Noam Chomsky and universal grammar structure.

Noam Chomsky

the father of modern Linguistics

Noam Chomskys life and influences

 Born: December 7, 1928 Son of a professor of Hebrew His father worked with medieval Hebrew grammar. Influenced Chomsky Yiddish: parents 1st language He was able to see first-hand how his parents, as immigrants, learned English, compared to how he learned English from his American peers as a child Wife: also a linguist

Carol Chomsky

 PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, 1955 Zellig Harris: a linguist who swayed Chomsky towards studying linguistics, when he was on the verge of dropping out of college. MIT: became a professor in 1955; Has been a professor there for over 55 years 1957: book Syntactic Structures Began to develop his linguistic theories in his doctoral thesis; elaborated on these theories in his first book Criticized U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S. power: controversy, death threats, receives police protection Rarely at MIT now: travels, giving lectures

Noam Chomsky Universal Grammar

The most famous aspect of this line of thought was put forth by the linguist Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. Chomsky proposed a universal grammar hardwired into the brain of all humans underlying all languages.

Universal Grammar Theory

Is the theory introduced by Noam Chomsky

There are rules of language that all humans are born with, they are internal, not imitated.

 Nowadays UG means the initial state of a language learner. It is the innate (genetically transmitted) aspect of grammatical rules; the language instinct It is that aspect of the human mind that causes one to learn the language. UG qua initial state is biologically determined. As such, it does not belong to a specific language.

Universal Grammar
When learning a new language we can rely on some structures common to our native language or even common to all language. According to the theories of Noam Chomsky there is an universal grammar which claims that all languages have a similar underlying abstract structure

Language Acquisition Device

According to Chomsky LAD is the neurological system in the brain that facilitates language development

Universal Grammar Theory

Two layers must be distinguished, the deep grammatical structure which is common to all language and the surface grammar applicable only to a specific language

Deep structure is the abstract underlying form, which determines the meaning of a sentence. Surface structure is what we write or speak. The two are connected by transformations like combination, addition and deletion. There were two structures or trees: one for deep and one for surface sentences. Transformation rules linked the two

Chomsky's initial assumptions were fourfold. Firstly that transformations preserved meaning, i.e. that surface structure was linked to meaning only by deep structures. Secondly, that transformational rules were simple and did only one thing at a time. Thirdly that the deep structures were similar to surface structures. And fourthly that transformational rules were the only rules needed to link surface and deep structures. Now it appears that all four cannot be held jointly

Deep structure
The deep structure of a sentence is its underlying semantic content, an abstraction decoded from the actual syntactic sequence of its surface structure. E.g.: She wrote an article or An article was written by her . Shares the same deep structure.

Surface structure
The structure that corresponds with the actual form of a sentence Is the final stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence It provides the input to the phonological component of the grammar

Done by 408 group:

Almoldaeva Ulbossyn Rakhatova Alma Zhusupova Gulnur Kaskarauova Kymbat