Farah Dina

140203047
Second Language Acqusition
Universal Grammar (UG)
The Universal Grammar (UG) hypothesis—the idea that human languages, share some
fundamental similarities these are attributable to innate principles unique to language: that deep
down, there is only one human language (Chomsky, 2000a, p. 7)- is one of the theory that is
critically discussed by linguists, psychologist, philosophers and experts in cognitive study.
There is little agreement on what exactly is in it; and the empirical evidence for it is very weak.

This paper critically examines a variety of arguments that have been put forward as
evidence for UG, focussing on the three most powerful ones:
 universality : all human languages share a number of properties.

In Chomsky’s (2000a) , a generative, words,

“… in their essential properties and even down to fine detail, languages are cast to the same
mold. The Martian scientist might reasonably conclude that there is a single human
language, with differences only at the margins.” (p. 7)
However typologists like Evans and Levinson (2009) does not really agree to the statement.

One reason for the disagreement is that generative and functional linguists have a very
different view of language universals. For the functionalists, universals are inductive
generalizations about observable features of language, discovered by studying a large number
of unrelated languages—what some people call descriptive, or “surface” universals. The
generativists’ universals, on the other hand, are cognitive or “deep” universals, which are
highly abstract and cannot be derived inductively from observation of surface features.

 convergence : all language learners converge on the same grammar in spite of

the fact that they are exposed to different input.

“… it is clear that the language each person acquires is a rich complex construction hopelessly
underdetermined by the fragmentary evidence available [to the learner]. Nevertheless
individuals in a speech community have developed essentially the same language. This fact can
be explained only on the assumption that these individuals employ highly restrictive principles
that guide the construction of the grammar.” (Chomsky, 1975, p. 11)

 poverty of the stimulus : children know things about language which they
could not have learned from the input available to them.

Let us return to the poverty of the stimulus argument. The structure of the argument may be
summarized as follows:Children know certain things about language ;To learn them from the
input, they would need access to data of a particular kind.;The relevant data is not available in
the input, or not frequent enough in the input to guarantee learning.Therefore, the knowledge
must be innate.