Theories: Chomsky's Universal Grammar

THEORIES
 Chomsky’s Universal Grammar

During the first half of the 20th century, linguists who
theorized about the human ability to speak did so from the behaviourist perspective that
prevailed at that time. They therefore held that language learning, like any other kind of learning,
could be explained by a succession of trials, errors, and rewards for success. In other words,
children learned their mother tongue by simple imitation, listening to and repeating what adults
said.
This view became radically questioned, however, by the American linguist Noam Chomsky. For
Chomsky, acquiring language cannot be reduced to simply developing an inventory of responses
to stimuli, because every sentence that anyone produces can be a totally new combination of
words. When we speak, we combine a finite number of elements—the words of our language—
to create an infinite number of larger structures—sentences.
Moreover, language is governed by a large number of rules and principles, particularly those of
syntax, which determine the order of words in sentences. The term “generative grammar”refers
to the set of rules that enables us to understand sentences but of which we are usually totally
unaware. It is because of generative grammar that everyone says “that’s how you say it” rather
than “how that’s you it say”, or that the words “Bob”and “him” cannot mean the same person in
the sentence “Bob loves him.” but can do so in “Bob knows that his father loves him.” (Note in
passing that generative grammar has nothing to do with grammar textbooks, whose purpose is
simply to explain what is grammatically correct and incorrect in a given language.)
Even before the age of 5, children can, without having had any formal instruction, consistently
produce and interpret sentences that they have never encountered before. It is this extraordinary
ability to use language despite having had only very partial exposure to the allowable syntactic
variants that led Chomsky to formulate his “poverty of the stimulus” argument, which was the
foundation for the new approach that he proposed in the early 1960s.
In Chomsky’s view, the reason that children so easily master the complex operations of language
is that they have innate knowledge of certain principles that guide them in developing the
grammar of their language. In other words, Chomsky’s theory is that language learning is
facilitated by a predisposition that our brains have for certain structures of language.
But what language? For Chomsky’s theory to hold true, all of the languages in the world must
share certain structural properties. And indeed, Chomsky and other generative linguists like him
have shown that the 5000 to 6000 languages in the world, despite their very different grammars,
do share a set of syntactic rules and principles. These linguists believe that this “universal
grammar” is innate and is embedded somewhere in the neuronal circuitry of the human brain.
And that would be why children can select, from all the sentences that come to their minds, only
those that conform to a “deep structure” encoded in the brain’s circuits.
Universal grammar
Universal grammar, then, consists of a set of unconscious constraints that let us decide whether a
sentence is correctly formed. This mental grammar is not necessarily the same for all languages.
But according to Chomskyian theorists, the process by which, in any given language, certain
sentences are perceived as correct while others are not, is universal and independent of meaning.
Thus, we immediately perceive that the sentence “Robert book reads the” is not correct English,
even though we have a pretty good idea of what it means. Conversely, we recognize that a
sentence such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” is grammatically correct English, even
though it is nonsense.
A pair of dice offers a useful metaphor to explain what Chomsky means when he refers to
universal grammar as a “set of constraints”. Before we throw the pair of dice, we know that the
result will be a number from 2 to 12, but nobody would take a bet on its being 3.143. Similarly, a
newborn baby has the potential to speak any of a number of languages, depending on what
country it is born in, but it will not just speak them any way it likes: it will adopt certain
preferred, innate structures. One way to describe these structures would be that they are not
things that babies and children learn, but rather things that happen to them. Just as babies
naturally develop arms and not wings while they are still in the womb, once they are born they
naturally learn to speak, and not to chirp or neigh.
 Speech Act Theory

