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Avram Noam Chomsky

Universal Grammar

“I’m about as monolingual as you come, but nevertheless, I have a variety of different languages at my command, different styles, different ways of talking, which do involve different parameter settings.”

Avram Noam Chomsky

Linguist Philosopher Cognitive Scientist Historian

Social Critic

Political Activist

Biography

  • Born to Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City.

  • He studied at the University of Pennsylvania. During his postgraduate work in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Chomsky developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he earned his doctorate in 1955.

Early Years

  • He created or co-created the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program.

  • Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.
  • Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of linguistic behaviorism, and was particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.

Personal Beliefs

  • An outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, which he saw as an act of American imperialism, in 1967 Chomsky rose to national attention for his anti-war essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals". Becoming associated with the New Left, he was arrested multiple times for his activism and placed on President Richard Nixon's Enemies List.

  • His defense of unconditional freedom of speech, including that of Holocaust denial, generated significant controversy in the Faurisson affair of the 1980's.

  • Since retiring from active teaching at MIT, he has continued his vocal political activism, including opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and supporting the Occupy movement. Chomsky began teaching at the University of Arizona in 2017.
  • He is widely recognized as having helped to spark the cognitive revolution in the human sciences, contributing to the development of a new cognitivistic framework for the study of language and the mind.

  • In addition to his continued scholarship, he remains a leading critic of U.S. foreign policy, neo-liberalism and contemporary state capitalism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and mainstream news media.

  • Chomsky and his ideas are highly influential in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements.

What is Universal Grammar?

Universal Grammar (UG)

It is a second language acquisition theory based on Chomsky's linguistic theory of language universals and marked features. In learning a new language, students must reset the parameters of their L1 to achieve the features of the new language.

Language Universals

  • All human languages share certain properties.

  • Basic patterns or principles shared by all languages. For examples, all languages have verbs.

  • When applying the concept of language universal to second language acquisition, it is important to point out that the theory was originally based on first language acquisition. Since children, develop their first language without being "taught", a number of scholars have reservation about its applicability to second language teaching.

Marked/Unmarked

Markedness

  • Language features that are more consistent with language universal are referred to as unmarked while those that differ from the universal are called marked.

  • An inherent learning hierarchy which reflects the sequence in which constructions are acquired, the difficulty of acquiring certain constructions, and the transferability of rules across languages

Nativism

  • Innate language ability
  • The perspective that the human brain contains language universal which direct the acquisition of language. This position contrasts with the behavioral view that all aspects of language are learned through practice and reinforcement.

Nativism

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Language Acquisition Device

  • The human capacity for learning a first language. According to this view, all babies are with the same language universals hardwired in their babies. Scholars differ as to whether and to what extent the LAD is available to second language learners.

  • The main argument given in favor of the LAD was the argument from the poverty of the stimulus, which argues that unless children have significant innate knowledge of grammar, they would not be able to learn language as quickly as they do, given that they never have access to negative evidence and rarely receive direct instruction in their first language

Parameter (Re-) Setting

  • A child's brain selects the form of each universal feature (parameter) that corresponds to his or her L1 group. In the UG theory, second language learners reset their L1 parameters to those of the new language.

  • Resetting first language parameters to achieve the marked features of the target language is a highly debated and research topic.

Parameter (Re) Setting

Critical Period

  • The idea that babies are born with the ability to learn language but that their innate language learning ability either decreases or is lost at a certain point in human development.

Critical Period

Noam Chomsky on Language

Video

What do you think?

Agree/Disagree

Do you agree/disagree with Chomsky's theory?

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