CONTENT

Universal Grammar
Why a Universal Grammar What does a Universal Grammar consist of?

NOAM CHOMSKY
MIT

Cognitive Revolution

Universal Grammar

MIT

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Chomsky takes a cognitive approach to studying

grammar as, in his view, linguistics should discover what knowledge enables people to speak and understand their native language fluently

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are

elements or properties of all human languages - Chomsky, 1976, p.29

Language is an innate faculty - we are born with a

set of rules about language in our heads which he refers to as the 'Universal Grammar
A linguistic theory, which postulates principles of

grammar, shared by all languages and considered to be innate to human beings

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Universal imply that it is universal to all human beings and human languages and grammar

signify the facts about grammar (language rules) that humans are born knowing.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
A theory that explains the language the way it is.
Universal invariant properties of grammar

construction and they are innate. Mechanism that allows children to construct a grammar out of the raw language materials supplied by their parents. A theory that describes that all languages share the same principle properties and only differ in the details.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
There is a set of grammar rules responsible for

organizing the language and explaining the process of childrens language acquisition - Universal Grammar
The universal grammar is the basis upon which all

human languages build

A native speaker of a language knows a set of

principles that can be applied to all languages and parameters that vary from one language to another

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Chomsky explains that human languages exhibit

remarkable similarities or principles. These patterns are called universals. Phonological universals: Consonants, for example, are distinguished also according to the location of their production Syntactic universals: Most of existing languages have verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns. Semantic universals: One semantic universal regards our notion of color. There exist eleven basic color terms: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown, purple, pink, orange, and grey.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Universal Grammar exists in the childs mind as a

system of principles and parameters. The amount of all the principles cover grammar, speech sounds, and meaning that heredity builds into the human language organ. Principles of Language are rules of the language or abstract principles that permit or prohibit certain structures from occurring in all human languages. It is the properties that all languages possess.

PRINCIPLES
The principle of structure dependency asserts that

knowledge of language relies on the structural relationship in a sentence rather than on the sequence of the words. e.g.(English) The artist drew an eagle. (Bahasa Melayu) Pelukis itu melukis seekor burung helang.

PARAMETERS
Parameters of Language are systematic ways in

which human languages vary which determine the syntactic variability amongst languages.
I went to the market yesterday.

English ( change

in verb go to went) Semalam saya pergi ke pasar. B. Melayu ( no change in verb pergi)

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Children are exposed to very little correctly formed

language. When people speak, they constantly interrupt themselves, change their minds, make slips of the tongue and so on. Yet children manage to learn their language all the same
Children do not simply copy the language that they

hear around them. They deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences that they have never heard before. They do not learn a repertoire of phrases and sayings, as the behaviourists believe, but a grammar that generates an infinity of new sentences.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Children are born, then, with the Universal

Grammar wired into their brains.

When the child begins to listen to his parents, he will

unconsciously recognise which kind of a language he is dealing with - and he will set his grammar to the correct one - this is known as 'setting the parameters'.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Critical period between the ages of 2-7 suggests that

(first) language learning, like walking, is an innate capacity of human beings triggered by a level of development more than feedback from the environment As long as a child hears a language-any language-when they reach this critical period they will learn it perfectly

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Chomsky differentiates between competence and

performance Performance is what people actually say, which is often ungrammatical Competence is what they instinctively know about the syntax of their language - equated with the Universal Grammar Chomsky concentrates upon this aspect of language he thus ignores the things that people actually say.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Chomsky focuses on grammar. UG enforces the form

which the grammar of a certain language can take. Regards meaning as secondary - a sentence such as 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously' may be considered as part of the English language, for it is grammatically correct, and therefore worthy of study by Transformational Grammarians. A sentence such as 'My mother, he no like bananas',

Universal Grammar Model

Input (lang. data) of Language Acquisition Device
Fig. Early UG model - Chomsky, 1964 The process of language acquisition includes data going into the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and coming out as a formed grammar LAD is the neurological system in the brain that facilitates language development

Output (a grammar language)

CORE RULES/CORE GRAMMAR

Chomsky distinguishes between the 'core' or central

grammar of a language, which is essentially founded on the UG, and peripheral grammar
UG rather sets parameters which are fixed according to

the input a child receives. These rules constrained on the childs grammar are called the core grammar or core rules of his language (Ellis, 1985).

PERIPHERY RULES
Other rules which are not core and are not enforced by

UG. They are called periphery rules

Cook (1985) defines the periphery rules as ones either

derived from the history of the language or borrowed from other languages
They have to be learnt without the help of UG

PARAMETER-SETTING MODEL
Chomsky gradually abandons the LAD model of

acquisition in favour of the parameter-setting model

This improved model of language acquisition claims

that Universal Grammar exists in the childs mind as a system of principles and parameters
Influenced by the surrounding environment, the child

creates a core grammar that sets values to all the parameters of a certain language which he speaks as native.

PARAMETER-SETTING MODEL
The child does not actually acquire certain grammar

rules but rather settings for the different parameters, which combined with the system of principles, form the core grammar. This means, that acquiring a language is mainly setting all the UG parameters appropriately Apart from that, a child learns a huge amount of vocabulary items, together with their pronunciation, meaning and syntactic restrictions.

SUMMARY
A child has to learn the lexicon of his L1, together with rules which are not core but peripheral. To summarise what we know innately are the core grammar principles and the parameters associated with them; what we have to learn are the values of the parameters and the elements of the periphery - Chomsky, 1980b, p.47

UG & CRITICAL AGE

Are children better than adults at learning a

second language? Explanations: Only child L2 learners have access to UG Adults are more influenced by L1 transfer Children are more motivated to learn a new language than adults Children receive more input in L2 than adults

UG & ADULT L2 LEARNERS

The UG is available to L2 learners Q: Why does it seem hard for adult learners to perform well in L2? 1. There is no enough unconscious comprehensible input before learning is introduced. 2. Compared to children, adult learners have higher affective filter 3. Adults are more influenced by L1 transfer