental structures. Sampson deals with seventeen such universals; most notably, he predicted that Chomsky would reject unbounded movement rules (which allow transformations to affect any sentence element, no matter how deeply imbedded) in favor of the subjacency principle, which limits transformations to their own imbedding level, or the level immediately lower. Simons theory does not strictly forbid transformations t o operate on more distant levels but predicts that the chances would be quite remote (1980, pp. 183, 188). The same hypothesis applied to first language acquisition works reasonably well, and there is a neatness in seeing ontogeny reflect phylogeny. Besides, the innateness hypothesis makes n o predictions

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about what linguistic universals will be found, whereas the hypothesis that we know nothing about language when we begin life and therefore have to acquire all aspects of our linguistic competence in a step-by-step, trial-anderror fashion leads to the prediction that human languages will share certain specified common traits, and just those traits are in fact observed (1980, p. 176). But before taking Occams Razor to the innateness hypothesis, it is worth considering Sampsons assertion that language learning is accomplished by the same general intelligence used to grapple with all other diverse and unpredictable problems (1980, p. 178). Putnam (1967, p. 21) also postulated general multipurpose learning strategies rather than an innate mechanism just for language, and Chomsky made no substantive reply, failing to see how one can resolutely insist on one or the other in the light of the evidence now available to use (Chomsky 1972, p. 184). Nonetheless, Diana Woodruff (1978) has observed an anatomical asymmetry in the brains of newborn children (the superior surface of the left temporal lobe tends to be greater than the right temporal lobe), which supports the hypothesis that the human newborn has a preprogrammed biological capacity to process speech sounds. Also, D.L. Molfese (1977) notes that nine out of ten infants (mean age 5.8 months) show a greater response in the left hemisphere to verbal as opposed to nonverbal stimuli. However, the infants did not distinguish between meaningful words and articulated nonsense syllables, while older children did. So, it would seem that the human brain has evolved at least some structures specialized for language processing (Slobin 1979, pp. 124-125), though, of course, sensitivity t o speech sounds may be phylogenetically old, reflecting the sensitivity many lower animals have to the calls of others of their species. Still, this is a far cry from the rigid innate wiring proposed by Chomsky. The true situation is likely to be neither tabula rasa nor preprogrammed supergrammar but somewhere in between. Finally, it should be apparent by now that Sampson is a philosophical dualist-mind and body are two separate essences, and the laws applicable to one do not govern the other. While it is still the intellectual fashion to reject this position, respected scientists in the present century have entertained the mind-body duality. Jung broke with Freud over this issue, and the neuroscientist J.C. Eccles has developed rather elegant hypotheses concerning the self-conscious mind which integrates instantaneously what it reads out from diverse scattered elements of the active neocortex, even though it lacks the property of spatial extension (Popper and Eccles 1977, p. 37b. Popper is also a dualist: ibid, p. ix) Even Heisenberg (1958) warned against the somewhat forced application of scientific concepts in domains where

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they do not belong. Overall, this reviewer finds that Making Sense is recommended reading for those whose linguistic education consisted largely of the canonical Chomskyan texts. Much of Chomskys rise to prominence, it seems, was in reaction to the depressingly mechanistic view of man held by the behaviorists. His Transformational Grammar and theories of a rich innate language acquisition structure reassured the general public that they were indeed unique and cornplex beings. Yet, examined closely, Chomskys determinism merely added a few more layers of complexity between man and Skinners trained pigeons. Certainly it is comforting to hear Sampson speak of the boundless creativity of the human mind-beyond the range of scientific inquiry, capable of inventing totally new ideas out of nothing-but comforting thoughts need empirical support before we can accept them as reasonable hypotheses. So, while Making Sense is not the deathblow to theoretical linguistics that its dust jacket proclaimed it to be, it has the potential to stimulate much useful debate. For example, Sampson points out some methodological blindspots (e.g., pp. 45, 73, 93) that the theoretical linguists would do well to examine. Certainly he produces some impressive arguments for his Simonian theory of language evolution; this reviewer finds it more plausible than other such theories he has read (e.g., Jaynes 1976, Hill 1972). As for Sampsons central thesis-the duality of mind and body-the reader is left with a question of faith. Kevin J. Tuite Polymer Science Department Ford Motor Company

REFERENCES
Anglin, J. 1970. The Growth of Word Meaning. Research Monograph 63. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton and Co. Chomsky, N. 1959. Review of Skinner verbal behavior. Language 35 :26-58. Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper and Row. Chomsky, N. 1969. American Power and the New Mandarins. New York: Vintage Books. Chomsky, N. 1970. Trials of the Resistunce. New York: Vintage Books. Special thanks go to the Zucks (Lou and Joyce) for acquainting me with this book and entrusting me with this review, and to Barbara Goldman for her invaluable critical assistance.

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Chomsky, N. 1971. Problems o f Knowledge and Freedom. New York: Pantheon Books. Chomsky, N. 1972. Language and Mind. Enlarged edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Chomsky, N. 1973. For Reasons of State. New York: Vintage Books. Chomsky, N. 1975. Reflections on Language. New York: Pantheon Books. Goodman, N. 1967. The epistemological argument. Synthese 17:23-28. Heisenberg, W. 1958. Physics and Philosophy, p. 199. New York: Harper and Brothers. Hill, J. 1972. On the evolutionary foundations of language. American Anthropologist 44: 308-3 16. Jaynes, J. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the BicameraIMind, pp. 132-137. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin. Langacker, R.W. 1973. Language and Its Structure, p. 253. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. McNeil, D. 1971. The capacity for the ontogenesis of grammar. In Slobin, D.E. (ed.), The Ontogenesis of Grammar, p. 17. New York: Academic Press. Molfese, D.L. 1977. Infant cerebral asymmetry. In Segalowitz, S.J., and F.A. Gruber (eds.), Language Development and Neurological Theory. New York: Academic Press. Popper, K., and J. Eccles. 1977. The Selfand Its Brain. New York: Springer International. Postal, P. 1966. Review of A. Martinet elements of general linguistics. Foundations of Language 2:179. Putnam, H. 1967. The innateness hypothesis and explanatory models in linguistics. Synthese 17 :12-22. Sampson, G . 1970. Stratificational Grammar: A Definition and an Example. Janua Linguarum Series Minor Nr 88. The Hague: Mouton and Co. Sampson, G . 1975. The Form of Language. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Sampson, G . 1979. Liberty and Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sampson, G . Forthcoming. Schools of Linguistics. London: Hutchison. Simon, H.A. 1969. The architecture of complexity. In The Sciences of the Artificial, pp. 84-118. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Skinner, B.F. 1957. Verbal Behavior. New York: Appleton Press. Slobin, D.E. 1979. Psycholinguistics. 2nd ed. Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman. Staats, A.W. 1971. Psycholinguistic theory versus an S-R learning theory. In Slobin, D.1. (ed.), The Ontogenesis of Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Woodruff, D. 1978. Brain activity and development. In Baltes, T. (ed.), Life-Span Development and Behavior. New York: Academic Press.