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Chapter 3 - UG

The document discusses Universal Grammar and its application to first and second language acquisition. Universal Grammar proposes that humans are born with innate, universal principles that guide language learning. It suggests languages share underlying structural similarities governed by principles and parameters. Parameters allow for cross-linguistic variation. The document examines how Universal Grammar explains first language acquisition and evaluates its ability to describe and explain aspects of second language learning. While influential, the Universal Grammar approach is limited in its focus on formal syntax over other linguistic domains.

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Umutcan Gülener
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122 views

Chapter 3 - UG

The document discusses Universal Grammar and its application to first and second language acquisition. Universal Grammar proposes that humans are born with innate, universal principles that guide language learning. It suggests languages share underlying structural similarities governed by principles and parameters. Parameters allow for cross-linguistic variation. The document examines how Universal Grammar explains first language acquisition and evaluates its ability to describe and explain aspects of second language learning. While influential, the Universal Grammar approach is limited in its focus on formal syntax over other linguistic domains.

Uploaded by

Umutcan Gülener
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 3

Linguistics and language


learning: the Universal
Grammar approach
Linguistics and language
learning: the Universal
Grammar approach
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Why a Universal Grammar?
3.3 What does Universal Grammar consist of?
3.4 Universal Grammar and first language acquisition
3.5 Universal Grammar and second language acquisition
3.6 Evaluation of Universal Grammar-based approaches
to second language acquisition
Evidently each language is the result of the interplay of two factors: the initial
state and the course of experience. We can think of the initial state as a
'language acquisition device that takes experience as 'input' and gives the
language as an 'output' - an 'output' that is internally represented in the
mind/brain.
(Chomsky, 2000, p. 4)
The main aim of linguistic theory is twofold: first, to characterize what
human languages are like (descriptive adequacy), and second, to explain
why they are that way (explanatory adequacy). In terms of second language
acquisition, what a linguistic approach attempts to do is no different; its
aims are to describe the language produced by second language learners,
and to explain why the language they produce is the way it is.
Why a Universal Grammar?

Aims of linguistic research

1. What constitutes knowledge of language?


2. How is knowledge of language acquired?
3. How is knowledge of language put to use?
1. What constitutes knowledge of language?

Linguistic theory aims to describe the mental


representations of language that are stored in the
human mind.
1. What constitutes knowledge of language?

The Universal Grammar approach claims that all human beings inherit a
universal set of principles and parameters that control the shape human
languages can take, and which are what make human languages similar
to one another.
1. What constitutes knowledge of language?

More recently, in his Minimalist Program, Chomsky (1995, 2000) argues


that the core of human language is the lexicon (the word store), which
can be characterized as follows:
2. How is knowledge of language acquired?

How does the child create the mental construct that is language?

Chomsky first resorted to the concept of Universal Grammar because he


believes that children could not learn their first language so quickly and
effortlessly without the help of an innate language faculty to guide them.
2. How is knowledge of language acquired?

If there is a biologically endowed Universal Grammar, this


would make the task facing children much easier, by providing a
genetic blueprint which determines in advance the shape which
language will take.
3. How is knowledge of language put to use?

The Universal Grammar approach to language is concerned with


knowledge of language, that is, with the abstract mental
representation of language and the computational mechanisms
associated with it, which all human beings possess, called competence.
Arguments from first language acquisition
To give an example of the complexities of language which children
have to disentangle, just consider the following reflexive sentences,
some of them grammatical and others ungrammatical:

(Examples are taken from White, 1989, cited in


Lightbown and Spada, 1993, pp. 9-10.)
Universalists think that there must be some kind of innate language
faculty that is biologically triggered, in order to explain why language in
children just seems to grow', in the same way as teeth develop and
children start walking.
What does Universal Grammar consist of?

Generative linguistics has changed considerably in the last 50 years or


so, from the early phase of phrase structure rules to the recent
Minimalist Program.

A theory of language must show how each particular language can be derived
from a uniform initial state under the boundary conditions' set by experience.
The search for descriptive adequacy seems to lead to ever-greater complexity
and variety of rule systems, while the search for explanatory adequacy requires
that language structure must be invariant, except at the margins.

