Universal Grammar Principles Research Articles

Language transfer: a useful or pernicious concept?

Westergaard’s microcue account raises the question of the exact nature of language transfer in the acquisition of languages as well of how L1/Ln input interacts with the principles of universal grammar (UG) during processing. In order to consider in more detail the actual representation building, processing mechanisms that would be involved, her approach will be spelled out in terms of the Modular Cognition Framework (see Sharwood Smith, 2017; Sharwood Smith and Truscott, 2014; Truscott and Sharwood Smith, 2004, 2019). As well as identifying the way in which microcues would be constructed, this analysis in particular will have the effect of undermining the concept underlying the transfer metaphor as a way of characterizing crosslinguistic influence.

THE UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR APPROACH

This paper describes what Universal Grammar (UG) is, the universal of UG (parameters and principles, marked and unmarked, core and peripheral), UG and L2 Acquisition, Access to UG and L2 Acquisition, the strength and weakness of UG

Об обосновании принципов освоения иностранного языка

This paper discusses the different views on the availability of UG principles in language acquisition of adult second language learners, and summarizes some of the evidence for or against each position. One important issue in current language acquisition research is whether the acquisition of a second language is fundamentally different from that of the first language. Researchers approaching second language acquisition (SLA) from the linguistic perspective often relate this issue to the availability of Universal Grammar to second language acquisition. Universal Grammar (UG) refers to a grammar which is genetically endowed to all human beings and which all languages have in common.

Emergent knowledge of a universal phonological principle in the L2 acquisition of vowel harmony in Turkish: A ‘four’-fold poverty of the stimulus in L2 acquisition

A significant body of theoretically motivated research has addressed the role of Universal Grammar (UG) in the nonnative acquisition of morphosyntax and properties of the syntax–semantics interface, but very little research has addressed the role of phonological principles of UG in nonnative language acquisition. Turkish has a regular and pervasive system of vowel harmony for which classroom second language (L2) learners receive explicit instruction and abundant input; however, there are also cases of non-canonical vowel harmony in Turkish, for which classroom learners receive no instruction and rather little input. In this study, we show that English–Turkish L2ers come to exhibit sensitivity to the ‘No Crossing Constraint’ of UG (Goldsmith, 1976; Hammond, 1988) when calculating non-canonical vowel harmony in the context of underlyingly pre-specified non-velarized laterals (i.e. ‘light’ [l]), despite the poverty of the stimulus and potentially misleading effects of classroom instruction and standard Turkish orthography. We argue that this supports the view that nonnative phonological development is guided by (at least one principle of) UG.

Linguistics: The Garden and the Bush

Linguistics: The Garden and the Bush

Constraints on have-cliticisation and accessibility of Universal Grammar in native speakers and foreign language learners

The cliticisation of have onto a preceding word has been argued to be constrained by principles of Universal Grammar. In particular, have-cliticisation appears to be blocked when an empty T constituent that follows from Universal Grammar intervenes between have and its host provided that the host c-commands have and that the host ends with a vowel or diphthong. The study investigated knowledge of these constraints in (31) adult native speakers of American English and (162) adult Jordanian learners of English as a foreign language. The results of a grammaticality judgment test showed that both the group of native speakers and the group of foreign language learners exhibited differentiating patterns of response to sentences with licit and illicit have-cliticisation suggesting that their production of have-cliticisation is constrained by Universal Grammar. However, both groups showed imperfect knowledge of the constraints on have-cliticisation especially on the part of foreign language learners. This imperfect knowledge is argued to be the result of a concealing effect of performance factors.

Commentary: Cultural recycling of neural substrates during language evolution and development.

Commentary: Cultural recycling of neural substrates during language evolution and development.

