Universal grammar: Encyclopedia - Universal grammar

Universal grammar

Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans. It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages. It was developed after issues of the Argument from poverty of the stimulus arose from the constructivist approach to linguistic theory.

This theory does not claim that all human languages have the same grammar, or that all humans are "programmed" with a structure that underlies all surface expressions of human language. Rather, universal grammar proposes a set of rules that would explain how children acquire their language(s), or how they construct valid sentences of their language.

Students of universal grammar study a variety of grammars to abstract generalizations called linguistic universals, often in the form of "If X holds true, then Y occurs." These have been extended to a range of traits, from the phonemes found in languages, to what word orders languages choose, to why children exhibit certain linguistic behaviors.

The idea can be traced to Roger Bacon's observation that all languages are built upon a common grammar, substantially the same in all languages, even though it may undergo in them accidental variations, and the 13th century speculative grammarians who, following Bacon, postulated universal rules underlying all grammars. The concept of a universal grammar or language was at the core of the 17th century projects for philosophical languages. Later linguists who have influenced this theory include Noam Chomsky, Edward Sapir and Richard Montague.

Some linguists oppose the universal grammar theory; one of its strongest opponents is Michael Tomasello, who claims that it is possible for children to learn a language without being born with grammatical rules. He believes that universal grammar theories are not falsifiable, arguing that the grammatical generalizations made are simply observations about existing languages and not predictions about what is possible in a language. Proponents of UG argue that their theories make extremely strong predictions of this kind (often too strong, failing to allow for grammatical phenomena which are in fact observed).

See also

• Principles and parameters

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Universal grammar", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki