The Acquisition of Preposition Stranding

1987 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Hildebrand
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
Innate Knowledge ◽  
Acquisition Task ◽  
Linguistic Input

This study examines the acquisition of a familiar and widely studied syntactic phenomenon, preposition stranding, within the framework of transformational generative grammar. According to Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar (UG), children begin the acquisition task with an innate knowledge of universal principles of grammar. Many of these principles have open parameters with marked and unmarked options which must be set by children on the basis of their linguistic input. The marked setting entails the unmarked setting in that if a language allows the marked structures it will also allow the relevant unmarked structures, but the reverse is not necessarily true.

Generative coda

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-430
Author(s):  
ELLY VAN GELDEREN
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Innate Knowledge

Generative grammar has its beginnings in the late 1950s with the work of Noam Chomsky and emphasizes innate linguistic knowledge, or Universal Grammar. Children use their innate knowledge and, on the basis of the language they hear spoken, also known as the E(xternalized)-Language, come up with a grammar, also known as the I(nternalized)-Language (see Chomsky 1986: 19–24). Generative grammar focuses on the ability of native speakers to speak and understand grammatical sentences.

Universal Grammar, crosslinguistic variation and second language acquisition

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia White
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Linguistic Input ◽  
Constrained Variation ◽  
Crosslinguistic Variation

According to generative linguistic theory, certain principles underlying language structure are innately given, accounting for how children are able to acquire their mother tongues (L1s) despite a mismatch between the linguistic input and the complex unconscious mental representation of language that children achieve. This innate structure is referred to as Universal Grammar (UG); it includes universal principles, as well as parameters which allow for constrained variation across languages.

scholarly journals The Linguistic Philosophy of Noam Chomsky

2014 ◽  
pp. 103-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Binoy Barman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Noam Chomsky ◽  
Human Child ◽  
Mental Exercise ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy

Noam Chomsky, one of the most famous linguists of the twentieth century, based his linguistic works on certain philosophical doctrines. His main contribution to linguistics is Transformational Generative Grammar, which is founded on mentalist philosophy. He opposes the behaviourist psychology in favour of innatism for explaining the acquisition of language. He claims that it becomes possible for human child to learn a language for the linguistic faculty with which the child is born, and that the use of language for an adult is mostly a mental exercise. His ideas brought about a revolution in linguistics, dubbed as Chomskyan Revolution. According to him, the part of language which is innate to human being would be called Universal Grammar. His philosophy holds a strong propensity to rationalism in search of a cognitive foundation. His theory is a continuation of analytic philosophy, which puts language in the centre of philosophical investigation. He would also be identified as an essentialist. This paper considers various aspects of Chomsky’s linguistic philosophy with necessary elaborations.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/pp.v51i1-2.17681

The acquisition of preposition stranding by second language learners and parametric variation

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul van Buren ◽  
Michael Sharwood Smith
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Target System ◽  
Binding Theory ◽  
Pilot Studies ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
Government Binding

This paper discusses the application of Government Binding Theory to second language acquisition in the context of a project which is looking into the acquisition of preposition stranding in English and Dutch. The bulk of the discussion focuses on the theoretical problems involved. Firstly, the potential value of Government Binding Theory in principle is considered both in terms of the formulation of linguistic questions per se and also in terms of more specifically acquisitional questions having to do with the speed and order of acquisition. Secondly, some results in the pilot studies conducted so far in Utrecht are examined with respect to the theoretical usefulness of the framework adopted. The potential of the framework to generate sophisticated linguistic research questions is found to be undeniable. The acquisitional aspects need to be elaborated and adapted to cope with the special features of second, as opposed to first, language acquisition. This involves an elaboration of scenarios to be investigated: one in which the learner's initial assumption is that the unmarked setting of a given parameter of Universal Grammar holds for the target system, one in which the settings of parameters shared by the target and native systems are assumed to be identical, the second being a 'cross linguistic' scenario. These possibilities are considered in the light of the nature of evidence derived from the input and in the light of a set of possible learning strategies derived from the scenarios. The scenarios, the types of evidence and the strategies are spelled out in terms of the specific problem of preposition stranding in Universal Grammar, in Dutch and in English.

Buzzsaws and blueprints: Commentary

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 734-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
HELEN GOODLUCK
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Language Abilities ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Innate Knowledge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Strong Emergentism ◽  
Auxiliary Verb

The review article by Sabbagh & Gelman (S & G) on The emergence of language (EL) mentions several criticisms of strong emergentism, the view that language emerges through an interaction between domain-general learning mechanisms and the environment, without crediting the organism with innate knowledge of domain-specific rules, a view that successful connectionist modelling is taken to support. One criticism of this view and the support for it that connectionist modelling putatively provides has been made frequently, and is noted by S & G: it is arguable that connectionist simulations work only because the input to the network in effect contains a representation of the knowledge that the net seeks to acquire. I think it is worth adding to this another criticism that to my mind is a fundamental one, but which has not featured so strongly in critiques of connectionism. A primary goal of modern linguistics has been to account not merely for what patterns we do see in human languages, but for those that we do not. The concept of Universal Grammar is precisely a set of limitations on what constitutes a possible human language. The kind of example used in teaching Linguistics 101 is the fact that patterns of grammaticality are structurally, not linearly, determined: in English we form a yes–no question by inverting the subject NP and auxiliary verb, not by inverting the first and second words of the equivalent declarative sentence, or the first and fifth words, or any number of conceivable non-structural operations. Could a connectionist mechanism learn such non-structural operations? Perhaps I have asked the wrong people, but when I have queried researchers doing connectionist modelling, the answer appears to be ‘yes’. If that's the case, then connectionist mechanisms as currently developed do not constitute an explanatory model of human language abilities: they are too powerful.

