Universal Grammar

10 Key excerpts on "Universal Grammar"

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  The Extended Mind

  The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind, and Culture

  • Robert K. Logan(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • University of Toronto Press

    (Publisher)

  We also explore the duality implicit in the notion that the brain and the human mind are distinct phenomena. But before embarking on these comparisons and syntheses, we will pause and consider the work of Noam Chomsky, who dominated the field of linguistics in the latter half of the twentieth century. 5 How Universal Is Universal Grammar? Chomsky’s Generative Grammar Even though Chomsky is a sceptic when it comes to trying to under-stand the origin of language in evolutionary terms, his work must be evaluated because of his dominance of the field of linguistics for the past half century. One cannot ignore his contribution when comparing different explanations of the origin of language, especially as the field divides rather neatly into Chomsky supporters and Chomsky detractors. Many members of the anti-Chomsky camp do not attempt to discredit the main thrust of Chomsky’s work in describing the Universal Grammar (UG), but rather they are critical of some of his more extreme positions vis-à-vis the ontogeny and phylogeny of language. Perhaps the most con-tentious of all of these is his notion that the brain is hard-wired with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is Chomsky’s explanation of why children are able to learn languages with such ease. The hard-wiring of the LAD in the human brain also explains why all the lan-guages of the world share the Universal Grammar (UG). While there is general agreement that the languages of the world share many similari-ties, not all linguists accept Chomsky’s explanation of this regularity, and there is some debate as to just how universal UG is given his claim that it is hard-wired into the brain. It is instructive to examine the roots of Chomsky’s UG hypothesis and compare it with Newton’s ‘UG’ hypothesis of universal gravity.

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  Investigating Second Language Acquisition

  • Peter Jordens, Josine Lalleman, Peter Jordens, Josine Lalleman(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Are there principles of Universal Grammar that do not apply to second language acquisition? Paul van Buren 1. Introduction I thought it might be interesting for budding language researchers to be taken through a detailed theoretical argument in second language research. This might show something of the way we struggle in this field. But before I get that far I shall have to do some groundwork on metatheory. I apologize if some of this should turn out to be redundant, but I think it is better for my present purpose to err on the side of overexplicitness. Ever since Chomsky introduced his linguistic metatheory to the world the main problem in the study of language acquisition has been: How can human beings acquire a language on the basis of data that are incomplete, defective and utterly opaque in relation to the abstract principles that characterize them? This epistemological problem has become known in the trade as 'the logical problem of language acquisition'. The problem is also called Plato's problem, since Plato was the first to ask the relevant question, namely, how is it that human beings can know so much on the basis of so little overt evidence? Part of the solution to Plato's problem was proposed by Chomsky as a body of innate constraining principles called Universal Grammar. It is important here to stress three things about Universal Grammar. 188 Paul van Buren First, Universal Grammar is not actually a grammar at all or even a set of possible grammars. Rather, it is a set of conditions that possible grammars must obey, a sort of abstract blueprint for the construction of grammars in other words. Secondly, Universal Grammar allows for variation between languages. Comparing it with biology we might say that UG is the genotype blueprint from which a wide variety of actual phenotypes or core grammars may be constructed. This variety is of course not the same as a free for all. Rather, the degree of variation is controlled by a set of possible parameters.

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  Chomskyan (R)evolutions

  • Douglas A. Kibbee(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • John Benjamins Publishing Company

    (Publisher)

