Part 1 Noam Chomsky on Language Acquisition

language sets us apart, other animals communicate but they don't have anything
approaching the sophisticated grammar of human languages. How is it that we learn to
speak and think in language so easily? young children become adept in a new language
very quickly. Since the dawn of philosophy thinkers have argued about whether or not we
have innate ideas whether we are born knowing things as Plato believed or rather as John
Locke and other empiricists argued, the mind is a blank slate on which experience writes. an
American linguist noam chomsky gave a twist to this debate in the 1960s by demonstrating
that children learning to speak just don't have enough information to form the complex
grammatical maneuvers that allow them to generate unlimited new and original sentences,
yet they do so with ease there's a poverty of stimulus, something else must be going on.
Chomsky's hypothesis was that there are inborn structures in our brain called a language
acquisition device or LAD which gives us a natural propensity to organize the spoken
language that we hear in various grammatical ways. Without that, we couldn't get started as
language learners. If his right language structure is hardwired as a kind of universal
grammar our slates have been written on before we emerge from the womb.

Part 2 Language Acquisition & Universal Grammar

So let’s talk about babies. Very cute, right? It’s hard to look at a baby smiling at you and not
feel good. But even the most devoted parents don’t generally think of their baby as a
cognitive powerhouse. But babies figure out how language works like little geniuses. They’re
just born that way. Language is special. People can do a lot of amazing things;ride a
unicycle, learn long division, walk on the moon. But maybe the most amazing thing that
human beings do is language. Don’t believe me? Just wait. So the most important idea for
today’s episode is the theory that the ability to learn and use language is biologically
hardwired into the human brain. Babies are made to pick up the language that they hear
around them, just sponging up those glorious sounds and structures and turning them into
their mother tongues. The theory that language is something innate, something you’re born
with, is known in linguistics as nativism or generativism, and it’s got a lot of really good
evidence behind it. Before we start getting into what this means, though, let’s be perfectly
clear about what it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean that we’re born with any particular language – no
baby springs into the world with the ability to speak perfect English or German or Japanese.
We don’t come equipped with the rules or sounds or vocabulary of any language - that’s all
stuff we have to learn. What babies don’t need to figure out is how language can work –
what kinds of words we can build, what types of sentences we can make, what sorts of
interpretations we’re allowed. These fundamental principles of language define what’s
possible and what’s not, and they’re the same for everybody. Anything that doesn’t stick to
the rules will never come up in any human language, ever. Given how many different
languages there are, it might seem unlikely that there's one set of principles that can rule
them all. But the idea comes to us from none less than the father of modern linguistics,
Noam Chomsky. He called it: Universal Grammar, or UG. There are a lot of arguments to
back up the nativist position, but for today, we’re just going to focus on two of them. So the
first is that babies go through the same stages in development no matter what language
they’re learning. The second is that infants master language way faster than they should if
they’re just little blank slate know-nothing babies. To be that fast, there’s got to be something
there to help them along. Let’s start off with babbling, those adorable random syllables that
little babies make. Except they’re not really random. No matter what language they’re
learning, this early babbling uses the same set of sounds. One study examined the early
babbling of babies from 15 different languages, including English, Thai, Japanese, Arabic,
Hindi, and Mayan – languages where all they have in common is that they’re spoken by
people. The study found that these babies all prefer labial consonants, or sounds made with
the lips, more than other consonants; stop consonants like [p] and [b], where the air flow
through the mouth is totally blocked, over others; and vowels made low in the mouth like [æ]
and [ɑ] over those that are made higher up, like [i] and [u]. And all of that is independent of
how often - or even whether at all - these languages make use of these sounds! Babbling
Hindi-learning babies make the same amounts of the same sounds that Arabic-learning
babies do. In fact, your average 8-month-old baby can differentiate between any pair of
sounds used in any language in the world. Depending on your language, you might not be
able to tell the difference between [t̪ ɑk] and [ʈɑk], or between [lɑk] and [ɹɑk], but your baby
