👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻🌹Rana sir
The ESL ACADEMY BY SIRRANA
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👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻Chomsky's Theory of Universal Grammar
In weakest form, UG is the idea that all human languages share a set of properties which no other animal communication system possesses in whole, and that these make up what we mean by "language". Here are some of these properties:
referentiality -- a communicative act reliably indicates an entity or referent
unlike, e.g., dog barks, which merely indicate the dog is excited
non-iconicity -- the form of a communication act does not correspond reliably with the meaning
unlike, e.g., bee dances, in which the vigor of the dance corresponds to the amount of food; the "arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified" is a key aspect of natural human languages
productivity (open-class) -- words can freely be added to refer to new meanings
unlike the calls of certain monkey species, which can distinguish between EAGLE (airborne predators), LION (groundborne, carnivorous predators), and SNAKE (poisonous, hidden dangers), but cannot distinguish other meanings
hierarchical structure -- a communicative sequence is composed of recognizable sub-parts, which themselves may have sub-parts
for example, "John likes Mary" can be divided into the subject "John" and the predicate "likes Mary"
recursive structure -- in which a communicative sequence contains a part that is like itself
for example, "the cat that ate the rat" is a noun phrase, which picks out a unique cat; "the rat" is also a noun phrase, which picks out a unique rat; "the rat" is a part of "the cat that ate the rat" so the large noun phrase contains the smaller one
compositionality -- the meaning of the whole is normally determined by the meaning of the sub-parts, and the way in which they are arranged
for example, "John likes Mary" can only mean that John is the liker, and Mary is the likee; it may also be true that Mary likes John, but to communicate this we have to use the opposite order "Mary likes John"
It is generally accepted by all reasonable people that the properties listed above do indeed characterize all human languages, and nearly everyone agrees that no other animal communication system has all of these properties together. Thus, the weakest form of UG is the idea that the genetic endowment of humans incorporates the cognitive machinery to produce a computational system with the properties listed above. In short, "language is special; no one else does it; there must be some special part of our genetic heritage which sets us apart from other animals".
A slightly stronger version of UG arises from the fact that there are non-obvious restrictions on the types of sentences that humans freely generate. For example, consider the following, completely unremarkable exchange:
(Background: Mike fixed the car with a hammer.)
Question: [How] did Mike fix the car?
Reply: [With a hammer].
Seeing question-answer pairs like this, one might be tempted to hypothesize that whatever the answer is, the corresponding question is formed by repeating the answer, except that focus of the question (in the above, [with a hammer]) is replaced by the question word (who, what, when, where, how, etc..), which is in turn moved to the front of the sentence. This hypothesis is falsified by the following, ungrammatical exchange:
(Background: John knew that Mike fixed the car with a hammer.
Question: [How] did John know that Mike fixed the car?
Reply: *[With a hammer]
In this latter case, the reply "with a hammer" can only mean that Mike fixed the car, and that John somehow used a hammer to discover this fact. It is eminently reasonable that Mike would fix a car using a hammer; indeed this is far more likely than John using a hammer to discover that Mike fixed the car. However, the interpretation that [with a hammer] refers to Mike's fixing, rather than John's knowing, is somehow blocked.
The ESL ACADEMY BY SIRRANA
VISIT OUR BLOG
RANASIRLITERATURE.BLOGSPOT.COM
👉🏻👉🏻👉🏻Chomsky's Theory of Universal Grammar
In weakest form, UG is the idea that all human languages share a set of properties which no other animal communication system possesses in whole, and that these make up what we mean by "language". Here are some of these properties:
referentiality -- a communicative act reliably indicates an entity or referent
unlike, e.g., dog barks, which merely indicate the dog is excited
non-iconicity -- the form of a communication act does not correspond reliably with the meaning
unlike, e.g., bee dances, in which the vigor of the dance corresponds to the amount of food; the "arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified" is a key aspect of natural human languages
productivity (open-class) -- words can freely be added to refer to new meanings
unlike the calls of certain monkey species, which can distinguish between EAGLE (airborne predators), LION (groundborne, carnivorous predators), and SNAKE (poisonous, hidden dangers), but cannot distinguish other meanings
hierarchical structure -- a communicative sequence is composed of recognizable sub-parts, which themselves may have sub-parts
for example, "John likes Mary" can be divided into the subject "John" and the predicate "likes Mary"
recursive structure -- in which a communicative sequence contains a part that is like itself
for example, "the cat that ate the rat" is a noun phrase, which picks out a unique cat; "the rat" is also a noun phrase, which picks out a unique rat; "the rat" is a part of "the cat that ate the rat" so the large noun phrase contains the smaller one
compositionality -- the meaning of the whole is normally determined by the meaning of the sub-parts, and the way in which they are arranged
for example, "John likes Mary" can only mean that John is the liker, and Mary is the likee; it may also be true that Mary likes John, but to communicate this we have to use the opposite order "Mary likes John"
It is generally accepted by all reasonable people that the properties listed above do indeed characterize all human languages, and nearly everyone agrees that no other animal communication system has all of these properties together. Thus, the weakest form of UG is the idea that the genetic endowment of humans incorporates the cognitive machinery to produce a computational system with the properties listed above. In short, "language is special; no one else does it; there must be some special part of our genetic heritage which sets us apart from other animals".
A slightly stronger version of UG arises from the fact that there are non-obvious restrictions on the types of sentences that humans freely generate. For example, consider the following, completely unremarkable exchange:
(Background: Mike fixed the car with a hammer.)
Question: [How] did Mike fix the car?
Reply: [With a hammer].
Seeing question-answer pairs like this, one might be tempted to hypothesize that whatever the answer is, the corresponding question is formed by repeating the answer, except that focus of the question (in the above, [with a hammer]) is replaced by the question word (who, what, when, where, how, etc..), which is in turn moved to the front of the sentence. This hypothesis is falsified by the following, ungrammatical exchange:
(Background: John knew that Mike fixed the car with a hammer.
Question: [How] did John know that Mike fixed the car?
Reply: *[With a hammer]
In this latter case, the reply "with a hammer" can only mean that Mike fixed the car, and that John somehow used a hammer to discover this fact. It is eminently reasonable that Mike would fix a car using a hammer; indeed this is far more likely than John using a hammer to discover that Mike fixed the car. However, the interpretation that [with a hammer] refers to Mike's fixing, rather than John's knowing, is somehow blocked.
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