The speech act theory considers language as a sort of action rather than a medium to convey and
express. The contemporary Speech act theory developed by J. L. Austin a British philosopher of
languages, he introduced this theory in 1975 in his well-known book of ‘How do things with
words’. Later John Searle brought the aspects of theory into much higher dimensions. This
theory is often used in the field of philosophy of languages. Austin is the one who came up with
the findings that people not only uses that language to assert things but also to do things. And
people who followed him went to greater depths based on this point.
THEORY
All sort of linguist communication are comprised of linguistic actions. Previously it was
conceived that the very basic unit of communication is words, Symbols, sentences or
some kind of token of all of these, but it was speech act theory which suggested that
production or issuances if words, symbols are the basic units of communication. This
issuance happens during the process of performance of speech act. The meaning of
these basic units was considered as the building blocks of mutual understanding
between the people intend to communicate.
“ A theory of language is a theory of action”- Greig E. Henderson and Christopher
Brown.
The theory emphasis that the utterances have a different or specific meaning to its user
and listener other than its meaning according to the language. The theory further
identify that there are two kinds of utterances, they are called constative and
performative utterances. In his book of ‘How do things with words’ Austin clearly talks
about the disparities between the constative and performative utterances.
A constative utterances is something which describes or denotes the situation, in
relation with the fact of true or false.
Example: The teacher asked Olivia whether she had stolen the candy. Olivia replies
“mmmmmm”. Here the utterances of Olivia describes the event in pact of answering her
teacher whether the situation was true or false.
The performative utterances is something which do not describes anything at all. The
utterances in the sentences or in the part of sentences are normally considered as having
a meaning of its own. The feelings, attitudes, emotions and thoughts of the person
performing linguistic act are much of a principal unit here.
Example: Bane and Sarah have been dating for the past four years. One fine evening Bane took
Sarah to the most expensive restaurant in town. And he ordered the most expensive wine
available in the restaurant. Then he moved closer to her and asked her that “ will you marry
me?”. Sarah burst with contentment and replied “I will”. Here the “I will” of Sarah express her
feelings, attitudes and emotional towards the context. This utterances have its specific meaning
only in relation to it specific context.
Further Austin divides his linguistic act into three different categories. They are,
1. Locutionary act – This is the act of saying something. It has a meaning and it creates an
understandable utterly to convey or express
2. Illocutionary act – It is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed
to saying something. The illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it. It well well-
versed with certain tones, attitudes, feelings, or emotions. There will be an intention of
the speaker or others in illocutionary utterance. It is often used as a tone of warning in
day today life
3. Perlocutionary act – It normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the
audiences. The effects may be in the form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or
emotions. The effect upon the addressee is the main charactership of perlocutionary
utterances
For example
The locutionary act describes a dangerous situation, the illocutionary act acts as a force of the
warning and perlocutionary acts frighten the addressee.
Austin himself admits that these three components of utterances are not altogether separable.“We
must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued- the total speech act – if we are
to see the parallel between statements and performative utterance, and how each can go wrong.
Perhaps indeed there is no great distinction between statements and performative utterances.”
Austin.
Searle suggested that the basic unit of linguistic communication is speech act. It can be a word, a
phrase, a sentence or a sound, it should fulfil the task of expressing the intention of the user.
Understanding the user’s intention can lead to complete understanding of the speech act.
CONCLUSION
The context of speech act is in the context of situation than explanation. The speech act borrows
it ideas from structuralism. The indirect speech act of John Searle was developed based on
Austin’s speech act.
 Motor Theory of Speech Perception

The Motor Theory of Speech
Perception is a proposed explanation of the fundamental relationship between the way
speech is produced and the way it is perceived. Associated primarily with the work of
Liberman and colleagues, it posited the active participation of the motor system in the
perception of speech. Early versions of the theory contained elements that later proved
untenable, such as the expectation that the neural commands to the muscles (as seen in
electromyography) would be more invariant than the acoustics. Support drawn from
categorical perception (in which discrimination is quite poor within linguistic categories but
excellent across boundaries) was called into question by studies showing means of
improving within-category discrimination and finding similar results for nonspeech sounds
and for animals perceiving speech. Evidence for motor involvement in perceptual processes
nonetheless continued to accrue, and related motor theories have been proposed.
Neurological and neuroimaging results have yielded a great deal of evidence consistent with
variants of the theory, but they highlight the issue that there is no single “motor system,” and
so different components appear in different contexts. Assigning the appropriate amount of
effort to the various systems that interact to result in the perception of speech is an ongoing
process, but it is clear that some of the systems will reflect the motor control of speech.
##############################
##############################

Theories: Chomsky's Universal Grammar

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Theories: Chomsky's Universal Grammar

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Theories: Chomsky's Universal Grammar

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THEORIES

 Chomsky’s Universal Grammar

 Speech Act Theory

 Motor Theory of Speech Perception

You might also like