A Minimalist Approach to Collocation Acquisition: Integrating Syntax and Semantics

How language, be it first (L1) or second (L2), is acquired has been the concern of much research and investigation, and perhaps no other phenomenon has witnessed such interest (Shormani, 2014b). One such area within language acquisition is collocability and how it presents a difficult aspect to L2 acquirers. This is so due to the fact that collocability involves formulaic language the mastering of which has been considered specific to native speakers of the language being learned. Thus, in this article, I propose a minimalist approach based on integrating syntax and semantics. The former concerns combining (collocating) two lexical items by means of Select and Merge operations, and the latter concerns what goes with what in a collocation based on feature specifications encoded on each lexis (i.e. word). My proposal is based on substantial evidence proving the availability of syntax and semantics in collocability, hence, abstracting from usage-based approaches. Thus, each collocation produced by Select and Merge (syntax) has to pass the semantic constraints manifested in the Collocating Feature Specification Rule (=CFSR). However, if this produced collocation fails to pass CFSR, it has to undergo acquisition once more in which parameters are reset and retri ggered through acquisition reorientation. The proposal places much emphasis on mental properties of Universal Grammar (UG), and the same is true concerning L2 acquisition settings in relation to providing L2 acquirers with equal linguistic input native s peakers have. The minimalist approach developed in this article stems from the fact that minimalism is seen as a theory, primarily concerned with language acquisition in its two spheres (i.e. L1 and L2). As far as L1 acquisition is concerned, minimalism sees it as acquiring only feature specifications manifested in parameters. L2 acquisition, however, is seen by minimalism, as merely acquiring features, peculiar to L2 being learned, which are different from and/or similar to those of the acquirer's L1, wher e the learner's only task is to reset and retrigger the UG parameters specific to L2, simply because UG principles are universal. Hence, our major task as linguists, language educators and teachers alike is how to make use of and benefit from the minimalist assumptions and hypotheses concerned with language acquisition in general, and those concerned with collocability in particular.

Access to Universal Grammar in Adult Second Language Acquisition

This paper discusses the different views on the availability of UG principles in language acquisition of adult second language learners, and summarizes some of the evidence for or against each position. One important issue in current language acquisition research is whether the acquisition of a second language is fundamentally different from that of the first language. Researchers approaching second language acquisition (SLA) from the linguistic perspective often relate this issue to the availability of Universal Grammar to second language acquisition. Universal Grammar (UG) refers to a grammar which is genetically endowed to all human beings and which all languages have in common.

Transfer from LI to L2: A study of parameter values in the Afrikaans of a child L2 learner

Linguistics is concerned with explaining what natural languages are, what it is about human beings that makes them know a language, and how they are able to acquire and use their specific linguistic abilities (Webelhuth 1995:3). In answering these questions, Chomsky developed the concept Universal Grammar (UG). UG is the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages...the essence ofhuman (Chomsky 1976:29). The central claim of Chomsky's theory is that children are bom equipped with knowledge of the principles that apply to all languages. These universal principles are associated with sets of variable options known as 'parameters'. The settings, or values, of the parameters can vary from one language to another (Cook & Newson 1996:2). When acquiring a language, a child needs to learn only which parameter value to select for each principle of UG. In short, language knowledge can be described as knowing the principles of UG and knowing which parameter settings are appropriate for the language in question.

On the Galilean style of linguistic inquiry

The Specified Subject Condition (henceforth SSC) and the Tensed SCondit~ on (henceforth TSC) were proposed in the early seventies by Chomsky as principles of universal grammar, restricting the application of both syntactic movement transformations and rules of semantic interpretation. An early informal reference to these conditions can be found in (Chomsky 1971:34-40). The first detailed technical discussion of the SSC and TSC appeared in "Conditions on transformations" (henceforth (Chomsky 1973)). Since the publication of the latter work, these two conditions have played a fundamental role in the theory of universal grammar (henceforth UG) within the Chomskyan approach to the study of language. The developmental history of these two conditions in fact provides us with helpful insight into important aspects of both the substantive and the methodological developments which Chomsky's general linguistic theory has undergone within The time has come for psychologists and linguists to adopt "the Galilean style" of inquiry in the study both of mind in general and of language in particular. Such is the position more than once argued for by Chomsky in recent writings. On the face of it, "the Galilean style" ~s a new mode of ~nqu~ry ~n theoretical linguistcs; the overall aim of this essay ~s to see how this apparent novelty holds up under methodological analysis. Before turning to a number of specific questions about "the Galilean style", however, it will be in order to take a brief look at the main components of Chomsky's argument for the adoption of this mode of inquiry the past decade.

