The UG Paradox of Native and Foreign Language Acquisition

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the two issues: the properties of the language acquisition device, an biological organ related to the human language and Plato’s and Orwell’s problems, which are well known as the problems of language acquisition. The nature of human language, that is, creativity and arbitrariness, are also discussed based on the theory of generative grammar. It is argued that the working principle of the algorithm of the language acquisition device enables the chemical combination of essential elements of language, which leads to the creativity and arbitrariness of language. Plato s problem related to the native language acquisition is accounted for by the maturation of the biological language organ and by the substantial minimalism and derivational minimalism. For Orwell s problem related to foreign language acquisition, I tried to find the answer in Chomsky’s(1981) principles and parameters theory. Although all languages are composed by the same principle, the differential characteristics of each language comes from its parameters. The greater differences of parameters between the native language and the foreign language lead to the greater difficulties experienced by foreign language learners. Therefore, in the case of learning a foreign language which has different parameters from the native language, I argue that starting the foreign language learning early is more effective in reducing the difficulty of learning the language.