  *Tis research was supported by the University of North Alabama, and by Friends of the Department of Foreign Languages.  T. Craig Christy 1. Introduction Central to Chomskyan language theory, which some have accorded the status of a Kuhnian revolution, 1 is the claim that all languages share a common underlying uni-versal grammar, that this Universal Grammar is innate, and that it is comprised of a set of principles (fundamental confguring forces) and parameters (selection options for the resulting confgurational transformations) which constitute and constrain pos-sible human language grammars. In this model, grammar is essentially — and, in all events, ultimately — a programmed fait accompli , and the causes of language change are sought principally in the reanalyses characteristically carried out and observed in the course of language acquisition. Based on unique inferences about the systemic pat-terning informing input from adult speech, the grammar each child constructs is nec-essarily diferent from that actually underlying this input, and is, consequently, capable of generating output that would not emerge from the adult grammar. An alternate approach, grammaticalization, so christened by Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) 2 in 1912, and the focus of intense research over the past two decades, would appear to be potentially at odds with this view (depending on the degree of specifcity assigned to UG) for the simple reason that, in studies of grammaticalization, distinct pathways of change and evolving (as opposed to innate ) grammatical categories have been identifed as the linguistic/pragmatic outcomes of speakers’ use of (as opposed to children’s acquisition of ) the language. Tus, on the one hand, grammaticalization stud-ies, which have multiplied exponentially since the 1980s to become a major current in linguistic research, have yielded frm evidence of the evolution of grammatical dis-tinctions; of grammar.

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  Grammar Without Grammaticality

  Growth and Limits of Grammatical Precision

  • Geoffrey Sampson, Anna Babarczy(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Since we have seen (p. 22) that the ubiquity of hierarchical structure is predictable independently of generative linguistics, this appears to drain that theory of content. (Faarlund bases his statement on a 2002 publication whose lead author was the controversial ethologist Marc Hauser but whose co-authors puzzlingly included Noam Chomsky, although the tendency of the article seems to render Chomsky ’ s theories vacuous; see Hauser et al. 2002. In other writing, e.g. Chomsky 2007b, Chomsky does still assert a belief in “ Universal Grammar ” , but described in terms – “ CP ” , “ SPEC-T ” , etc. – too abstract and theory-internal to test against the evidence of real-life languages.) As Ivan Sag says (2010: 495, emphasis in original removed), “ accepting with equanimity a progressive reduction of the range of facts that lie within the domain of a scienti fi c theory may be within the mainstream of generative lin-guistics, [but] it is well outside the mainstream of scienti fi c practice ” . (On the bankruptcy of recent versions of generative theory, see e.g. Behme 2013.) The downfall of Universal Grammar 109 We have argued at length elsewhere that Universal Grammar is a fundamen-tally wrong-headed idea (Sampson 2005). The arguments which have been used to make it seem a-priori plausible are logically fallacious, and the empirical evi-dence all points the other way. To date there have been no serious published challenges to the argument of Sampson (2005), and it would be wasteful to repeat that material here. Furthermore, the idea that human beings inherit innate knowledge of language which constrains all human languages to con-form to a rigid set of linguistic universals is by now under attack on so many fronts that it may soon be little more than a historical curiosity. It is an idea that has no traction except within university Departments of Linguistics, where belief in it still often ranks as something approaching a professional obligation.

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  A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism

  Perspectives of Change in Psycholinguistics

  • Philip Herdina, Ulrike Jessner(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4 Universal Grammar Reviewed It would be impossible to review the development of psycholinguistics and its relevance to multilingualism research without devoting a chapter to the contributions made by Universal Grammar (henceforth UG). Although we do not necessarily agree with the theories, our study would not be complete without a historical and systematic review of the issues raised by UG suggested (see also Brown, Malmkjaer & Williams, 1996). These issues are seen in the context of our endeavour to develop a new understanding of multilingualism. Thus we may note that research interests in the psycho-logical effects of multilingualism presuppose the fairly recent expansion of socio-and psycholinguistics. The question of multilingualism could not have been formulated in the terms of structuralist linguistics alone. As long as language was not clearly placed in the speaker’s mind, the question of how this mind manages to contain and process two or more languages could not be put. Thus multilingualism research also rather presupposes the existence of a pycholinguistic turn (see Kasher, 1991) replacing linguistic interest in e-language, that is language perceived as a social fact defined in structuralist terms, by that in i-language as an essentially psycholinguistic phenomenon. This step necessarily results in the develop-ment of a theory of competence, which forms a basis of most research on multilingualism as most of the questions asked in this field presuppose some notion of language competence. We will therefore start this chapter with a look at the compe-tence/performance dichotomy and move on to explain the explicit and implicit beliefs of UG language acquisition theory. The main focus of the chapter will lie on a discussion of the applicability of this research para-digm to SLA and multilingualism.