The Development of the specified subject conditions and the tensed s-condition / propostional islan condition

The Specified Subject Condition (henceforth SSC) and the Tensed SCondit~ on (henceforth TSC) were proposed in the early seventies by Chomsky as principles of universal grammar, restricting the application of both syntactic movement and rules of semantic interpretation. An early informal reference to these conditions can be found in (Chomsky 1971:34-40). The first detailed technical discussion of the SSC and TSC appeared in Conditions on transformations (henceforth (Chomsky 1973)). Since the publication of the latter work, these two conditions have played a fundamental role in the theory of universal grammar (henceforth UG) within the Chomskyan approach to the study of language. The developmental history of these two conditions in fact provides us with helpful insight into important aspects of both the substantive and the methodological developments which Chomsky's general linguistic theory has undergone within the past decade.

Second-language Instinct and Instruction Effects: Nature and Nurture in Second-language Acquisition

Adults seem to have greater difficulties than children in acquiring a second language (L2) because of the alleged "window of opportunity" around puberty. Postpuberty Japanese participants learned a new English rule with simplex sentences during one month of instruction, and then they were tested on "uninstructed complex sentences" as well as "instructed simplex sentences." The behavioral data show that they can acquire more knowledge than is instructed, suggesting the interweaving of nature (universal principles of grammar, UG) and nurture (instruction) in L2 acquisition. The comparison in the "uninstructed complex sentences" between post-instruction and pre-instruction using functional magnetic resonance imaging reveals a significant activation in Broca's area. Thus, this study provides new insight into Broca's area, where nature and nurture cooperate to produce L2 learners' rich linguistic knowledge. It also shows neural plasticity of adult L2 acquisition, arguing against a critical period hypothesis, at least in the domain of UG.

The poverty of the Mayan stimulus

Poverty of the stimulus (POS) arguments have instigated considerable debate in the recent linguistics literature. This article uses the comparative method to challenge the logic of POS arguments. Rather than question the premises of POS arguments, the article demonstrates how POS arguments for individual languages lead to a reductio ad absurdum as POS arguments from genetically related languages are compared. Comparison leads to different contradictions for poverty of the negative stimulus (PONS) and poverty of the positive stimulus (POPS) arguments. Comparing PONS arguments leads to the conclusion that Universal Grammar contains language-specific versions of linguistic rules. Comparing POPS arguments leads to the conclusion that Universal Grammar may supply knowledge that is ungrammatical in the target language. The reductio shows that universal principles of grammar cannot be established on the basis of POS arguments from a single language.

Natural and Unnatural Constraints in Hungarian Vowel Harmony

Abstract: Phonological constraints can, in principle, be classified according to whether they are natural (founded in principles of universal grammar (UG)) or unnatural (arbitrary, learned inductively from the language data). Recent work has used this distinction as the basis for arguments about the role of UG in learning. Some languages have phonological patterns that arguably reflect unnatural constraints. With experimental testing, one can assess whether such patterns are actually learned by native speakers. Becker, Ketrez, and Nevins (2007), testing speakers of Turkish, suggest that they do indeed go unlearned. They interpret this result with a strong UG position: humans are unable to learn data patterns not backed by UG principles. This article pursues the same research line, locating similarly unnatural data patterns in the vowel harmony system of Hungarian, such as the tendency (among certain stem types) for a final bilabial stop to favor front harmony. Our own test leads to the opposite conclusion of Becker and colleagues’: Hungarians evidently do learn the unnatural patterns. To conclude we consider a bias account—that speakers are able to learn unnatural environments, but devalue them relative to natural ones. We outline a method for testing the strength of constraints as learned by speakers against the strength of the corresponding patterns in the lexicon, and show that it offers tentative support for the hypothesis that unnatural constraints are disfavored by language learners.

