Meaning of universal grammar | Babel Free

Definitions

A hypothetical innate abstract system in the human brain that underlies the grammar of all human languages.

Equivalents

Examples

“At this point, let's gather together various loose ends, and try and paint a simple picture of the overall model of grammar which we are moving towards. We might suppose that Universal Grammar makes available a set of category- neutral pairs of rule-schemas such as those numbered (i) and (ii) in (168–170) above. The members of each pair of rule-schemas differ only in respect of the relative ordering of constituents. The task of the child acquiring the grammar of a particular language is thus to determine which ordering options are selected in the language he is acquiring. For example, the child has to deter- mine whether a given language is a head-first language incorporating rule- schema (168) (i), or a head-last language incorporating schema (168) (ii): in other words, the child has to ‘setʼ the relevant word-order parameter for Com- plements, Specifiers, Adjuncts, and so forth. The picture is complicated by the fact that some languages permit more than one ordering option: for example, as we have already seen, English selects the head-first and specifier-first orders as the unmarked option, but also selects the ‘mirror imageʼ orders as a marked option.”

CEFR level