THE LINGUISTICS OF SECOND

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

•
In the 1960s, linguist Noam Chomsky proposed a
revolutionary idea: We are all born with an innate
knowledge of grammar that serves as the basis for
all language acquisition. In other words, for humans,
language is a basic instinct. The theory, however,
has long been met with widespread criticism — until
now. A new study presents compelling evidence to
suggest Chomsky may have been right all along.
 INTRODUCTION

• Universal grammar is the theoretical or hypothetical

system of categories, operations, and principles
shared by all human languages and considered to
be innate. Since the 1980s, the term has often been
capitalized. The term is also known as Universal
Grammar Theory.
• Linguist Noam Chomsky explained, "'[U]niversal
grammar' is taken to be the set of properties,
conditions, or whatever that constitute the 'initial
state' of the language learner, hence the basis on
which knowledge of a language develops." ("Rules
and Representations." Columbia University Press,
1980)
 FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES

Approaches to SLA which are characterized as functional differ

in
emphasis and definition but share the following characteristics in
general opposition to those in the Chomsky an tradition:
• Focus is on the use of language in real situations (
performance ) as well as underlying knowledge
(competence). No sharp distinction is made between the two.
• Study of SLA begins with the assumption that the purpose of
language is communication, and that development of
linguistic knowledge (in L1 or L2) requires communicative use.
• Scope of concern goes beyond the sentence to include
discourse structure and how language is used in interaction,
and to include aspects of communication beyond language
(Tomlin 1990 ).
 Four of the functional approaches which have been influential
in SLA
are :
a. Systemic Linguistics has been developed by M. A. K.
Halliday, beginning in the late 1950s. This is a model for
analyzing language in terms of the interrelated systems of
choices that are available for expressing meaning.
b. Functional Typology is based on the comparative study of a
wide range of the world’s languages.
c. Function-to-form mapping
another functional approach which has been applied to the
description and analysis of interlanguage emphasizes
function-to-form mapping in the acquisitional sequence.
d. Information Organization refers to a functional approach
which focuses on utterance structure, or “the way in which
learners put their words together” (Klein and Perdue 1993:3).