can. It makes sense: a baby needs to be prepared to pick up any language, so they better
come equipped to hear anything that could be relevant. It’s not just the way they deal with
sounds that’s the same for all infants. They all pick up words at the same approximate rate
and stages, too, and that's regardless of how the language they’re learning works. It doesn’t
matter whether or not the babies hear motherese, that way of speaking slowly and using
easy words and intonation, like “What a cute baby! Where’s the kitty, baby?” It doesn’t matter
if the language has a tone, like Mandarin, or doesn’t, like English, or whether the verb comes
at the beginning or end of the sentence. In fact, all babies, in whatever language, will start
getting their first words around 10-12 months old. By 18 months, they’ve got about 50 words.
And then they undergo a crazy vocabulary spurt, picking up hundreds of words over the next
few months, so that by around 2, they’ll have about 500. And then they start going even
faster! Your average 2 and a half year old is glomming up new words at the rate of about 10
a day. That’s faster than your average 3-credit undergraduate language course. So the ways
that kids make sounds, the way they pick up words, it’s all the same worldwide, in Chicago
or Tokyo or Cairo or Bangkok. And since the languages they’re learning are all so different,
this tells us something fundamental about the human brain. How babies learn language is
biological – our brains are configured for language. If you’re still not convinced, how about
this: there’s been a lot of research done on other language acquisition theories, and the
results there are just as clear. Maybe you think that we can pick up language quicker than
other behavioral skills, that there’s nothing special about it except how fast we do it. Okay.
First, of course kids make mistakes - calling a deer “horsie” the first time they see one,
saying “I eated” instead of “I ate” - but there’s all sorts of mistakes that kids don’t make that it
seems like they should. For example, when asking a question, “Teddy is happy” can turn into
“Is Teddy happy?”, but “Teddy dressed up as Alice” can never turn into “Dressed Teddy up
as Alice?”. Kids never make mistakes like that. Second, if language was just something you
picked up without having a blueprint in your brain, it should be possible to approximate some
part of it with computer modeling. That’s exactly what one linguist tried to do in 2011. She
designed twenty different computer models of how the English stress system could be
acquired – so what syllables should be pronounced more strongly than others, and what
factors matter for deciding that. And the researcher didn’t only run the experiment only once
– she did it a thousand times for each model, with different versions paying attention to
different factors. So how many of these models nailed English? Three. Three out of twenty
thousand total trials. And yet, basically every English speaking child gets this right. That
strongly suggests there’s something very special going on with language. But it’s not just that
all babies do the same things that makes us think that language is innate, that it’s something
we’re born with. It’s that kids get so good at language so quickly. Let’s consider what your
average 2 and a half year old knows about language. They know what sound combinations
are possible for their language, so they know what a possible word sounds like. They know
the word order for their language, so a Turkish kid will know that the verb comes after the
object, but a French kid will know it’s the other way around. They know how to make
questions, and what sorts of questions it's grammatically okay to ask. They know how to use
modifiers like adjectives or adverbs. Now, think about what your average toddler knows
about, like, everything else. They know a whole lot about how language works, at an age
where they can’t add 2 + 2. Or tie their shoes. Or reliably use a bathroom. So why are kids
so good? Why can they learn so fast, make so few mistakes, and succeed where
sophisticated computer models fail? How do they know all of this despite not having it
explicitly taught to them? It’s because they already know how language can work. Deep in
their brains, in their genes, they have the abstract rule sets that tell them what’s possible and
what’s not. All babies start the same way, with the same linguistic abilities. Then, they apply
the data they hear to the Universal Grammar in their heads, and they make little linguistic
miracles happen. Every single day. So we’ve reached the end of the Ling Space for this
week. We’ll be coming back to talk more about child language in the future, but if you were
paying attention this time, you learned that nativist or generativist ideas mean that we think
language is innate, but not that any particular language is; that babies go through the same
stages of development regardless of what language they’re learning; and that kids know a
whole lot about how language works at a really early age.