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  Papers on Linguistics and Child Language

  Ruth Hirsch Weir Memorial Volume

  • Vladimir Honsa, M. J. Hardman-de-Bautista(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Two sorts of developmental universals are proposed. The first, called operating principles, are general heuristics or modes of operating with language. On the basis of these principles, taken along with data of linguistic development, a number of more specific predictions are made, called universals. The list is far from exhaustive, but hopefully it will stimulate further development. The suggested universals are open to refinement and to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation in the light of data on the acquisition of various native languages. 250 Dan I. Slobin Cognitive Variables The function of grammar is to relate sounds to meanings. In order to acquire language, the child must attend both to speech and to the contexts in which speech occurs; that is, the child must be trying to understand what he hears. In so doing, he must make use of linguistic and cognitive discovery proce-dures, formulating internal structures capable of assimilating and relating incoming linguistic and nonlinguistic data, and capable of realizing intentions as utterances. We do not know what goes on when a child attempts to assimilate linguistic input, however there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that the pacesetter in linguistic development is the child's cognitive growth, as opposed to an autonomous linguistic development which can then reflect back on cognition. An important line of evidence comes from examining the development of utterances from both a formal and functional point of view. From studies which have attended to the supposed intended meanings of children's utter-ances, the following central operating principle emerges: Operating Principle 1 : New forms first express old functions, and new functions are first expressed by old forms. This principle is supported by the work of Piaget's school (cf. Furth 1969; Piaget 1967, 1970; Sinclair-de-Zwart 1967, 1969) and by numerous studies of language development.

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  Language Learning and Cognition

  The Basics of Cognitive Language Pedagogy. With Contributions by Kees de Bot, Marina Foschi, Marianne Hepp, Sabine De Knop and Parvaneh Sohrabi

  • Jorg Roche, Ferran Suñer(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • LIT Verlag

    (Publisher)

  With compe- tence and the existence of Universal Grammar, the individual is also able to use the language system, for which Chomsky used the term performance. This is more or less equivalent to de Saussure’s concept of parole, although it only plays a secondary role in transformational grammar (Smir- nova/Mortelmans 2010: 11). However, in Chomsky’s theory, the social di- mension and the communicative function of language and language acqui- sition were being completely ignored (cf. Geeraerts/Cuyckens 2007: 11). For example, Chomsky interprets grammar as a rather abstract set of rules that can be established by transformations (replacement and conversion rules) (also cf. Klenk 2003: 71). The respective underlying transformations should enable the transition from a deep structure into a syntactic surface structure or concrete utterances (cf. Klenk 2003: 74). Accordingly, gram- mar is formally operational and forms a coherent set of rules. Individuals can only modify it to a very small extent, and it can function relatively independently from meaning and general cognition. From this perspective, language is determined by a Universal Grammar and is quite rigid: it cannot be easily manipulated by non-linguistic cognition. It was not until the end of the 1980s that cognitive linguistics led to a par- adigm shift from a mainly syntax-oriented language description to a mean- ing-oriented one. Langacker (2008a: 8), one of the most important repre- sentatives of cognitive linguistics, claims “[i]f generative linguistics views 24 syntax as being central to language, Cognitive Linguistics accords this honor to meaning”. Cognitive linguistics consequently emphasizes the symbolic function of language, whose parts or symbols are described as pairs consisting of (phonological) form and meaning.

