UG Theory

The concept of universal grammar has been traced to the observation of Roger
Bacon, a 13th-century Franciscan friar and philosopher, that all languages are built upon
a common grammar. The expression was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s by Noam
Chomsky and other
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.
New
Universal Grammar (UG) is a theoretical concept proposed by Noam Chomsky (not

without criticism or controversy from scholars in the scientific community) that the
human brain contains an innate mental grammar that helps humans acquire language.
Chomsky theorized that the brain contains a mechanism he referred to as a language
acquisition device (LAD), which is “separate from other faculties of cognitive
activity….Input is needed, but only to ‘trigger’ the operation of the language acquisition
device” (Ellis 32). Without this LAD, according to Chomsky, children would never be
able to learn language from the input they receive.
Nowak et al. summarizes the theory in this way:
“Children acquire their mental grammar spontaneously and without formal training.
Children of the same speech community reliably learn the same grammar. Exactly how
the mental grammar comes into a child’s mind is a puzzle. Children have to deduce the
rules of their native language from sample sentences they receive from their parents and
others. This information is insufficient for uniquely determining the underlying
grammatical principles (4). Linguists call this phenomenon the “poverty of stimulus” (5)
or the “paradox of language acquisition” (6). The proposed solution is universal
grammar” (114).
Poverty of stimulus is the ability of the human brain to recognize correct and incorrect
grammar even in novel sentences. Vivian Cook writes,
“A second example from English is the well-known pair, ‘John is eager to please’ and
‘John is easy to please’, taken from the earlier ‘Aspects’ model (Chomsky 1965)
….Conceivably an adult might explain the difference to the child, or some feature of the
particular situation might make it obvious; such accidental and improbable occurrences
cannot explain why children go through the same stages in acquiring ‘eager/easy to
please’ and are successful at about the same age (Cromer 1970). If the child has not
learnt the distinction from the input, he must have done so from some property of his
own mind. Both examples therefore exploit the same argument, known as ‘the poverty
of the stimulus’, to show that the child knows things about language he could not have
learnt from outside, that important aspects of language are not strictly speaking
learnable” (“Chomsky’s Universal Grammar”).
Bibliography
Cook, Vivian J. “Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and Second Language

Learning.” Applied Linguistics 6.1 (1985): 2-18.
http://www.viviancook.uk/Writings/Papers/AL85.htm.
Nowak, Martin A., et al. “Evolution of Universal Grammar.” Science, vol. 291, no. 5501,
2001, pp. 114–118. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3082186.
Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford, 1997

https://worldenglishes.lmc.gatech.edu/universal-grammar-ug/

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The concept of universal grammar has been traced to the observation of Roger

Chomsky and other

Universal grammar, then, consists of a set of unconscious constraints that let us

universal and independent of meaning.

we recognize that a sentence such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” is

grammatically correct English, even though it is nonsense.

Universal Grammar (UG) is a theoretical concept proposed by Noam Chomsky (not

Nowak et al. summarizes the theory in this way:

Cook, Vivian J. “Chomsky’s Universal Grammar and Second Language

Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford, 1997

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