Part 3 Universal Grammar Overview Video

Universal grandma or grammar is also known as generative Linguistics and it's related really
to the study of genetics and the innate capacities of our mind. so sometimes you will hear
this also referred to as an innatist approach to Linguistics. at any rate, Noam Chomsky
challenged the behaviorist approach to first language acquisition and in that approach
language acquisition is more about habit formation it is get a stimulus response type of
relationship and that if there's enough input and positive and negative reinforcement then a
child or a person will imitate and learn the first language or the second language they're
seeking to learn. That's kind of the behaviorist approach. what Chomsky suggested is that
language acquisition is not simply a matter of stimulus and response and as a matter of fact
when he observed children um he noted that children are constantly coming up with new
ways of saying things and as a matter of fact if you um correct a child a lot of times they will
just keep saying the phrase the wrong way even though they've never heard anyone say it
incorrectly before so it shows that there's not just a simple imitation going on here there's
something else going in the way the child's learning to put together language and then the
fact that they're not responding to rec correction indicates that the behavioral strategy isn't
quite enough. Interestingly these children eventually end up learning the basic structures of
their first language and so somehow they work out that incorrect component of language or
their language use across time and it seems like it's something going on in their brain that
helps them to do that. so as children learn their first language the language develops in a
kind of systematic way and that developing language is what we sometimes call
interlanguage and the inner language is that mental um understanding of how language
works and it is a kind of internally consistent understanding or theory of how the grammar of
the language works and it's not something that's conscious it's more subconscious it's in the
brain and it and in chomsky's view it's related to how the brain is wired to learn a language
so he came up with this concept of universal grammar and Chomsky in this idea suggests
that all human beings inherit a universal set of principles and parameters that control the
shape that human languages can take and which are what make human languages similar
to each other so when you look at human languages actually they're they're quite similar but
they're different and he came up with two really important Concepts to explain what's going
on with universal grammar and how we end up with different languages and the first is this
idea of principles and this is the idea that language is actually actually vary in limited ways
and that there are some things that are true of all human languages if you compare all the
languages in the world you will discover for example that there is something that linguists
calls structure dependency and this tells us that all languages have sentences that consist of
noun phrases and verb phrases there are other examples of principles that that are known
out there but Chomsky also identified is that we have this principle right that there are there's
structure dependency. now there are also parameters and the parameters are the areas in
which languages differ so parameters tell us how languages are different so for example
there's a parameter called the head parameter and the head parameter then determines
whether a language will be a right-branching language or a left branching language and this
is how languages then become different. English is a right branching language what that
means is we build sentences to the right so we say “the woman who is sitting over there is
reading a book” right it's all the the sentence is moving in the direction of the right um
Japanese interestingly is constructed in a reverse order so if the Japanese were to say that
exact sentence they would say um “sitting over there the woman is reading a book” and so
they build it in kind of reverse order and so that's what we mean by right branching and left
branching and the way Universal grammar explains this is the brain has the principle there
right that there is a kind of structure dependency and then as a child starts to receive input
and they receive the input from their parents from people around them they're receiving input
even in the womb and the Brain it's like they have the brain has switches there and the Brain
identifies oh this language that I'm receiving input for is a right branching language so if you
live in if your child living in the U.S the um the switch gets set to a right branching language,
if you grow up in Japan the switch gets set to a left branching language and then the brain
knows how to construct sentences in that language and it begins to to work that out the
same concept works with other parameters within language we don't have time to get into
that at this point but that's the idea of universal grammar that there is this innate language
acquisition device built into our brains all of there are all these Universal principles that are
there and then there are these parameters which are kind of like switches in the brain and as
we receive input then the brain knows which way to set them. if you don't get that input the
brain doesn't know how to switch those switch you know how to set those switches and then
it doesn't know how to acquire the functional part of language that is a really important
Concept in Universal grammar so for Chomsky then the functional components of language
are a closed class in other words you can't add to them and they're closely related to the
language acquisition device the functional part is the grammatical component it's the
phonemes it's the different sounds that we have and such that we can hear and understand
and so that's why in the critical period hypothesis then if you if you haven't picked up certain
sounds for example like Japanese um by the time they're uh six years old they can't hear a
difference between Lake and rake for them the phone phonemic difference between an l and
an R is set and so they can hear the difference later but it um is they can't hear it later they
can figure it out later based on context and then the same is true with um the grammatical
part so they know at that early age oh this is a left branching language or right branching
language. however even though functional components of language are closed lexical items
are actually an Open Class and that means that we can add vocabulary continually
throughout our lives and continue to build that and that is separate in chomsky's view then
from the functional part of language the last thing I wanted to say here is that it is interesting
that um there are new languages that emerge among adults and an example of that is a
pidgin language and there are some situations in which people have moved for example to
the Caribbean islands and they maybe they were brought there years and years ago as
slaves and when they got there they couldn't communicate well with their masters and then
they were separated and mixed together so they couldn't really communicate with people
from their own language group so they ended up creating a separate language called a
pidgin language and when we look at these pidgin languages pigeon languages are always
developed among first generation peoples but they seem to actually follow these rules of
universal grammar it's kind of a another proof I guess the universe Universal grammar um
exists and then pigeons later this is a little extra information but when the second generation
comes along they formalize those they kind of fill out those languages um and they become
what are called Creole languages anyway that is a strong argument the fact that they're even
pigeons are embedded in this kind of concept of universal grammar that they are indeed full
languages in their whole right. so this is Noam chomsky's Theory he's often known as the
father of modern Linguistics and he wouldn't use this phrase because he's a bit of an
evolutionist but I will say the big idea here is that God has designed the human brain with the
innate capacity to learn languages I think this is really cool um there are some challenges to
this view but the key ideas here are that we have a language acquisition device part of that
are these principles that are there for all languages and then parameters are these switches
where when we get input as children they're set to go right left or whatever the others might
be and those settings begin very early in life as early as 18 months of age and then we had
previously discussed this concept of orders of acquisition and how there is this research by
Brown saying that when we learn the different functional components of language we
actually learn them in a kind of set order that too explains why it is that children come up with
these crazy novel phrases and use words kind of incorrectly but and we can't fix it we might
try to correct them but we can't really correct them but somehow their brain works it out
across time and those sequences show us that there's a consistent order in which children
work those out and their brain helps them work out what the the target language is going to
look like this is the concept of universal grammar.

