Universal Grammar

and Language Acquisition

 Language Combination of written words and

spoken sounds along with rules to define how to
use those words and sounds.
Two kinds of languages :
a) Natural languages
-human language, used by people to express
thought or ideas
- eg : English, Chinese, Spanish, Germany
b) Artificial languages
-machine languages, consist of symbols and a set
of rules

Language definition: (by H. Douglas

Brown)
Language is systematic
Language is a set of arbitrary symbol
(can be either vocal or visual)
Language is used for communication
within a community or culture
Language is essentially for human,
although possibly not limited to humans
Language and language learning have
universal characteristics.

 First Language Acquisition (FLA) Acquired

during childhood
Second Language Acquisition (SLA)
Acquired after FLA
According to Hawkins (2001) :
FLA
Acquired along with
the development of
cognitive abilities.

SLA

The native tongue is

already present and can
be used fluently.
The functioning of the
mind has maturely
developed.

Different Theories of First Language

Acquisition
Behaviourism (B.F. Skinner,
1957)

Nativism (Noam Chomsky,

1959)

Human infants are born with blank Human language capacity is

sheets in their mind.
genetically ingrained in our
species.
People first received linguistics
stimuli from their surrounding.

Human are born with a language

acquisition device (LAD)

They acquire the language mostly

through imitations.

LAD triggers learners to acquire

the language.

Reinforcements are used to

conditioned learners to acquire
the language.

Children use their internal

inherent ability to generate their
language output.

Justification
Behaviourists believe in drilling
while nativists believe in embracing
and thus, these explained the
process of nature versus nurture.
Agnes and Herald (2001)

Universal Grammar
Concept of Language Acquisition
Device (LAD)
There was a set of common
grammatical rules encoded
genetically into our minds, and
therefore shared by all
languages - White, L.
It does not mean that children are born

Chomsky
Proposed a framework of principals and parameters.
Parameters: A finite set of variables diverged across
languages.
Parameters: Different rules, the structure of the
sentences in all languages are different (Larry, 1979)

Eg: A principle says all sentences in all languages have

subject.
Pro drop: subject matter, which determines that the
subject of a sentence should be obviously present or not

Example: English and Chinese

The brave man strangled that tiger
The object: That tiger
For both languages, words that have semantic meaning
requires the object to be present in the sentences
Thus, a sentence using the word strangle without a
compulsory object, violating the projection principle, is
not properly formed.
To make the sentence meaningful and grammatical

The girl I met is a college student

Noun phrase (NP) : The girl I met
The head of NP: The girl
Modifier: I met
Thus, in English, the head should be placed
before its modifier. English does not
have:
I met the girl is a college student

Differ to Chinese
The girl I met is a college student
Translated to Chinese, it became:
I met is that girl is a college
student.
Chinese rule:
Head be at the end of the noun
phrase, which is opposite to English.

English and Malay

In English
Cute and beautiful girl
Adjectives come first, followed by the
subject.
In Malay:
Perempuan comel dan cantik.
The subject come first, followed by the
adjectives.

Universal Grammar and

Second Language Acquistion

UG ARGUMENTS
1. Poverty of the stimulus
Children hear only a finite number of sentences.
They are able to abstract the rules and
principles of the language.
They Produce a infinite number of possible
sentences without any formal training.
Ungrammatical input Grammatical acceptable
output

2.Constraints and principles cannot be learned.

Children are very young when acquiring L1.
They do not have the cognitive ability to understand the principles
of grammar as a system.
Because of innate capacity they are capable of producing correct
grammar.
3. Patterns of development are universal
Children learn the various aspects of a language in a very similar
order.

Brown (1973)
There is a very specific order of MORPHEME acquisition.
1. Present Progressive -ing
Eg: Daddy jumping
2. Plural s
Eg: Many books
3. Irregular past forms
Eg: I run I ran
The sequence is quite fixed. All children learn in the same in order, but not
in rate. But some take longer than others