Talk:Universal grammar
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[edit] Initial discussion
First proposed by Noam Chomsky, Universal Grammar is that part of language that can be considered to be innate. As children develop they go through a stage of language acquisition which occurs much more rapidly than for most other mental abilities. This, along with many structural similarities between languages, suggests that there is a part of the human brain pre-wired through evolution allowing us to quickly assimilate and recognize linguistic patterns.
For example, the use of certain types of verbs implies a fixed set of possible nouns. "Come" for example implies one associated noun, a subject. In English we say "John is coming", in French "Jean vient". "Send" implies two associated nouns, a subject and an object. "John is sending a letter" in English. Or "Jan posla dopis" in Czech. "Give" on the other hand implies three nouns; a subject, direct object and indirect object, in this case the recipient. In English: "John is giving the letter to Mary". In French: "Jean donne la lettre à Marie". While what makes languages unique is the inability of non-speakers to understand phrases, phrases and sentences governed by verbs show similar patterns through all languages, as illustrated by the previous sentences. This similarity suggests that while sound and word patterns are specifically unique for any given language, there remains certain aspects of the underlying structure which is universal to all languages.
Universal Grammar covers the search for these common linguistic reflexes, and research into the mechanisms at work within the brain that make language acquisition possible.
[edit] Article cleanup
There was considerable redundancy and verbal fat in this article. Expressions like underlying principles, shared in common, that there exists and all human beings are all good examples of verbal excess.--NathanHawking 00:34, 2004 Oct 14 (UTC)
It seems to me that the parenthetical aside in last sentence in the main entry is confusing: "Proponents of UG argue that their theories make extremely strong predictions of this kind (often too strong, failing to allow for grammatical phenomena which are in fact observed)."
Why would proponents argue that their theories are too strong? Isn't the parenthetical comment meant to say something like..."while opponents say that such predictions are often too strong...etc."? Or am I misreading the sentence? --User:Jeffmatt
- I've removed it. This point cannot be dealt with in a sentence. It needs proper discussion, with examples and references. dab (ᛏ) 17:43, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] What does this mean?
- The idea that universal grammar is supported by the creole languages is the fact that such languages all share certain features.
Should this be something like "...comes from the fact..."? Loganberry (Talk) 00:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Eurocentric
The theory is also criticized because Chomsky makes too much of the similarity of a small group of languages (English, French, German, maybe some others - haven't read Chomsky lately, so I don't remember which), narrowing the subject matter so that one could hardly fail to find underlying forms. Truly universal grammar would include every actually existing language and any language that could exist (making it rather tough to falsify his theory, of course). 72.144.92.159 22:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- I'd love a citation for that for the article. CRGreathouse (t | c) 23:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Erm...
I shan't edit the article because, frankly, this is a question. The poverty of stimulus argument seems rather out of whack. Sure, a child will not hear grammatical constructs unacceptable in the local language, but what of it? Having had experience with three year olds, they often produce themselves horribly incomprehensible (to anyone but their parents) grammatical nightmares. When they use them, adults tell them that what they have said makes no sense. That's not poverty of stimulus, that's an abundance of it.
In other words, while children may not hear unacceptable grammar very often, they can very easily come to understand what is and is not acceptable by experimentation.
As it currently reads, the argument in the article can be refuted by the very fact that children are not mute.
Either the article needs to do a better job of explaining the theory, or the theory is simply useless. I am more inclined towards the former. In either regard, I am not comptetent to fix the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.113.219.44 (talk) 06:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC).