Part 4 Universal Grammar

when you say Universal it comes from the universe it has to do with all the languages of the
universe. so if we encounter aliens and they speak languages our Universal grammar should
cover it theoretically speaking. interestingly a lot of times in the context of linguistics the word
Universal which is an adjective derived from universe is actually used more often as a noun
for example you talk about Universal grammar and which Universal is an adjective but we
also talk about language universals and in this sense the word Universal itself has been
used as a noun to refer to anything that is universal about language it could be a rule it could
be other kinds of statement about language. In linguistic Theory the term Universal is a noun
used to refer to a linguistic characteristic of language to something that applies to all
languages of the world. The concept of universal grammar was introduced in generative
grammar generative Linguistics with transformational Linguistics which is the theory that was
introduced in the 1950s by Noam Chomsky and that's because generative grammar is
obsessed with universality. we're not just happy to know about a specific language like
English, we know we want to know about all languages, so that's the desire underpinning
Universal grammar. I don't want to just write a grammar that is good for a language, I want a
gram write a grammar that is good for all languages. and these universals are sets of
constraints or set of rules or principles that apply to our languages. when you engage in
Universal grammar Eugene you may make specific statements about all languages but in a
particular domain of linguistics although the statement or rule or principle is universal it is still
specific to a particular domain for example you could be making a statement about the
phonology of all languages or you could be making a statement about semantic Universal
syntactic universals. in other words UG is concerned about principles of human language all
human languages it is concerned about the universal logical patterns of thought that give
rise to those principles, it is the theory of universal grammar in linguistics especially
generative Linguistics Universal refers to a property that is claimed to be common among all
languages. In this sense one of the main goals of linguistic theory is to specify precisely what
these properties are to write a grammar that's not about a language it's about all languages;
it's a theory of human grammar. in other words the concept of universal grammar itself is
based on the assumption that all of us as humans have a cognitive system that is shared
among all of us it's something biological we are endowed biologically not just with the
capability but with the specific device that enables us to understand any language in the
world but also to speak the language so as a child if I put you in China you will grow up
learning Chinese but if you grow up in the U.S you will learn English and these two
languages obviously have so many differences so how is it that you're capable of learning
Chinese but you're also capable of learning English and you're capable of learning any other
language, it is because you are born with that device the biological device, so language
universals depict the general features of the way human language is designed it provides so
by it I mean universal grammar provides the theory of the human language faculty or
language and this Theory consists of language properties that are said to be biologically
necessary and in this sense language universals are one step along the path of
understanding all of the intellectual capabilities of us as the species as a human species.
Example:
all languages have nouns, all languages have verbs. in other words all languages have noun
phrases and verb phrases every single language in the world has that. Therefore this is a
universal language Universal. It's a universal property of all languages. In Universal
grammar we have a universal base; it is the base from which all the rules of all grammars
can be generated. Some of these rules have no exceptions. These are like hard rules. These
are absolute universals but sometimes there are relative universals which are language
universals which may come with specific principled exceptions. The purpose of linguistic
theory is to discover Universal grammar. We want to discover all the laws of human
language in the same sense that the purpose of physics is to understand the physical world
to discover all the laws of the physical Universe. Universal grammar is out there to discover
all of these laws but this doesn't mean that it has already been discovered , it's just the
beginning. The physical world is out there to observe and experience but it doesn't mean our
knowledge of the science of physics is perfect, it's just the science of physics, it's just a
branch of science that constantly involves. you all know that there was Newtonian physics
and now we have einsteinian physics and in the future we'll have new forms and theories of
physics like people speak languages we just do it but our theory of how we come to speak
these languages is constantly evolving. Universal grammar provides for properties that are
abstract and account for what laying Chomsky terms the language acquisition device: this
grammar of a specific language, say Japanese or English, is a specific instance of UG and
may contain statements that are specific to that language.
Example:
all languages have a word order which means that there's more or less a fixed word order in
every language although some languages are more flexible in their word order but if you
have subject verb object there is different possibilities there's there could be sov there could
be SVO vso VOS theoretically all of these are possible but when you come to learn English
you learn that the dominant word order is SVO in the same way that the dominant World
Order in Persian is sov subject to object verb in this sense Universal grammar tells you that
there's word order but a language-specific grammar tells you what that specific order in that
specific language is. since we don't know everything about all languages of the world dead
and alive you need to know that that we don't know yet how much language is have in
common so this is something that you could debate in question like how do we really know
there is this underlying grammar from which all these specific grammars can be derived
that's why there's criticisms of universal grammar because it's an ongoing process we are
yet to learn about all these languages dead in living and Universal grammar are still
evolving.

