Universal Grammar
Universal Grammar
•Linguistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky
in the 1950s-60s
•Core hypothesis: Humans are born with an
innate capacity for language
•Suggests all human languages share certain
structural properties
•Proposes a "Language Acquisition Device"
(LAD) in the human brain
Universal Grammar
AIM:
A) to characterize what
human languages are like -descriptive
adequacy;
B) to explain why they are that way-
explanatory adequacy.
Chomsky (1986a)
Three basic questions about human
language:
1. What constitutes knowledge of
language?
2. How is knowledge of language acquired?
3. How is knowledge of language put to
use?
The UG approach views language as a genetic endowment;
This was conceptualized by claiming that all human beings
inherit a universal set of abstract principles and parameters
which constrain (limit) the shape human languages can take, and
which make human languages similar to one another.
(Government and Binding theory, Chomsky (1981, 1986a, 1986b)
Universal
Grammar
1. Innateness Hypothesis
•Language ability is innate, not just learned through imitation
•Children are born with a "blueprint" for language
•Explains the rapid acquisition despite "poverty of stimulus”
•Children acquire language with
Key limited and often imperfect input
•The LAD allows children to generate
Principles rules beyond what they've been
of exposed to
Universal
Grammar
Universal rules applicable to all languages
Structure-dependence: Grammatical rules operate on structural
relationships, not linear order
•Recursion: The ability to embed phrases within phrases infinitely
•Subjacency: Constraints on movement operations in syntax
•Binding principles: Rules governing the interpretation of pronouns and
anaphors
Principles
• Children acquire complex language structures despite limited
exposure
• Much of the input they receive is ungrammatical or incomplete
• Children don't receive explicit negative evidence (correction)
for many errors
• Yet they still develop the same
The complex grammar as adults
Poverty of • This gap between input and output
the suggests innate linguistic knowledge
Stimulus
Argument
1. Rapid Acquisition
•Children acquire language quickly despite limited input
•Follow predictable acquisition stages across cultures
•Acquire complex grammatical structures without explicit
instruction
2. Universal Acquisition Patterns
•Similar developmental milestones
Evidence regardless of language
•Similar error patterns across
for languages
•The critical period for language
Universal acquisition
3. Creolization
Grammar •Children transform pidgins into
grammatically complex creoles
•Suggests innate structuring of
language when input is limited
Pidgin:
• Simplified contact language with limited vocabulary and grammar
• Develops when speakers of different languages need to
communicate
• Has no native speakers
• Limited grammatical structure, vocabulary, and expressive capacity
• Examples: Nigerian Pidgin English, Chinese Pidgin English
Creole:
The fully developed language that
evolves from a pidgin
Becomes the native language of a
community
•Has complex grammatical
Creolizatio structures
n •Complete vocabulary and
expressive capacity
•Examples: Haitian Creole, Jamaican
Creole, Hawaiian Creole
Critical Period Hypothesis
•After puberty, direct access to UG may diminish
•Explains difficulties in L2 acquisition for adults
Universal
Grammar and •Debate: Do adult L2 learners have
Second full/partial/no access to UG?
Language
Acquisition
1. Children go through developmental stages;
2. These stages are very similar among children learning the same language,
although individual children’s rate of progress is variable;
3. These stages are similar across languages;
4. Child language is rule-governed and systematic, though the rules created
by the child often do not correspond to adult ones;
5. Children are resistant to correction;
Arguments for 6. Children’s processing capacity limits
UG from L1 the number of rules they can apply
at any one time, and they will revert to
Acquisition earlier hypotheses when two or
more rules compete.
Lenneberg (1967) called The Biological Foundations of
Language
1. “The behaviour emerges before it is necessary”. Children start talking
long before they need to: they are still being fed and looked after, and
therefore do not need language for survival.
2. “Its appearance is not the result of a conscious decision”. It is quite
obvious that children do not get up one morning and decide to start
talking, whereas they might consciously decide to learn to ride a bike
or play the piano.
3. “Its emergence is not triggered by external events (though the
surrounding
environment must be sufficiently ‘rich’ for it to develop adequately)”.
Although children need language around them in order to
learn it, there is no single event which will suddenly trigger language
development.
4. “Direct teaching and intensive practice have relatively little effect”.
Languages are much more diverse in structure than cognitive scientists
generally appreciate. A widespread assumption among cognitive scientists,
growing out of the generative tradition in linguistics, is that all languages
are English-like, but with different sound systems and vocabularies.
The true picture is very different:
languages differ so fundamentally from
one another at every level of description
(sound, grammar, lexicon, meaning)
that it is very hard to find any single
Scepticism structural property they share. The
claims of Universal Grammar, we will
argue, are either empirically false,
unfalsifiable, or misleading in that they
refer to tendencies rather than strict
universals.
Evans & Levinson, 2009:2
Usage-Based Theories
•Language emerges from general cognitive abilities and exposure
•No need for specialized language "organ" or device
•Statistical learning and pattern recognition
Cultural Evolution View
Competing •Languages adapt to human
cognitive constraints
Theories & •Universal properties reflect
shared cognitive abilities
Critiques •Languages evolve to be
learnable