Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, whose research focuses on syntax, language acquisition, typology and language revitalization.
Language is one of nature’s most mysterious phenomena. Its workings have eluded scholars for thousands of years, and there is no reason to think that a major breakthrough is at hand. The danger of a deep irony is real: the quest to explain language may lie beyond the reach of the only creatures who are able to use it. One avenue of inquiry that has shown some promise in recent years remains lightly explored. It takes as its starting point emergence, the process whereby the interaction of simple components, forces and events produces a complex system with its own novel properties. Drawing on a classic set of syntactic phenomena from the literature on formal syntax, I will outline an explanatory framework that seeks to understand the syntax of form and meaning by reference to factors such as memory, prediction and processing cost that have a natural and well established role in cognition.