Part 5 Universal Grammar by Chomsky

universal grammar this one was proposed by noam chomsky, it's around the 1980s. so this
is actually the continuation of the theories that he had proposed in the 1950s and 60s
previously. This theory believes first that all humans have this innate capacity that he called
as language faculty that makes it possible for everyone to acquire language. This has a
place in our brain since we were born. it also explained why children can acquire languages
heard from parents and the surrounding without even learning them as you all of you might
have experienced with your l1 or your first language that you never learned them you just
heard from your parents or your neighbor or the people around you but and then now you
become a native speaker uh and this is what a universal grammar believes because we
have this capacity in our brain. And another one is that children understand grammar only by
limited or fragmented sources around them even though they only heard pieces and bits and
pieces we never understand why children suddenly grow up into an adult who can speak,
who can produce language very fluently and that all humans have this regardless the l1, they
have this ability and this is what is believed by a universal grammar. This is actually the
underlying belief that is proposed by universal grammar: the ability of humans to acquire
language because of what we already have in our brain since we were born. so we have
understood the underlying principle of universal grammar and just like other theories,
theories develop over time and also universal grammar proposed by chomsky and then
chomsky himself fixed or you know reconceptualized his theories and he used the principles
and parameters to explain the newer or the later version of his universal grammar. so he
used principles and parameters to explain the story. So what are principles and
parameters? So basically , universe grammar is a set of principles. So universal grammar
itself is a set of principles that are the properties of all languages. So Chomsky believes that
all languages have these very core principles and it's called universal grammars. These
principles have parameters that limit the choice of settings depending on the language
involved. and then children are believed to have this innate ability to understand all these
principles and parameters subconsciously. They don't have to consciously learn these
principles and parameters. And also the last one is that Chomsky proposed that UG is the
reason why children never violate the principles and never select wrong parameters. So this
is one of the examples of the principle that Chomsky talked about. so we have here the
principle of the elements including the head. So what does head mean? okay for example he
believes that in all languages for example third phrase in the third phrase you have to have
the head. for example in the phrase work hard you have the head verb work before the
complement heart, but work hard is one phrase. it's called phrase, this includes verb, the
head verb, and also adverb. so the verb is the head verb. also in noun phrase, every noun
phrase has the head noun. for example in the phrase “smart” goal so we have the goal here
as the head noun. smart girl is a noun phrase and it has to have the head noun and the head
noun is the goal. another example is in prepositional phrase for example in the phrase “on
time” we have the word “on” as the head preposition and then “time” as part of this phrase.
on time is one phrase but we have the head preposition “on” in there. so this is one of the
principles that chomsky stated in his universal grammar theory that every language always
have in their phrase what he calls as the head, noun phrase has to have a noun head, a
verb phrase has to have a verb head and then prepositional phrase has the one preposition
as the head. So now we all know that languages are all different, the rules of language are
all different. Like well there are some similarities but there are also a lot of differences. For
example, English and Bahasa Indonesia are quite different in some parts, so this difference
is what Chomsky addressed as the parameters. We already know the principles he believed
in the existence of the head. Now what is the parameter? One example of the parameter is
the position or the direction of the head. He only recognized head initial and also head final.
let's take a look at the example here with the comparison between english and also french.
For example, in english there's a sentence she “calls you”. as you can see here the verb
phrase “calls you”. the verb comes first and then “you” because the verb comes first before
the object, or the head comes first this is called head initial. Let's take a look at the
comparison with french. This actually means the same “el tapel”. We have the verb phrase
here “tapel” but actually the verb is a “ell” and “ta” here from “attua” is you. so the object
comes first before the verb. That means the head verb comes last or later. This is what is
called the head final. and according to this theory, the universal grammar theory, children
have this innate ability to recognize the principle and parameter and in their first language
unlimitedly until they become the native speakers. So somehow it cannot always be
explained that children can understand these principles and parameters without them
realizing and without having to learn it. so there is an input to their brain and then the brain
process it here and then it becomes something that they can produce for communication but
the process in the head until now it's still mystery nobody knows exactly how that happened
this is just one of the theory based on the phenomena that happens in the field of first
language.

Part 6 Noam chomsky Language Theory

Norm Chomsky was an American linguist and if you look at Linguistics it's very much
connected to the psychoanalytical school of criticism why so because psychoanalytical
school of criticism deals with the psyche psyche means the mind and language acquisition is
one of the most important thing or one of the most important function of mind so
psychoanalytical critics they are quite eager to know how we learn language how we acquire
language and how we use it in our day-to-day life if you look at psychoanalytical criticism
before Norm Chomsky you'll find that most of the psychoanalytics they were quite eager to
know whether the person when he's born he's born with a clean slate that means he has no
uh knowledge of rules of grammar or is he born with some basic knowledge of language and
grammar Norm Chomsky was the first person to say that human brain is pre-wired with
some basic rules of language he says that when a child is born he is born in this world with a
basic set of language skills that means he's not a clean slate his mind is not empty he
already has a language acquisition device LED there in his brain due to which he is able to
learn language so quickly so before Norm Chomsky a lot of psychoanalytical thinkers us
they believed that how a child learns a child learns by observing and then imitating parents
and other people around him but Norm Chomsky was the first person who said that no the
child already has some basic rules of grammar there in his mind and what he does is that he
picks up the vocabulary and learns the language easily there are three important things that
you must know when it comes to Norm chomsky's theory of universal grammar the first point
is that Norm Chomsky says that every child who takes birth on this Earth he already knows
basic grammatical rules when he interact with his parents with Elders he's actually learning
vocabulary but grammar he already knows okay so this is the first thing second thing Norm
Chomsky says that if you look at languages across different cultures you'll find that all
languages they have the same basic structure for example if you look at French German
English Hindi Marathi all these languages are going to have certain nouns certain verbs
certain adjectives so the categories would remain same the structure the subject verb
agreement in every language is going to stay the same there can be different words.

