More recently, Deprez and Pierce (1993) offered an explanation for Klima and Bellugi’s stages based on a parameter-setting model of Universal Grammar (UG) (Chomsky 1981). Deprez and Pierce proposed that the subject raising parameter is initially set to allow the subject to remain inside VP. According to Deprez and Pierce, sentences containing “external negation” result when the subject fails to...

Universal grammar (UG) is a list of innate constraints that specify the set of grammars that can be learned by the child during primary language acquisition. UG of the human brain has been shaped by evolution. Evolution requires variation. Hence, we have to postulate and study variation of UG. We investigate evolutionary dynamics and language acquisition in the context of multiple UGs. We provi...

A science is a series of ‘conjectures and refutations’. The most powerful conjectures are those that are formulated in such a way that they may be easily refuted by observation. On this account, Universal Grammar is an extremely weak hypothesis. This is because (i) there are very few precise formulations of exactly what is in UG (Wunderlich’s list on pp.620–623 being an admirable exception), an...

The purpose of this work is to investigate the process of grammatical acquisition from data. We are using a computational learning systern that is composed of a Universal Grammar with associated parameters, and a learning algorithm, following the Principles and Parameters Theory. The Universal Grammar is implemented as a Unification-Based Generalised Categorial Grammar, embedded in a default in...

Generative phonology has been dominant for roughly fifty years (Chomsky & Halle 1968, etc.) with Optimality Theory (OT) being the prevailing framework in phonology for over a decade (Prince & Smolensky 2004, etc.). Both theories share the assumption that Universal Grammar (UG) provides an inventory of universal distinctive features; OT also assumes that UG provides an inventory of universal con...

This paper questions the validity of various assumptions central to treatments of featural processes such as vowel and consonant harmony, namely that features are universal, that constraints are universal, that feature scales are universal, and so on. The paper begins with a discussion of various phonetic, phonological, and typological properties of distinctive features. It goes on to discuss v...

The principal goal of Chomskyan linguistics is to account for language acquisition; the core postulate is that the child has available linguistically detailed innate knowledge, known as Universal Grammar (UG). Critical to this postulate is the poverty of the stimulus argument that the child’s target grammar is “hopelessly underdetermined by the fragmentary evidence available” (Chomsky, 1968). U...

As many scholars have their own viewpoints and perspectives on Chomsky's universal grammar theory, this article shows recent developments in L2 learning by Chomsky. A significant turning point at the moment is UG approach to language education, particularly its values parameters. Many researchers argue that with SLA, has problems like Fries Palmer. They say there are linguistic variations make ...