Universal Grammar from a Martian's point of view
A Martian meets
a terrestrial. They start conversing.
The terrestrial
is surprised: ‘You speak my language very well. I guess, I am not the first
human who you have conversed with.’
The Martian:
‘It’s true. I have met many humans from all over the world. They claimed to
speak different languages and they also claimed that they don’t understand each
other without having to learn each other’s language by making a big effort. It
is very strange to me. I can understand all the languages that you claim are
different. They sound the same.’
The terrestrial:
‘Noam Chomsky has already made a statement that a Martian would perceive our
languages as one single language. Finally, you are the proof that universal
grammar really exists. There are big debates on the question’
The Martian: ‘Or
simply I am so intelligent that I can understand every language in the world,
don’t you think? Because I am more intelligent, I can help you with the
universal grammar issue. Let me ask you some questions which can be fundamental
to investigate it. Describe a language. It doesn’t have to be a specific
language, but any language. My aim is to understand the common properties of
the world’s languages.
The terrestrial:
A language always distinguishes nouns from verbs, or distinguishes function
words from content words.
The Martian: Because
of the universal properties of all
languages. And how did you learn your language? Were you copying your mother’s
sentences exactly as she was saying them? Was your mother correcting you?
The terrestrial:
No, I wasn’t copying exactly what my mother was saying. My mom wasn’t
correcting me, the opposite in fact, she was happy if I could say something. In
addition, my neighbor, Simon who is a 9 year old boy, is deaf. His parents are
also deaf but they learned sign language in their teens. That’s why they
couldn’t learn it well and they make a lot of mistakes. However, surprisingly,
Simon could learn sign language well. It is very interesting, isn’t it?
The Martian: So,
you don’t learn everything from the environment as the behaviorist theory
claims. It means children know things about
language which they could not have learned from the input available to them. It
is poverty of the stimulus. Do
you understand sentences that you haven’t heard before?
The terrestrial:
Of course. I form sentences that I have haven’t heard before.
The Martian: So
you can form infinite sentences using finite rules of the language. There
should be a mental grammar then. You
potentially could form countless sentences, this is your competence, but you form counted sentences in your usage, this is
your performance.
So we can state
that there are universal properties which all languages share. The child doesn’t
only learn from his or her environment and his or her mistakes, but there must
be an innate knowledge about the
grammar that gives him or her access to learn any language. A human could form
and understand sentences that he or she hasn’t heard before. This is the core
idea of universal grammar.
If human
language is innate, then why is there such a variety of languages? What do you
think? Leave me a comment!
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