Universal Grammar Linguist Noam Chomsky made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. In turn, there is an assumption that all languages have a common structural basis. This set of rules is known as Universal grammar. - a set of principles and rules which are common to all human languages and a set of parameters whose value is set by experience and which may vary from one language to another.
Principle A principle of U.G. is a statement that is true for all human languages. These principles are innate in the native speaker as a cognitive process in the human brain. Eg: - the principle of structure dependency the relation between words (Subject Auxiliary Inversion (SAI) Can you speak English?
- the projection principle
Parameter A parameter is a variation along a well defined range of possibilities, subsumes a cluster of phonological, syntactic, lexical or morphological properties or structures governed by an abstract principle. A parameter must be set according to the requirements of the language being acquired. Eg: - the null subject parameter (the PRO-drop parameter) - the Head parameter the most important word in a sentence
Structure Dependency The principle of Structure Dependency relies on structural relationships rather than on the sequence of items. Grammatical rules do not depend on the liner ordering of the words in the sentence, but on how this words are structured within constituents of specific types. Eg: - SAI (Subject Auxiliary Inversion) They will watch TV. Will they watch TV?
Lexicon The Lexicon consists of words or group of words which convey a meaning and make grammatical sense. The Lexicon contains words listed in an alphabetic order with information about them.
Projection Principle The Projection Principle states that the items stored in the Lexicon are projected to other levels. This principle demonstrates the link between the syntax and the Lexicon. The lexical specification of the item ensures that the syntax has a particular form. Eg: Mary is meetig someone. Mary is meeting. Both lexical and functional categories expand according to the same general format: X-bar schema
The Innateness Hypothesis The Chomskian Innateness Hypothesis postulates not only a general ability in human to acquire language, but also that this ability of ours comes from a specific acquisition device in the brain, equipped already at birth with specific grammatically rules and principles.