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  Beyond Humanism

  The Flourishing of Life, Self and Other

  • B. Nooteboom(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  125 6 Language In the previous chapter I proposed that mental structures of the subject arise in interaction with the physical and social environment on the basis of generative potential inherited from evolution. Social interaction to a large extent takes place on the basis of language. As indicated earlier, in human evolution language, conscious thought and social conduct co-evolved. The question now is how language works and how meaning arises and changes. Rather than mirroring reality, language creates conceptualizations of it. Something makes sense if we can express it in language. Language use is not simply expression of thought that precedes language. Cognition enables use of language but language use affects cognition. Language does not deter- mine thought but does stimulate and order it. Thinking without language is possible. Think of dreams, for example, which if we can recall them appear senseless when we try to tell them. They escape the categories of time, place, causality and logic. Think also of the moods, emotions and feelings that we express and understand not by means of language but by ‘body language’ in the posture or movement of the body and facial expression – which we can also express in language, though only very imperfectly. According to the theory of a ‘Universal Grammar’ developed by Noam Chomsky there is an instinctive universal structure of grammar for everyone, as an outcome of evolution, which lies at the basis of all language (Pinker 1995). Expressions in language can have ‘propositional’ content, can be ‘about something’, in the posing of a belief concerning the world, such as ‘that is a chair’. According to the theory of ‘speech acts’ (Austin 1975; Searle 1969) people also use language ‘to do things to each other’.

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  The Second Glot International State-of-the-Article Book

  The Latest in Linguistics

  • Lisa Cheng, Rint Sybesma(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The development of grammars David Lightfoot Some aspects of how syntactic systems change over time are a function of the way in which they are acquired by children. Here I shall make a few points about the art of explaining change through acquisition. 1. The development of grammars in children Grammars are mental entities which develop in the mind/brain of indi-vidual children. This development is data-driven only in part. Re-searchers have postulated genotypical principles which are available in-dependently of experience and which do not have to be learned. These principles determine similarities among grammars, recurrent properties which hold of all grammars. Alongside the invariant principles, it is cus-tomary to postulate grammatical parameters, which children set on the basis of their linguistic experience and which account for grammar vari-ation. So language acquisition proceeds as children set the parameters defined by Universal Grammar (UG), i.e. those genotypical principles and parameters which are relevant for the emergence of language in an indi-vidual. The parameters of UG are structural and abstract and that ac-counts for the bumpiness of language variation; even closely related languages generally diñer from each other in clusters of superficial phe-nomena (Baker 2001). Here I shall discuss the nature of the experience which triggers the de-velopment of grammars, arguing that children scan their environment for certain designated structures or cues and that they are not influenced by 2 David Lightfoot the set of sentences generated by their grammars. Indeed, there are no in-dependent parameters; rather, some cues are found in all grammars and some are fovmd only in certain grammars—the latter constitute points of variation. There is a second kind of development, which we shall tum to in the next section. Grammars may also develop from generation to generation.

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  Grammatical theory: Fourth revised and extended edition : From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches

  • Stefan Müller(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Language Science Press

    (Publisher)

  Similar claims were made with respect to part of speech and other morpho-syntactic properties. It was argued that UG is a toolbox and languages can choose which building blocks they use. As Evans & Levinson (2009a: 436, 443) and Tomasello (2009: 471) noticed, the toolbox approach is problematic as one can posit any number of properties belonging to UG and then decide on a language by language basis whether they play a role or not. An extreme variant of this approach would be that grammars of all languages become part of UG (perhaps with different symbols such as NP Spanish , NP German ). This variant of a UG-based theory of the human capacity for language would be truly unfalsifiable In the first edition of this book (Müller 2016), I followed the view of Evans & Klein and Tomasello, but I want to revise my view here. The criticism applies to things like part of speech (Section 13.1.7) since it is true that the claim that 400 and more parts of speech are part of our genetic endowment Cinque & Rizzi (2010: 55, 57) cannot really be falsified, but the situation is different here. All grammar formalisms that were covered in this book are capable of analyzing recursive structures (see Section 18.3). If Pirahã lacks recursive structures one could use a grammar formalism with lower generative ca-pacity (see Chapter 17 on generative capacity) to model the grammar of Pirahã. Parts of the development of theoretical linguistics were driven by the desire to find formalisms of the right computational complexity to describe human languages. GPSG (with cer-tain assumptions) was equivalent to context-sensitive grammars. When Shieber (1985) and Culy (1985) discovered data from Swiss German and Bambara it was clear that con-text free grammars are not sufficiently powerful to describe all known languages. Hence, GPSG was not powerful enough and researchers moved on to more powerful formalisms like HPSG.

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