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    Universal Grammar

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    Nana Kawaii
    Universal Grammar refers to the innate language faculty that enables humans to learn any human language. It consists of a set of principles and parameters that are part of our genetic endowment. All human languages conform to these principles, though they vary in their specific parameter settings. Universal Grammar allows children to learn the grammar of their native language unconsciously by setting the parameters according to the language they are exposed to. It explains how language acquisition is possible despite the limited language data children receive.

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    Universal Grammar

    Uploaded by

    Nana Kawaii
    1K views37 pages
    Universal Grammar refers to the innate language faculty that enables humans to learn any human language. It consists of a set of principles and parameters that are part of our genetic endowment. All human languages conform to these principles, though they vary in their specific parameter settings. Universal Grammar allows children to learn the grammar of their native language unconsciously by setting the parameters according to the language they are exposed to. It explains how language acquisition is possible despite the limited language data children receive.

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    Methodology

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    Universal Grammar refers to the innate language faculty that enables humans to learn any human language. It consists of a set of principles and parameters that are part of our genetic endowment. All human languages conform to these principles, though they vary in their specific parameter settings. Universal Grammar allows children to learn the grammar of their native language unconsciously by setting the parameters according to the language they are exposed to. It explains how language acquisition is possible despite the limited language data children receive.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as ppt, pdf, or txt
    1K views37 pages

    Universal Grammar

    Uploaded by

    Nana Kawaii
    Universal Grammar refers to the innate language faculty that enables humans to learn any human language. It consists of a set of principles and parameters that are part of our genetic endowment. All human languages conform to these principles, though they vary in their specific parameter settings. Universal Grammar allows children to learn the grammar of their native language unconsciously by setting the parameters according to the language they are exposed to. It explains how language acquisition is possible despite the limited language data children receive.

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    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as ppt, pdf, or txt
    of 37
    At a glance
    Powered by AI
    The key takeaways are that Universal Grammar refers to innate linguistic principles that are shared across all human languages. It consists of principles related to grammar, speech sounds, and meaning. These principles allow children to learn language quickly by constraining the search space of possible grammars.

    Universal Grammar consists of principles and parameters related to grammar, speech sounds, and meaning that are built into the human language faculty. It also consists of syntactic categories like nouns and verbs as well as constituent structure.

    The principles of Universal Grammar include word order, subjects and predicates, morphological marking, negation, and that the two most common word orders are subject-verb-object and subject-object-verb.

    Universal grammar

    By the end of this Session, you will be able to: define Universal Grammar explain why it is termed Universal Grammar explain what Universal Grammar consist of relate Universal Grammar and first language acquisition

    What is a Language?
    Language = df. A system that uses some physical sign (sound, gesture, mark) to express meaning.

    Universal grammar
    Phonological universals: Consonants, for example, are distinguished also according to the location of their production, that is, after the various organs of the vocal tract. With the help of this detailed information we can now refer to every consonant by its location and manner of articulation; [f], for example, is a voiceless, labiodentals fricative.

    Universal grammar
    Syntactic universals: Most existing languages have verbs, nouns, adjectives and pronouns.

    Universal grammar
    Semantic universals: One semantic universal regards our notion of colour. There exist eleven basic colour terms: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown, purple, pink, orange, and grey.

    Enter Rules
    But what are rules, and how are they represented in the brain?

    4 Parts to Language/Grammar
    Grammar Phonology Rule pertaining to the sound system Morphology Rules governing word structure. Syntax Rules governing the structure of sentences Semantics Rules concerning meaning.

    Phonological Rules
    Language consists of a fairly small set of sounds (phonemes). There are about 40 in English. Most have no meaning in themselves; rather we string them together to form meaningful bits and pieces.
    Rules - E.g., an English word can end, but not begin, with an -ng sound . A BM word can begin and end with an ng sound.

    Morphology
    Language is Made up of Morphemes. Many are words (Lexicon is the dictionary of). Papers has 2 morphemes (paper & s) 3 million words in English (about 200,000 words in common use today).

    Syntactic Rules
    Rules that enable us to combine morphemes into sentences (bridge between sound and meaning). When children put words together they are following syntactic rules about how morphemes are put together.

    Semantic
    Arbitrariness of the Sign - Sounds of words bear no relationship to meaning (except for onomatopoeia). In Philosophy we often distinguish between denotation and connotation.

    Semantics Follows Syntax

    The people talked over the noise Two Syntaxtical Interpretations


    1. [The people] [talked [over]the noise]]] - Over is a preposition 2. [The people [talked over][the noise] Over is a particle

    Semantics Follows Syntax


    A single sentence can correspond to two propositions, each of which has a distinctive syntactic (and logical) structure, hence, a different cognitive representation. Evidence that meaning is assigned to syntactic structure, rather than to words and sentences.

    Questions About Rules


    How do we come to have such knowledge? In what form is such knowledge represented in the mind? How can children learn grammar?

    Grammar
    How do we know that one sentence is grammatical and the other is not? Amy likes Stan Think likes I Stan that Amy Cannot be that we have learned each instance individually. Sentences are infinite; brain is not.