Part 7 Universal grammar

In the mid 20th century the American linguist noam chomsky proposed a theory that our
brains are hard-wired with a mental template for learning grammar and that we rely on this
innate grammar module to acquire language his theory of universal grammar would
endeavor to define a set of rules applicable to all languages essentially exposing a hidden
unity that underlies the vast surface diversity of the 7,000 languages in the world Universal
grammar was a radical break from the more informal approaches prevalent at the time
traditional approaches relied too much on the intelligent of the speaker and failed to account
for a number of linguistic phenomena structuralist approaches had too limited scope focus
too much on morphemes and phonemes and didn't account for the intelligence of the
speaker in his book aspects of the theory of syntax Chomsky drew attention to all the
complexities involved in becoming a competent speaker of a language his first version of the
theory of universal grammar incorporated two emerging trends in Western intellectual life the
idea is that language had both a computational structure and was rooted in human biology
he posited that the language we used to communicate in everyday life behaves in the same
manner as mathematically based computer languages simultaneously he suggested that
universal grammar was an innate component of the human mind with deep biological
underpinnings universal grammar of the 1960s was initially based on the underlying
structure of the languages spoken by those linguists who were developing the theory that
meant for the most part European languages the universal grammar program operated on
chunks of language such as noun and verb phrases and so to define rules that could be
applied to or transform those phrases however exceptions that did not align with the
established schema began to emerge challenging this early idea of a universal grammar
purgative languages such as busk and Otto for example use sentence subjects in a way that
is unlike that in many European languages additionally native Australian languages such as
while piri scatter noun and verb phrases throughout the sentence these outliers were difficult
to reconcile with the universal grammar approach and led to a wholesale revision of the
theory in the 1980s rather than a single universal grammar for all the world's languages the
new version of the theory set to identify universal principles such as any structure X must
have the property y plus parameters that govern the structure of languages these principles
are manifested themselves differently in each language and interacted with culture to
produce today's parametric variations let us look at a non linguistic example to illustrate this
principles and parameters approach a principle that could be found in our world is that all
countries have roads that can be driven on the question is on which side so here we have a
parameter that can be associated with each country plus right for I can traffic and - right for
left-hand traffic here is a linguistic principle standard declarative sentences normally have an
overt subject even if the subject is a pronoun this is true for English and German where
sentences without the pronominal subject are and grammatical languages such as Italian or
Spanish by contrast can form fully grammatical sentences without the need for separate
subjects this parameter has become known as the pro drop parameter some people also call
it null subject parameter it is said - for English and German where the pronoun cannot be
dropped and plus for Italian and Spanish the idea is as soon as children encounter few
sentences of this type this Pro drop parameter would be set and the children would know
whether they could drop the subject in these sentences or not the most recent revision of
universal grammar came in 2002 when Chomsky and his colleagues published a paper in
science where they described a universal grammar that included only one feature called
computational recursion or merge this new shift in the paradigm permitted a limited number
of words and rules to be combined to make an unlimited number of sentences he also
proposed that this recursive ability that may have arisen from a single genetic mutation
between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago is what sets language apart from other types of
cognitive processes such as categorization and relational perception however as with the
1960 version of this theory there is a counter example the Amazonian language aha this
language does not exhibit recursive structures defenders of universal grammar make the
analogy that the universal parameters and principles are like our senses of taste while
culture and geography may produce variations in worldly cuisines we are all nevertheless
born with a basic set of tastes sweet sour salty bitter and so on just because a culture lacks
salt to season food does not mean that the members of that culture lack the ability to taste
salt likewise they would say just because a language lacks recursive structures this does not
mean that the speakers of that language lack the potential for recursion this line of thinking
makes universal grammar difficult to test in practice and contributes to the overall empirical
inadequacies of the theory many researchers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with a
completely formal language approach such as universal grammar with more and more
evidence rebutting Chomsky's theory a paradigm shift may be underway this paradigm shift
will be discussed in a second video on universal grammar until then have a nice time and
thanks for your attention

Part 8 Noam Chomsky-Universal grammar

In advance of experience the child is already equipped with an understanding of the basic
structure of any human language so we know even in advance to think work that there's
going to be a fundamental and very Oracle language linguist have common to use the term
universal brand it's a notion that there's some underlying set of characteristics that I carry
along languages all over the world all human languages have something that is sort of now
need and something that is sort of verb' they all do all human languages have a way to make
things negative all human languages have a way to ask a question if I'm asking a question I'll
lower my eyebrows where are you from what's your name who is that person all human
languages have a way to indicate a difference between just one and more than one in the s
floor languages you have not only the singular for example guyot one rabbit will gyq two
rabbits will guide three or more rabbits and so with those each language has a list of
obligatory distinctions male/female definite indefinite singular plural past present this is the
stock of categories that the human mind uses to schematize experience and Chomsky
asked the question why is this why our language is so similar why are they all cut from the
same mold and his answer was there are fixed invariant principles fixed invariant structural
principles which are simply part of the human biological endowment and that determine what
counts as a human language it's because the human brain is pre-wired to accept only certain
kinds of languages and that the grammatical properties of the languages of the world have
those properties that they do because the human mind as those properties those things
which are true of all languages are the candidates but what the child comes into the world
knowing about the nature of the language to which he is being exposed the child might very
well have a plan for what is a possible rule in human language so languages can have verbs
then objects or objects and verbs but those are two possibilities that every language has one
or the other of and the child can simply worry about which of those two versions his
language has what he's got to pick up are the particular versions of the rules that everyone
else in the community is using