The Interpretability Hypothesis: evidence from wh-interrogatives in second language acquisition

The second language acquisition (SLA) literature reports numerous studies of proficient second language (L2) speakers who diverge significantly from native speakers despite the evidence offered by the L2 input. Recent SLA theories have attempted to account for native speaker/non-native speaker (NS/NNS) divergence by arguing for the dissociation between syntactic knowledge and morpho(pho)nology. In particular, Lardiere (1998), Prévost and White (2000), and Goad and White (2004) claim that highly proficient learners have knowledge of the abstract syntactic properties of the language but occasionally fail to associate them with the correct morphological or phonological forms. On the other hand, theories that support partial availability of Universal Grammar (UG) (Tsimpli and Roussou 1991; Hawkins and Chan, 1997) argue for a problem in the syntax: while UG principles and operations are available in SLA, the formal features of the target language that are not instantiated in the L1 or have a different setting, cause learnability problems. This article discusses acquisitional data in the light of the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli and Mastropavlou, 2007), which is a reformulation of the SLA theory suggested by Tsimpli and Roussou (1991) in minimalist terms. It is argued that a minimalist approach to SLA can be implemented to specify the status of the features that are least accessible to re-setting in the SLA process, given (1) constraints on their learnability and (2), their setting in the L1 grammar. The phenomenon discussed concerns the use of the resumptive strategy in wh- subject and object extraction by intermediate and advanced Greek learners of English. It is proposed that the acceptability rate of pronouns in the extraction site is conditioned by the Logical Form (LF) interpretability of the features involved in the derivation. Hence, the interpretable features of animacy and discourse-linking are hypothesized to be involved in the analysis of English pronouns by Greek L2 learners, while the first language (L1) specification of resumptive pronouns as clusters of uninterpretable Case and Agreement features resists resetting.

Who is where: Deriving right edge WH phrases in Ikalanga WH constructions

Earlier literature on Bantu languages claimed that interrogative WH constructions in Bantu languages involve no WH movement (see Bokamba, 1976; Kimenyi, 1980). Using data from Ikalanga (an understudied Bantu language spoken in Botswana), this paper challenges this view and argues that although this language has WH in situ, WH constructions with left edge and right edge WH phrases prefixed with ndi- involve movement. Three island tests (the NP island test, the WH island test and the Adjunct island test) are used as movement diagnostics. Further evidence that WH phrases prefixed with ndi- involve movement comes from morphological facts. Once it is established that these WH constructions involve movement, the seemingly unusual position occupied by right edge WH phrases (including subject WH phrases) is explained in a principled and straight forward way; that is, Ikalanga is (at least partially) a discourse configurational language and thus the discourse properties of the language induce movement of a remnant TopP to a high position stranding the WH phrase. This discovery situates Ikalanga in the same language typology as languages like Hungarian, for example. The analysis adopted in this paper lends support to the much discussed remnant movement analysis (see among others Müller, 1998; Epstein, 2001; Mahajan, 1997, 2000; Culicover and Rochement, 1997), showing that remnant movement is a phenomenon permitted by universal principles of grammar.

THE ACQUISITION OF SPANISH: MORPHOSYNTACTIC DEVELOPMENT IN MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL L1 ACQUISITION AND ADULT L2 ACQUISITION

