Lingua 91 (1993) 279-347. North-HollandLearning the impossible: The acquisition of possible and impossible languages by apolyglot savantNeil V. Smith,a lanthi-Maria Tsimpli,b and Jamal OuhallacaDepartment of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UKbDepartment of English Language, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 7RU, UKcDepartment of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary & Westfield College, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UKReceived March 1993We report on the case of a polyglot savant (Christopher) who has a remarkable talent for learning and translatinglanguages. Building on previous work which had established both the range of languages at Christopher's command and theextent to which his linguistic knowledge was integrated into his cognitive ability, we taught him two new languages forwhich we controlled the input. We had two main aims: the first was to test the hypothesis (within one version of thePrinciples and Parameters framework) that parameter resetting is not an option available to the second language learner; thesecond was to accrue further evidence for or against Fodor's modularity hypothesis and cast light on the possible range ofinteractions between linguistic and 'central' cognitive processes. The languages chosen were Berber, an Afro-Asiaticlanguage spoken in North Africa, and Epun, an invented language deliberately devised to contain constructions whichviolated universal grammatical principles. In Christopher's acquisition of Berber we gleaned evidence from a variety ofphenomena, including word order, null subjects, that-trace effects, wh-island violations and cliticisation, that his learningwas conditioned by a combination of transfer effects from English and principles of UG, rather than by the effect ofparameter resetting. In Christopher's acquisition of Epun we began with a core of 'normal' constructions, designed to makehim feel at home in the new language, and then proceeded to investigate a range of impossible constructions, bothstructure-dependent and structure-independent. In the former case, we concentrated on negative sentences, constructed withno overt negative morpheme. and past-tense sentences which involve unattested and putatively impossible word-orderdifferences. In the latter case, we concentrated on a rule of emphasis that involved counting words, and a form of agreementwhich again violated putatively universal generalisations. In each case we compared Christopher's performance with that ofa small group of controls. The results were complex, but we think we can justify an interpretation which lends support toboth the main hypotheses being tested.‘Similarly, knowing something about UG, we can readily design languages that will be unattainable bythe language faculty.’ (Chomsky 1991a: 40)1. BackgroundIn earlier work (Smith and Tsimpli 1991, Tsimpli and Smith 1991; see also O'Connor and Hermelin 1991) we havereported on the apparently unique case of a polyglot savant, Christopher, who, despite being institutionalised because he isunable to look after himself, has a remarkable talent for learning and translating languages.1 Given a previously unseenpassage in any of some sixteen or so languages, Christopher reads it - fluently but not flawlessly - in English.Christopher is 31 years old (date of birth: 6 January, 1962); tests of his non-verbal IQ give the following results: Raven'sMatrices - 75; Wisc-R, UK - 42, 67, 52 (test administered on three different occasions; 'Draw a Man' - 40; ColumbiaGreystone Mental Maturity Scale - Score 68, Mental age 9.2, IQ 56 (test administered at age 29.2). Tests of his verbal IQ onthe other hand give results in the normal range: Wisc-R, UK - 89, 102, 98; in the Gapadol Reading Comprehension Test hescored at the maximum level, indicating a reading comprehension age of 16.10; in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test hisscores for different languages were: English - 121, German - 114, French - 110, Spanish - 89. Full details of these and othertests can be found in the references cited above and in Tsimpli and Smith (in prep.), but this rough outline is sufficientindication of the gross disparity between his different abilities.Our previous work has documented the range of languages at Christopher's command, has established that his knowledgeof English is essentially normal, and has apparently shown that this knowledge is integrated into his general cognitiveabilities. Despite this integration, we have also argued (Smith and Tsimpli 1991) that the case of Christopher provides somesupport for Fodor's (1983) modularity hypothesis in that he constitutes an example of someone with a preserved, orenhanced, language module in combination with an impaired central system. Further, in Tsimpli and Smith (1991) we havedemonstrated that the patterning of his mistakes in second language learning is remarkably similar to that of normal adultsecond language learners, and hence that his talent should be explicable in terms of current theories of second languagelearning, just as his prowess in general is amenable to description in terms of current linguistic theory.2. RationaleIn order to gain deeper insight into the way Christopher learns2 new languages, one part of our current research is devotedto teaching him languages with which he is unfamiliar, while controlling the nature and order of presentation of the inputdata. In the most general terms the idea motivating this exercise was that we could simultaneously investigate the kind ofrelationships obtaining between different aspects of his knowledge, and test the predictions made by the Principles andParameters framework of current linguistic theory. Specifically, in a framework where there are no construction specificrules, (cf. Chomsky 1981a, 1986a) one might expect that acquiring knowledge of one (type of) construction should bringwith it 'unlearned' knowledge of a range of other, parametrically related, constructions without overt exposure to therelevant data. However, our earlier work (Tsimpli and Smith 1991) has suggested that parameter (re-)setting is aninappropriate characterisation of Christopher's acquisition process, but that
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