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Universal grammar (UG),in modern linguistics,is the theory of the innate biological component of the language faculty,usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be. When linguistic stimuli are received in the course of language acquisition,children then adopt specific syntactic rules that conform to UG. The advocates of this theory emphasize and partially rely on the poverty of the stimulus (POS) argument and the existence of some universal properties of natural human languages. However,the latter has not been firmly established,as some linguists have argued languages are so diverse that such universality is rare,and the theory of universal grammar remains controversial among linguists.
In linguistics,transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar,especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language and involves the use of defined operations to produce new sentences from existing ones.
Cognitive linguistics is an interdisciplinary branch of linguistics,combining knowledge and research from cognitive science,cognitive psychology,neuropsychology and linguistics. Models and theoretical accounts of cognitive linguistics are considered as psychologically real,and research in cognitive linguistics aims to help understand cognition in general and is seen as a road into the human mind.
Generative grammar,or generativism,is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics,deriving from logical syntax and glossematics. Generative grammar considers grammar as a system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words that form grammatical sentences in a given language. It is a system of explicit rules that may apply repeatedly to generate an indefinite number of sentences which can be as long as one wants them to be. The difference from structural and functional models is that the object is base-generated within the verb phrase in generative grammar. This purportedly cognitive structure is thought of as being a part of a universal grammar,a syntactic structure which is caused by a genetic mutation in humans.
Geoffrey Keith Pullum is a British and American linguist specialising in the study of English. Pullum has published over 300 articles and books on various topics in linguistics,including phonology,morphology,semantics,pragmatics,computational linguistics,and philosophy of language. He is Professor Emeritus of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Syntactic Structures is an important work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky,originally published in 1957. A short monograph of about a hundred pages,it is recognized as one of the most significant and influential linguistic studies of the 20th century. It contains the now-famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously",which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no discernible meaning,thus arguing for the independence of syntax from semantics.
In linguistics,linguistic competence is the system of unconscious knowledge that one knows when they know a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance,which includes all other factors that allow one to use one's language in practice.
In linguistics,glossematics is a structuralist theory proposed by Louis Hjelmslev and Hans Jørgen Uldall. It defines the glosseme as the most basic unit of language.
In linguistics and social sciences,markedness is the state of standing out as nontypical or divergent as opposed to regular or common. In a marked–unmarked relation,one term of an opposition is the broader,dominant one. The dominant default or minimum-effort form is known as unmarked;the other,secondary one is marked. In other words,markedness involves the characterization of a "normal" linguistic unit against one or more of its possible "irregular" forms.
Poverty of the stimulus (POS) is the controversial argument from linguistics that children are not exposed to rich enough data within their linguistic environments to acquire every feature of their language. This is considered evidence contrary to the empiricist idea that language is learned solely through experience. The claim is that the sentences children hear while learning a language do not contain the information needed to develop a thorough understanding of the grammar of the language.
Sir John Lyons FBA was a British linguist,working on semantics.
The term Cartesian linguistics was coined by Noam Chomsky in his book Cartesian Linguistics:A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought (1966). The adjective "Cartesian" pertains to RenéDescartes,a prominent 17th-century philosopher. As well as Descartes,Chomsky surveys other examples of rationalist thought in 17th-century linguistics,in particular the Port-Royal Grammar (1660),which foreshadows some of his own ideas concerning universal grammar.
In linguistics,the innateness hypothesis,also known as the nativist hypothesis,holds that humans are born with at least some knowledge of linguistic structure. On this hypothesis,language acquisition involves filling in the details of an innate blueprint rather than being an entirely inductive process. The hypothesis is one of the cornerstones of generative grammar and related approaches in linguistics. Arguments in favour include the poverty of the stimulus,the universality of language acquisition,as well as experimental studies on learning and learnability. However,these arguments have been criticized,and the hypothesis is widely rejected in other traditions such as usage-based linguistics. The term was coined by Hilary Putnam in reference to the views of Noam Chomsky.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax is a book on linguistics written by American linguist Noam Chomsky,first published in 1965. In Aspects,Chomsky presented a deeper,more extensive reformulation of transformational generative grammar (TGG),a new kind of syntactic theory that he had introduced in the 1950s with the publication of his first book,Syntactic Structures. Aspects is widely considered to be the foundational document and a proper book-length articulation of Chomskyan theoretical framework of linguistics. It presented Chomsky's epistemological assumptions with a view to establishing linguistic theory-making as a formal discipline comparable to physical sciences,i.e. a domain of inquiry well-defined in its nature and scope. From a philosophical perspective,it directed mainstream linguistic research away from behaviorism,constructivism,empiricism and structuralism and towards mentalism,nativism,rationalism and generativism,respectively,taking as its main object of study the abstract,inner workings of the human mind related to language acquisition and production.
Caroline Heycock is a Scottish syntactician and professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh.
Bencie Woll FAAAS is an American–British linguist and scholar of sign language. She became the first professor of sign language in the United Kingdom when she was appointed Professor of Sign Language and Deaf Studies at City University,London in 1995. In 2005,she moved to University College London where she became Professor of Sign Language and Deaf Studies and Director of the Deafness,Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL).
Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli is a Greek linguist and Chair of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. She is an associate editor of the journal Glossa and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2021.
Rudolf P. Botha is a South African linguist. He is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics at Stellenbosch University and Honorary Professor of Linguistics at Utrecht University. Botha is best known for his works on the philosophy of linguistics.
Henk van Riemsdijk is a Dutch linguist and professor emeritus at Tilburg University.
The basis of Noam Chomsky's linguistic theory lies in biolinguistics,the linguistic school that holds that the principles underpinning the structure of language are biologically preset in the human mind and hence genetically inherited. He argues that all humans share the same underlying linguistic structure,irrespective of sociocultural differences. In adopting this position Chomsky rejects the radical behaviorist psychology of B. F. Skinner,who viewed speech,thought,and all behavior as a completely learned product of the interactions between organisms and their environments. Accordingly,Chomsky argues that language is a unique evolutionary development of the human species and distinguished from modes of communication used by any other animal species. Chomsky's nativist,internalist view of language is consistent with the philosophical school of "rationalism" and contrasts with the anti-nativist,externalist view of language consistent with the philosophical school of "empiricism",which contends that all knowledge,including language,comes from external stimuli.
References
- ↑ "News & Announcements".
- ↑ "Professor Neil Smith". British Academy. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