Part 9
in the name of allahim who taught maine by means of the pin dear students
assalamualaikum welcome you all in today's lecture topic for today's lecture discussion is
universal grammar universal grammar is one of the important topics in the course contents
of psycholinguistics so let's study first the outline of the lecture and today's lecture we will be
defining that what is universal grammar what are the important components of universal
grammar these components are principles and parameters and then like i will be studying
universal grammar with reference to language acquisition and language learning so let's
study with the introduction dear students as we know that secret language learning is an
issue in the theory of linguistics that concerns many researchers who are trying to answer
the fundamental the very basic question that is how people learning a foreign language how
people learn a foreign language like what are the issues what are the difficulties and
problems they are facing while learning a foreign language even adults the mature in
contrast to children are observed to be less successful in language learning why what are
the reasons or what are the factors that are affecting the adults the mature people like the
university students the process of second language or foreign language learning so there is
like one factor which is very much involved in this process which is universal grammar so in
today's lecture we are trying to learn what is universal grammar what are the like like issues
we are facing in learning a second language or foreign language yes truly there are
controversies in universal grammar like different concepts are there by different authors
researchers and linguists like for example the first thing the first question which is regarding
the contribution of universal grammar that what is the contribution of universal grammar in
first language in mother tongue acquiring okay and the acquisition of first language what is
the contribution of universal grammar and what is the contribution of universal grammar in
second language acquisition our second language learning and what is the contribution of
universal grammar in third language learning or foreign language learning is it work similarly
in all languages like in first language learning in second language learning and third lingual
learning are foreign language learning no different views are there dear students different
opinions by different researchers authors and linguists we are seeing like the first weave the
first thought is that universal grammar plays very important role in the acquisition of first
language the mother tongue in the mastery of the first language it takes place okay but some
scholars they are saying yes in first language it plays very important role but in second
language acquisition it cannot be ignored totally we cannot ignore the the like the role the
contribution the advantages of universal grammar this is another view okay third third
concept is that third like uh the school of thought of the one group of linguists that is we are
seeing that like for first language we need universal grammar and for second language first
language will be best we are learning second language on the basis of first language there is
like the the very like there is no role there is no contribution of the universal grammar in
learning second language but first language plays the role of universal grammar in the
process of second language acquisition our second language learning okay like they are uh
they are going against the universal grammar are they are in negation of universal grammar
it is secret language acquisition or second legal learning so there comes okay the third week
the third concept that is regarding the third language and foreign language learning and
requisition we are seeing that like similar role is played by the first language and sorry dear
students so now we are like uh able to answer our to to learn these controversies the
contribution of universal grammar in first language and second language and and foreign
language now what is universal grammar dear students universal grammar shortly ug was
first kind by noam chomsky who postulated that there has to be one grammar that applies to
all languages in all one for all one languages there is one similar grammar okay which is
present in the mind of the learner which is god gifted which is inborn capacity for language
learning and similar uh for all languages okay like children they are uh getting this capacity
by birth okay it's a natural process like we all are born with with one capacity for language
learning which is called like the capacity of the mental landscape okay with which we we
born that is called universal grammar in which is same similar for all world languages it
justifies children ability to grace any language presented to them in their earlier years okay
[Music] therefore all languages may be regarded as structurally similar and easy to compare
like there is strong comparison there is strong correlation among the all world languages
because they are based on one capacity okay which is present they are like based on
mental ability which is fixed in the mind of the learner or in the mind of the children so that's
why all languages are structurally similar and they are easy to be compared dear students
universal grammar is a term in linguistic theory which claims that all languages possesses
the same principles of grammar therefore occur to be similar like for all languages there is
one grammar okay that is believed to be present in the mind of every child and at the same
time justify the tremendous speed and complex processes that account for child language
acquisition like other parts which is performed by universal grammar in order to understand
the process of first language acquisition in second language acquisition it is important to
write about the components of universal grammar now we are having the important
components of universal grammar to students principles and parameters principle and
parameters these are the important components of universal grammar nam chomsky in his
universal grammar model makes the distinction between principles and parameters dear
students these are the two main components of universal grammar so nam chomsky he is
making in this model the distinction between principles and parameters and classifies them
as major components that are like elicited first language acquisition that helps in first
language acquisition and alternatively and second language acquisition also so now what
are these parameters according to chomsky uh like he is saying that language is governed
by a set of highly abstract principles that provide parameters which are given particular
settings in different languages all like languages language is governed by a set of highly
abstract principles that provides parameters that provide parameters it can be understood
that universal grammar is divided into two principles into two into principles and parameters
yes these principles and parameters control the shape human languages can take and at the
same time make human languages similar to one another on the basis of these principles we
are controlling the shape of human languages and at the same time like the similarities can
be taken into account on the basis of principles principles all languages are considered to be
fixed rules okay to have fixed rules yes where principles remain stable our language is key
fixed rules yes with the passage of time principle of a language are claimed to be universal
and stable components of universal grammar for example a principle example is a principle
for example one may consider the argument that all sentences must contain a noun phrase
and our phrase they are like depending on one structure which is a principle based so we
have noun phrase and we have one phrase at the same time it is considered a feature of
structural dependency of language it is believed that all languages are structure dependent
therefore regarded as similar yes tamar therefore they are similar to one another or each
other there is similarity because they are structure based they are structure bound principles
can be regarded as common feature in all languages so makes differences among
languages while principles make like similarities among languages on the basis of principles
we are seeing that our languages are similar while on the basis of parameters we are seeing
that there are differences these are the two main components of universal gravity students to
language postposition while personal language has both has both like preposition and
postposition so these are the students parameters in which is similar for all languages tk and
which is natural phenomena which is god gifted phenomena or which is in burn capacity
similar for all languages that universal grammar and the important components of universal
grammar if you have any question you can ask you are welcome to ask questions thanks for
watching assalamu alaikum

