Noam Chomsky and Universal Grammar Structure

Noam Chomsky and universal

grammar structure.

« the father of modernLinguistics »

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky’s life and influences…

• Born: December 7, 1928• Son of a professor of Hebrew

His father worked with medieval Hebrew grammar. Influenced Chomsky

• Yiddish: parents’ 1st language He was able to see first-hand how his parents, as

immigrants, learned English, compared to how he learned English from his American peers as a child

• Wife: also a linguist

Carol Chomsky

• PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, 1955• Zellig Harris: a linguist who swayed Chomsky towards

studying linguistics, when he was on the verge of dropping out of college.

• MIT: became a professor in 1955; Has been a professor there for over 55 years

• 1957: book Syntactic Structures– Began to develop his linguistic theories in his doctoral

thesis; elaborated on these theories in his first book• Criticized U.S. foreign policy and the legitimacy of U.S.

power: controversy, death threats, receives police protection• Rarely at MIT now: travels, giving lectures

Noam Chomsky Universal Grammar

The most famous aspect of this line of thought was put forth by the linguist

Noam Chomsky in the 1950s.

 Chomsky proposed a universal grammar hardwired into the brain

of all humans underlying all languages.

Universal Grammar Theory

Is the theory introduced by Noam Chomsky

There are rules of language that all humans are born

with, they are internal, not imitated.

• Nowadays UG means the initial state of a language learner.

• It is the “innate” (genetically transmitted) aspect of grammatical rules; the language instinct

• It is that aspect of the human mind that causes one to learn the language.

• UG qua initial state is biologically determined. • As such, it does not belong to a specific

language.

When learning a new language we can rely on some structures common to our native language or even common to all language.

According to the theories of Noam Chomsky there is an universal grammar which claims that all languages have a similar underlying

abstract structure

Universal Grammar

Language Acquisition Device

According to Chomsky LAD is the neurological system in the brain that facilitates language

development

Universal Grammar Theory

Two layers must be distinguished, the deep grammatical structure which is

common to all language and the surface grammar applicable only to a specific

language

Deep structure is the abstract underlying form, which determines the meaning of a sentence.

Surface structure is what we write or speak. The two are connected by transformations like

combination, addition and deletion. There were two structures or trees: one for deep and one for

surface sentences. Transformation rules linked the two

Chomsky's initial assumptions were fourfold. Firstly that transformations preserved meaning, i.e. that surface structure was linked to meaning

only by deep structures. Secondly, that transformational rules were simple and did only

one thing at a time. Thirdly that the deep structures were similar to surface structures.

And fourthly that transformational rules were the only rules needed to link surface and deep structures. Now it appears that all four cannot

be held jointly

The deep structure of a sentence is its underlying semantic content, an

abstraction decoded from the actual syntactic sequence of its surface

structure. E.g.:

She wrote an article or An article was written by her .

Shares the same deep structure.

Deep structure

Surface structure

The structure that corresponds with the actual form of a sentence Is the final

stage in the syntactic representation of a sentence It provides the input to the

phonological component of the grammar

Done by 408 group:

• Almoldaeva Ulbossyn• Rakhatova Alma• Zhusupova Gulnur• Kaskarauova Kymbat