THE ACQUISITION OF SPANISH: MORPHOSYNTACTIC DEVELOPMENT IN MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL L1 ACQUISITION AND ADULT L2 ACQUISITION. Silvina A. Montrul. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xvi + 413. $150.00 cloth, $49.95 paper.This book presents and analyzes the morphosyntactic development of Spanish in monolingual and bilingual first language (L1) acquisition and in adult SLA. Based on the principles and parameters model of generative grammar, the book addresses the nature of linguistic knowledge and examines the development of grammatical aspects such as morphology, syntax, and lexical semantics in monolingual, bilingual, and second language (L2) learners. The author argues that the underlying linguistic competence of L1 and L2 speakers is constrained by the nature of the language the learners entertain, as guided by principles of Universal Grammar. Throughout the book, the author considers different approaches concerning the nature and development of linguistic knowledge such as the continuity hypothesis—including both weak and strong versions—(Pinker, 1989), the maturation hypothesis (Radford, 1990), and the no continuity view. The author supports the continuity hypothesis by arguing that principles and parametric options continue to be available throughout the acquisition process in the monolingual, bilingual, and adult grammatical systems. In other words, the author argues that linguistic representation is fundamentally similar among the grammars of child L1, child bilingual, and adult L2 learners, and that all of these are similar to the adult target grammar.

Grammatical competence is not a psychologically valid construct

It is not unusual for developmental psychologists to become frustrated with the theory of universal grammar (UG), whose proponents have tended to dismiss most research on children's language production and comprehension as irrelevant to explaining how human languages are acquired. This is because children's actual linguistic behaviour is presumed to reflect factors besides their grammatical competence, rendering most methods of sampling linguistic behaviour unsuitable for evaluating UG theory. This means, in practice, that UG proponents do not view performance errors as evidence against their hypothesis that grammatical knowledge is largely innate. When children perform at ceiling on a given task, this is usually taken as proof of their adultlike grammatical competence, while poor performance is dismissed as due to research design flaws or limitations in information processing capacities (e.g. working memory). Crain & Thornton (1998) attempt to eliminate what they consider to be post hoc processing accounts of children's linguistic behaviour by arguing, counter to Chomsky (1965) and many others, that children and adults share identical language processing mechanisms, and that linguistic performance directly reflects grammatical competence. Therefore, if UG principles are available from an early age, child and adult performance should be the same when tasks are properly constructed to avoid extra-linguistic demand characteristics (excepting adult–child differences predicted by parameter-setting or maturational models). It should not be surprising then that some psycholinguists, such as Drozd (target article), would find C&T to be misguided with respect to these issues, because children's linguistic behaviour surely differs from adults' in seemingly unpredictable ways.

Deriving the similarities between Japanese and Italian: a case study in comparative syntax

This article explores a way of explaining rather surprising similarities between Japanese and Italian, in contradistinction with English. These similarities include (i) the presence of null subjects and quirky subjects, (ii) the absence of expletive elements, (iii) the existence of relatively free word order, (iv) the possibility of long-distance NP movement in restructuring constructions, and (v) the lack of so-called “subject condition effects” with respect to extraction. Capitalizing on the analysis of functional categories in terms of [±L(exical)] and [±F(unctional)] features [Huang, 1982, Logical Relations in Chinese and the Theory of Grammar. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, MA; Fukui, 1995, The principles-and-parameters approach: a comparative syntax of English and Japanese. In: Shibatani, M., Bynon, T. (Eds.), Approaches to Language Typology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 327], it is proposed that T in Japanese/Italian is specified as [+F, +L] (i.e., a functional category with lexical nature, which induces no feature checking), as opposed to T in English whose feature specification is [+F, −L] (i.e., a “pure” functional category inducing feature checking). It is then demonstrated that the proposed parameter, as it interacts with various principles of universal grammar, gives a unified account for the similarities between Japanese and Italian, while successfully distinguishing these two (types of) languages from English. The parameter also leads to an important modification of the Phase Impenetrability Condition [Chomsky, 2000. Minimalist inquiries: the framework. In: Martin, R., Michaels, D., Uriagereka, J. (Eds.), Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 89], thus opening up a refreshing way of looking at the differences, first noted by Rizzi [1982, Issues in Italian Syntax. Foris, Dordrecht], between English and Italian with respect to the wh-island constraint. Implications and advantages of the “tripartite” approach to comparative syntax are also discussed in detail.