Topic
Universal grammar
About: Universal grammar is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1326 publications have been published within this topic receiving 64033 citations. The topic is also known as: UG.
Papers published on a yearly basis
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01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues Noam Chomsky's classic work The Minimalist Program with a new preface by the author, which emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work "is a program, not a theory."
Abstract: A classic work that situates linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, formulating and developing the minimalist program. In his foundational book, The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, Noam Chomsky offered a significant contribution to the generative tradition in linguistics. This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues this classic work with a new preface by the author. In four essays, Chomsky attempts to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, with the essays formulating and progressively developing the minimalist approach to linguistic theory. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. In the preface to this edition, Chomsky emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work "is a program, not a theory." With this book, Chomsky built on pursuits from the earliest days of generative grammar to formulate a new research program that had far-reaching implications for the field.
9,104 citations
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01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: 'Without symbolism the life of man would be like that of the prisoners in the cave of Plato's simile; it could find no access to the "ideal world" which is opened to him from different sides by religion, art, philosophy, science.
Abstract: 'Without symbolism the life of man would be like that of the prisoners in the cave of Plato's simile…confined within the limits of his biological needs and practical interests; it could find no access to the "ideal world" which is opened to him from different sides by religion, art, philosophy, science.' Ernst Cassirer 1 ABSTRACT I begin by outlining some of the positions that have been taken by those who have reflected upon the nature of language. In his early work Wittgenstein asserts that language becomes meaningful when we tacitly adhere to the rules of logic. In his later work he claims that lan- guages become meaningful when they are situated within forms of life. Polanyi describes language as a toolbox for deploying our tacit awareness. A meaning is generated when a point of view attends from a subsidiary to a focal awareness. Languages re-present these meanings. Although all languages rely upon rules, what it is to be a meaning is not reduc- ible to rules. Nor is there a universal grammar. Because it renders abstract reflection possi- ble, language renders minds possible. A mind is not the product of an innate language of thought; it is a consequence of indwelling within a natural language. Indwelling within languages enables us to access new realities. Languages however do not supply us with the boundaries of the world. Not only do we know more than we can say, we can also say more than we know. The ultimate context of our linguistic meanings is not our social practices; it is our embodied awareness of the world. A representationalist account is in accordance with the view that minds are Turing machines. But the symbols processed by a Turing ma- chine derive their meaning from the agents that use them to achieve their purposes. Only if the processing of symbolic representations is related to the tacit context within which they become meaningful, does a semantic engine becomes possible.
4,598 citations
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TL;DR: Syntaxe comparative de l'anglais and l'espagnol dans le cadre de la theorie des barrieres as discussed by the authors, compare between the two languages.
Abstract: Syntaxe comparative de l'anglais et de l'espagnol dans le cadre de la theorie des barrieres
2,435 citations
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TL;DR: The principles-and-parameter approach has been used in this paper to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena.
Abstract: The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an “organ of the body,” along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language- or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena
1,409 citations
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TL;DR: This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once the authors honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages.
Abstract: Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective. This target article summarizes decades of cross-linguistic work by typologists and descriptive linguists, showing just how few and unprofound the universal characteristics of language are, once we honestly confront the diversity offered to us by the world's 6,000 to 8,000 languages. After surveying the various uses of "universal," we illustrate the ways languages vary radically in sound, meaning, and syntactic organization, and then we examine in more detail the core grammatical machinery of recursion, constituency, and grammatical relations. Although there are significant recurrent patterns in organization, these are better explained as stable engineering solutions satisfying multiple design constraints, reflecting both cultural-historical factors and the constraints of human cognition. Linguistic diversity then becomes the crucial datum for cognitive science: we are the only species with a communication system that is fundamentally variable at all levels. Recognizing the true extent of structural diversity in human language opens up exciting new research directions for cognitive scientists, offering thousands of different natural experiments given by different languages, with new opportunities for dialogue with biological paradigms concerned with change and diversity, and confronting us with the extraordinary plasticity of the highest human skills.
1,385 citations