Rajarata University of Sri Lanka Year-2 Semester-1

Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Department of Languages

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Online Lectures

Year and Semester	Year-2 Semester-1
Subject	Syntax and Semantics
Subject Code	ENGL 2112
Course Unit	Universal Grammar-1
Date	12.05.2020
Time	Theory (11.00 am-12.00 am)  Practical (12.30 pm-1.30 pm)
Lecturer	D.N. Aloysius
Theory Hours	01                                            Total  No of  Hours: 05
Practical Hours	01                                            Total  No of  Hours: 05

Universal Grammar

Noam Chomsky is usually associated with the term universal grammar in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans, independent of sensory experience. With more linguistic stimuli received in the course of psychological development, children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. It is sometimes known as "mental grammar", and stands contrasted with other "grammars", e.g. prescriptive, descriptive and pedagogical. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However, the latter has not been firmly established, as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare. It is a matter of empirical investigation to determine precisely what properties are universal and what linguistic capacities are innate.

The theory of universal grammar proposes that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions they will always develop language with certain properties (e.g., distinguishing nouns from verbs, or distinguishing function words from content words). The theory proposes that there is an innate, genetically determined language faculty that knows these rules, making it easier and faster for children to learn to speak than it otherwise would be. This faculty does not know the vocabulary of any particular language (so words and their meanings must be learned), and there remain several parameters which can vary freely among languages (such as whether adjectives come before or after nouns) which must also be learned. Evidence in favor of this idea can be found in studies like Valian (1986), which show that children of surprisingly young ages understand syntactic categories and their distribution before this knowledge shows up in production.

As Chomsky puts it, "Evidently, development of language in the individual must involve three factors: genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible; external data, converted to the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range; and principles not specific to the Faculty of Language."

Occasionally, aspects of universal grammar seem describable in terms of general details regarding cognition. For example, if a predisposition to categorize events and objects as different classes of things is part of human cognition, and directly results in nouns and verbs showing up in all languages, then it could be assumed that rather than this aspect of universal grammar being specific to language, it is more generally a part of human cognition. To distinguish properties of languages that can be traced to other facts regarding cognition from properties of languages that cannot, the abbreviation UG* can be used. UG is the term often used by Chomsky for those aspects of the human brain which cause language to be the way that it is (i.e. are universal grammar in the sense used here), but here for the purposes of discussion, it is used for those aspects which are furthermore specific to language (thus UG, as Chomsky uses it, is just an abbreviation for universal grammar, but UG* as used here is a subset of universal grammar).

Chomsky has speculated that UG might be extremely simple and abstract, for example only a mechanism for combining symbols in a particular way, which he calls "merge". The following quote shows that Chomsky does not use the term "UG" in the narrow sense UG* suggested above:

In other words, merge is seen as part of UG because it causes language to be the way it is, universal, and is not part of the environment or general properties independent of genetics and environment. Merge is part of universal grammar whether it is specific to language, or whether, as Chomsky suggests, it is also used for an example in mathematical thinking.

Other linguists who have influenced this theory include Richard Montague, who developed his version of this theory as he considered issues of the argument from poverty of the stimulus to arise from the constructivist approach to linguistic theory. The application of the idea of universal grammar to the study of second language acquisition (SLA) is represented mainly in the work of McGill linguist Lydia White.

Syntacticians generally hold that there are parametric points of variation between languages, although heated debate occurs over whether UG constraints are essentially universal due to being "hard-wired" (Chomsky's principles and parameters approach), a logical consequence of a specific syntactic architecture (the generalized phrase structure approach) or the result of functional constraints on communication (the functionalist approach).

Practical:  Explain the term, Universal Grammar with relevant examples.

References:

1.      Chomsky's universal grammar  by Vivian Cook

2.      Universal Grammar and second language acquisition by Lydia White