Universal grammar
 | This article or section is in a state of significant expansion or restructuring. You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well. If this article or section has not been edited in several days, please remove this template. If you are the editor who added this template and you are actively editing, please be sure to replace this template with {{in use}} during the active editing session. Click on the link for template parameters to use.
This article was last edited by 80.139.96.37 (talk | contribs) 20 years ago. (Update timer) |
Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating underlying principles of grammar shared in common by all languages. These underlying principles are said to be innate to all human beings.
This theory does not attempt to claim that all human languages have the same grammar, or that all humans are "programmed" with a structure that underlies all surface expressions of human language. Rather, universal grammar proposes that there exists an underlying set of rules that helps children to acquire their particular language(s).
Students of universal grammar study a variety of languages' grammars with the purpose of abstracting generalizations, often in the form of "If X holds true, then Y occurs." These have been extended to a range of traits, from the phonemes found in languages, to what word orders languages choose, to why children exhibit certain linguistic behaviors.
Three linguists who have had major impacts in this area, either directly or through the schools of thought they have promulgated, are Noam Chomsky, Edward Sapir and Richard Montague.