Part 10
so in this video i'll be talking about principles and parameters which is one aspect of gnome
chomsky's universal grammar so principles and parameters is a theory of language
acquisition and in previous videos we've looked at the difference between language learning
and language acquisition now this is part of generative linguistics um now a principle is an
abstract rule of grammar um or more technically an abstract rule of universal grammar um in
the chomsky in sense of the word word and parameter is like a marker or a switch okay so
what does that mean so for example chomsky would say that a principle is a language
universal that languages have adjectives now what do we mean by a language universal it
means all languages around the world have this aspect have this feature um for example um
it would be a uh it'd be very strange to find a language which had no adjectives at all so we
when we are born our innate knowledge of language tells us that languages have adjectives
but where do we place those adjectives think about this um we say a red car and so in this
case this would be what we call a pre-nominal pre-nominal antes del noun nom i don't know
um and in the spanish case we have yeah which is placing it after so that's where the switch
is set so the switch we are born with the switch we are born with the principle that languages
have adjectives if we put the switch up here then it's flipped on this side for languages which
are pre-nominal like english or if the child learns spanish then the child will flick the switch
this way which is post nominal so here we have nature and nurture working together so
nature gives you the switch and nurture determines if the switch is here or here okay so as it
says here the switch is innate the setting of the switch whether it's pre-nominal or
post-nominal comes from the environment and that's something that i've observed with my
daughters and my daughters have a mexican mother and me as their father obviously and
sometimes they get confused they will say something like the car read because they were
thinking in spanish and sometimes they'll say wrong in spanish they'll say things like el rojo
okay so um in this case uh this this theory of language acquisition takes into account nature
and nurture okay let's have a look at one more example so is your language pro drop or
non-pro drop what does that mean well if we say nosotros comes could we drop the pronoun
could we just say and the answer is yes yeah you could just say comment because you
know from commemos that it means nosotros it couldn't mean eus it couldn't mean yo it
couldn't mean do when you say comment it means okay however let's think about english if
we just said eat fish we can't just say eat fish to mean we eat fish yeah so in that case what
we can find is that spanish is a pro drop language because it allows for the pronoun to be
dropped and english is a non-pro drop language because it doesn't allow for the um pronoun
to be dropped okay so let's talk about some switches then so let's say we've what we are
born with what's innate is the switch of a language will have pronouns okay so that that's
probably a language universal um i don't know of any language which doesn't have any
pronouns at all so then the question is okay so we have pronouns that's a language
universal it's an aspect of universal grammar okay but are those um are those pronouns able
to be dropped or not and well that will depend on the language of your environment so if
you're learning spanish you will learn that yes pronouns can be dropped but if you're
acquiring english as a child you will learn from your environment that pronouns cannot be
dropped okay some exceptions think about these two in english attorney general and notary
public in these cases we have what we call a uh post nominal adjective here's the adjective
here's the adjective here's the noun here's the noun but these are very kind of few and far
between this is not very common um and then when we think about spanish it's not the case
that all adjectives always go out and think about mino yeah so again i mean it's not the case
that it's always the case that every single adjective um goes uh after the noun in spanish we
can see from these two cases that it's not true but i'm sure you'd agree that in you know
more than 90 of cases um adjectives in spanish are um post-nominal and in english 90 of
adjectives are probably um pre-nominal okay if not more okay what about this one then can
english be pro-drop um what did you do after that went home and in that case we were able
to drop the pronoun because it was kind of obvious that it should be i went home and
sometimes we must include the pronoun in spanish for example comments right so um or for
example nosotros i'm sorry um i think that i'm gonna blame the computer for this that's a
case where it can be either um present um or it can be passed okay and that in the world of
morphology is called syncretism okay and so in cases of syncretism it's best not to um avoid
uh dropping the pronoun so in this case common siemens that could refer to aeo so it could
refer to us because of this syncretism synchronism of common uh-huh um so in that case we
could say that english can sometimes be pro-drop but 99 of the time it's not pro drop and in
there are some cases where it's best not to be um non-pro drop um it's best to be non-pro
drop in spanish just to be clear but again this is not the way english normally works and this
is not the way spanish normally works so i hope this information was useful guys