    Interesting Facts About Language


    The number of sentences is infinite. We are able to distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sentences. We are able to recognize truncated sentences (Stop it) that are missing nouns. We are able to recognize ambiguous sentences (Andrew saw the girl with binoculars) We can create sentences that paraphrase each other.

    Noam Chomsky
    Focused on the vast and unconscious set of rules he hypothesized must exist in the minds of speakers and hearers in order for them to produce and understand their native language.
    1957 Syntactic Structures 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

    Chomskys Views
    He abandons the idea that children produce languages only by imitation (abandon behaviorism) He rejects the idea that direct teaching and correcting of grammar could account for childrens utterances because the rules children were unconsciously acquiring are buried in the unconscious of the adults. He claims that there are generative rules (explicit algorithms that characterize the

    Chomskys Views
    Hypothesis The inborn linguistic capacity of humans is sensitive to just those rules that occur in human languages. Language development occurs if the environment provides exposure to language. Similar to the capacity to walk. Universal Grammar - Despite superficial differences all human languages share a fundamental structure. This structure is a universal grammar. We have an innate ability to apply this universal grammar to whatever language we are faced with at birth.

    Chomskys Recent Views (1980s)


    Principles and Parameters Formulation
    Principles: Govern application of the rules of language. Parameters: There are a finite number of ways that the principles may apply.

    Likens grammar to a set of switches, each having a fixed range of potential settings. Learning the syntax of ones own language is a matter of setting those switches. Acquiring a language is a matter of fixing the parameters in one of the permissible ways.

    Support for Chomsky (1)


    That the number of grammatical sentences is infinite supports the idea that we have to appeal to grammatical rules.

    Support for Chomsky (2)


    Claim that children cant be taught grammatical rules because they are not explicitly known. Rather, they absorb these rules unconsciously, as their language is spoken around them.

    Support for Innate Rules


    Competent speakers of a language dont know the principles that form grammatical judgments. They never learned these rules in school, nor were they taught them by their parents. Linguistic knowledge is unconscious or tacit.

    Language Processing in Babies


    Different Languages have different Phonological Distinctions.
    Japanese speakers cant distinguish R and L Spanish and French speakers divide B and P differently from English. What sounds like a b to a Spanish speaker will sound like a p to an English speaker.

    Scientists thought that babies wouldnt be able to hear the subtle difference between speech sounds.

    Language Processing in Babies


    Instead found that they did the reverse. Babies of one month distinguished every English sound contrast as well as adults. American babies could also distinguish sounds found in Spanish. By six months they were starting to lose this ability. By one year it was pretty much gone.

    Feral Children
    Victor (early 1800s) The wild boy of Aveyron. Found in the woods at about 11 or 12. He was probably partially mentally retarded. He never learned to use language. Genie (1970) 13 year old girl had lived whole life in total isolation in her home. She may or may not have been of normal intelligence but never able to acquire language.

    Isabell Found at 6 (1947). In two months she was combining words. Within a year she had similar language to other 7 year olds.

    What is Universal Grammar?


    Universal Grammar (UG) is the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages. (Chomsky, 1969)

    Why it is named Universal Grammar?


    Chomsky named this innate capacity as 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.

    What does Universal Grammar consist of?


    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

    What does Universal Grammar consist of?


    Study the following example: (English) The artist drew an eagle. (Bahasa Melayu) Pelukis itu melukis seekor burung helang. This sentence breaks up into a noun phrase (NP) the artist and verb phrase(VP) drew an eagle. These phrases also break up into smaller constituents. The (NP) the artist consists of a determiner (Det or D) the and a Noun (N) artist, while the NP an eagle consists of a determiner an and a Noun eagle.

    What does Universal Grammar consist of?


    Sentence NP DET N V DET VP NP N

    What does Universal Grammar consist of?


    For example, the us of past tense in English which is non-existent in Bahasa Melayu. Look at the following example: i. I went to the market yesterday. English ( change in verb go to went) ii. Semalam saya pergi ke pasar. B. Melayu ( no change in verb pergi)

    UG
    All languages appear to share these universal principles: Word order Subjects & predicates Nouns & verbs Negation Morphological marking tone

    UG
    Two most common word orders in the worlds languages
    worder

    UG
    We acquire complex grammatical system regardless of how and where we are raised. UG would prevent the child from pursuing all sorts of wrong hypothesis abt how lang systems work. If children are pre-equipped with UG, then what they have to learn is the ways in which the language they are acquiring makes use of the principle.

    UG
    Chomskys theory makes crucial use of the fact that UG should be powerful enough to enable the child to acquire a first language and at the same time flexible enough to account for all different human languages. This means that his theory is primarily intended as a way of explaining the logical possibility of first language acquisition.

    Standing by his principles


    Chomsky (1986) reiterates that UG is part of the human genetic endowment and is coded in the Language Acquisition Faculty(LAF). LAF is an innate component of the human mind that yields a particular language through interaction with presented experience, a device that converts experience into a system of knowledge attained: knowledge of one or another language.

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