Andrés Bello

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-348
Author(s):  
Enrique Obediente ◽  
Francesco D’Introno
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Symbolic System ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Independent System ◽  
Philosophical Position ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Andres Bello

Summary In this article we will analyze two aspects of Andrés Bello’s (1781–1865) grammatical thought: its relation to the English empiricists and its similarity with generative grammar. His relation to the English empiricists is due to the fact that Bello spent 19 years in London, where he became familiar with the work of Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid. In fact his philosophical work, Filosofía del entendimiento, sounds like some of those philosophers’ essays. From the empiricists Bello derives the idea that there is no innate universal grammar with rules present in all languages, as well as his concept of language as an independent system of arbitrary and conventional signs. From Reid he derived his interpretation of the evolution of the language: signs start as ‘natural’ (i.e., they allow humans to communicate without any particular language), and then they become ‘artificial’, i.e., arbitrary and conventional, particular to each grammatical system. Because of his philosophical position, Bello has been compared to structuralist linguists. Here we will show that some of Bello’s grammatical thoughts can be compared with those of Chomsky. The reason for this is that in his grammatical analysis Bello uses concepts reminiscent of generative grammar. For example, Bello proposes the notion of an ‘latent proposition’ similar to that of ‘deep sttaicture’. And when he analyzes for example relative clauses and elliptical constructions, he uses concepts that are familiar to generative grammarians. In other words, the paper tries to show that methodologically and analytically Bello shares some concepts present in Chomsky’s linguistic theory. It also shows differences between Bello and Chomsky, and concludes by pointing out that the major difference between the two linguists is that Bello assumes language can be learned through a symbolic system, while Chomsky assumes language to be innate and independent of other cognitive systemsof the mind.

scholarly journals Chomsky's Contribution to Linguistics: A Review

2018 ◽  
Vol I (I) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Sonia Touqir ◽  
Amna Mushtaq ◽  
Touqir Nasir
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Principles And Parameters

This review seeks to highlight Chomsky's major contributions to the field of linguistics. He changed linguists' conception about the nature of language from an externalized to internalized approach. This shift also resulted in the language being thought of as a cognitive phenomenon rather than as a set of structures to be analyzed for their correctness or incorrectness to prove his stance introduced the concept of language faculty, its workings, Universal Grammar, Principles and Parameters, and Transformational and Generative Grammar. The TGG also significantly overhauled the existent phrase structure rules. These rules were brought to follow binarity principles that dictated that a node cannot have less than or more than two branches. Besides the concept of Universal Grammar, along with its principles and parameters, Chomsky simplified how the language acquisition process can be understood: instead of learning hundreds of rules, the human mind has to install a handful of principles and parameters.

scholarly journals Generative Syntax

Linguistics ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Tarald Taraldsen
Keyword(s):  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Generative Grammar ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Standard Theory ◽  
Recursive Structure ◽  
Phrase Structure Grammar ◽  
Core System ◽  
Form Complex ◽  
Generative Syntax ◽  
Early 21St Century

Generative syntax is a major subfield of generative grammar, an outgrowth of American structuralism in its insistence on rigorous formal modeling of linguistic patterns. Generative syntax breaks with the structuralist tradition by attaching no significance to discovery procedures and by not seeing accurate description of individual languages as the ultimate goal of linguistics. Rather, the goal is to extract cross-linguistic commonalities in order to characterize a core system of grammar shared by all natural languages. This core system, called Universal Grammar, is seen as a system of primitives and principles that determine how these primitives can be put together to form complex linguistic structures by recursive structure-building operations that will construct an infinite set of sentences and characterize the relations between them. The most interesting and controversial feature of generative grammar lies on the conceptual side. By seeing Universal Grammar as rooted in an innate language faculty specific to humans, generative grammar places the study of language within the cognitive sciences. Since its inception in the 1950s, the generative theory of syntax has spawned a number of approaches that differ from one another with respect to many theoretical assumptions but still seem to agree that natural language syntax is rooted in a species-specific cognitive capacity dedicated to language. These various theoretical developments can be grouped into two major categories for expository purposes. On the one hand, lexical-functional grammar (LFG) and head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) develop architectures sufficiently different from that of Chomskyan generative syntax to be regarded as distinct branches of the generative enterprise. On the other hand, five different stages can be identified within the line of development that has continued to be informed by Noam Chomsky’s own work: early generative syntax, 1957–1965; the aspects theory (also known as the standard theory), 1965–1973; the (revised) extended standard theory, roughly 1973–1981; government and binding theory, 1981–1993; and minimalism, 1993 onward, which must in the early 21st century be regarded as the mainstream paradigm. The research questions that arise concern both the internal organization of the syntactic component (levels of representation) and the interaction between syntax and other components of grammar, such as morphology, phonology, and semantics. These questions are intimately linked to the effort to isolate the essential properties of syntactic structures and of the syntactic operations and the general principles that govern their application.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document