(Chomsky, 2000, p.7)


Principles

The universal principle we are going to use as our first example is the
principle of structure-dependency, which states that language is
organized in such a way that it crucially depends on the structural
relationships between elements in a sentence (such as words,
morphemes, etc.).
This knowledge - that languages are structure-dependent - is a crucial
aspect of all human languages that has many implications; it is a
principle of Universal Grammar which explains many of the operations
we routinely perform on language.
As Cook and Newson (1996, p. 8) put it, 'Movement in the
sentence is not just a matter of recognizing phrases and then of
moving the right element in the right phrase: movement depends on
the structure of the sentence'.
According to White, there are three potential sources of
cross-linguistic variation relating to functional categories:
Functional Categories

These are grammatical words or ‘function’ words, such as


determiners (e.g. the, my, etc.) and complementizers (e.g. whether),
or grammatical morphemes such as plural -s, past tense -ed, etc.

In this view, the abstract principles underlying all human languages will
already be specified in the computational module, and the task facing
children (or second language learners) is therefore to learn the lexicon of
the language around them, as well as the settings of the parameters applying
to that language. This idea is known as the 'lexical parameterization
hypothesis’, and it suggests that the parameters are contained primarily in the
functional categories.
Parameters

All languages are organized hierarchically in terms of phrases (Noun-


Phrases, Verb-Phrases, Prepositional-Phrases, etc.

The head parameter deals with the way in which phrases themselves are
Structured. It applies to phrases headed by both lexical and functional categories
Parameters

Japanese is a head-last language, and all Japanese phrases will be


ordered in that way. So, the head parameter tells us how the head
and its complements are ordered in relation to one another in a
given language, and it has two possible settings: head-first (like
English), or head-last (like Japanese).
Parameters

Radford (1997, p. 22) claims that 'young children acquiring


English as their native language seem to set the head parameter at
its appropriate head-first setting from the very earliest multiword
utterances they produce (at around age 18 months), and seem to
know (tacitly, not explicitly, of course) that English is a head-first
language'.
Parameters

According to Chomsky, a language is not, then, a system of rules,


but a set of specifications for parameters in an invariant system of
principles of Universal Grammar'. He proposes a network metaphor
for the whole 'language faculty':
Parameters
Universal Grammar and first language acquisition

Do children indeed build phrase structure by applying


principles and setting parameters?
Universal Grammar and second language acquisition

Theoretical relevance of Universal Grammar to


second language learning
Principles and parameters in second language acquisition

The head-parameter

There seems to be no evidence in second language grammars that


learners ever violate the structure dependency principle. From the very
onset of second language development, learners seem to know that the
second language will be hierarchically structured in terms of phrases, rather
than linearly ordered.
Principles and parameters in second language acquisition

The head-parameter

There seems to be no evidence in second language grammars that


learners ever violate the structure dependency principle. From the very
onset of second language development, learners seem to know that the
second language will be hierarchically structured in terms of phrases, rather
than linearly ordered.
Current debates and hypotheses about parameter resetting

Principles are generally thought to be available, as second language


learners do not seem to produce interlanguages that violate them, and
most of the work has concentrated on testing the availability of
parameters, with as yet somewhat inconclusive results.
Empirical evidence
Evaluation of Universal Grammar-based
approaches to second language acquisition
The scope and achievements of the Universal
Grammar approach

In evaluating Universal Grammar, however, we must remember that it is


a linguistic theory, with its own aims and objectives, and not a learning
theory.

As a general theory of language therefore, the scope of Universal


Grammar is potentially very broad. It would be fair to say, however, that
Universal Grammar research has been primarily concerned with the
description and explanation of the formal system underlying language.
Moreover, its focus has been primarily morphosyntax, and other aspects
of the linguistic system have received much less attention.
The Universal Grammar view of language

The Universal Grammar view of language has been very influential since
the 1950s, but not uncontroversial. The Universal Grammar approach
views language as a mental framework, underlying all human languages.
The Universal Grammar view of language acqusition

Linguistically, this approach has in the past been almost exclusively


concerned with syntax. Even if recent interest in phonology, morphology
and the lexicon should redress the balance somewhat, semantics,
pragmatics and discourse are excluded. Second, the Universal Grammar
approach has been exclusively concerned with documenting and explaining
the nature of the second language linguistic system. The social and
psychological variables that affect the rate of the learning process are
beyond its remit and therefore ignored.
The Universal Grammar view of the language learner

The Universal Grammar approach is only interested in the learner as the


possessor of a mind that contains language; the assumption is that all
human beings are endowed with such a mind, and variations between
individuals are of little concern to Universal Grammar theorists. The
emphasis is very much again here on language as the object of study,
rather than on the speaker or learner as a social being, and the focus is on
what is universal within this mind.
THANK YOU

Emre Arvas

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