Universal Grammar

Universal Grammar

Universal Grammar has been defined as an innate capacity available to all human beings. Chomsky,( 1976:29) defines UG as “the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages”

What is Universal Grammar?

Generative Grammar

"Generative grammarians believe that the human species evolved a genetically universal grammar common to all peoples and that the variability in modern languages is basically on the surface only," wrote Michael Tomasello..

Universal grammar

This “universal grammar theory” suggests that every language has some of the same laws. For example, every language has a way to ask a question or make something negative. In addition, every language has a way to identify gender or show that something happened in the past or present.

• Babies go through the same stages in Development, no matter which language they are learning. (babling, vocab acquisition)
• Infants master language way after than they should if they are a blank slate.
• Some mistakes are never made

Tom went to school today? Did Tom go to school today? Go to school Tom today?

THE ROLE OF UG IN SLA

There are two views: 1. The nature and availability in UG are the same in L1 and L2 acquisition. Adult L2 learners, like children, neither need nor benefit from error correction and metalinguistic information. These things change only the superficial appearance of language performance and do not affect the underlying competence of the new language.

THE ROLE OF UG IN SLA

There are two views: 2. UG may be present and available to L2 learners, but its exact nature has been altered by the prior acquisition of the first language. L2 learners need to be given some explicit information about what is not grammatical in the L2 . Otherwise, they may assume that some structures of the L1 have equivalents in the L2 when, in fact, they do not

The empirical evidence for the various positions that argue for some role for UG in the SLA process is mixed.

A study by Meisel (1997 cited in Mitchell & Myles, 2004) of the acquisition of negation in French and German by L1 and L2 learners concludes that the UG principle of structure-dependency is not available to L2 learners.

On the other hand, a study by Bley-Vroman, Felix, and Ioup (1988 cited in Ellis 1994) of Korean learners of English concluded Given the results, it is extremely difficult to maintain the hypothesis that Universal Grammar is accessible to adult learners.

White (1989 cited in White, 2003) reports on a study of Japanese learners of English who, despite having no knowledge of question formation involving complex subjects, successfully acquired this knowledge in English.White argues that the learners must have had access to the principle of structural dependence.

A study by Ritchie (1978, cited in Ellis, 1994) of Japanese students of English gave preliminary support to the assumption that linguistic universals are intact in the adult.

-Khomeijani , Mehrdad, Reza Ahghar (2014) Access to Universal Grammar in Adult Second Language Acquisition, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, Volume 136, Pages 298-301, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.332.McGarrity , L. [Laura McGarrity ]. (n,f,). Chomsky Universal Grammar [Video]. YouTube. -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfiHd6DyuTU

-Tomasello (2003) Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition." Harvard University Press

REFERENCES

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