Universal Grammar and the learning and teaching of second languages.

Kelvin CastilloIsabel Díaz EspriellaItalia García EnríquezEduardo RojasCesar Ruíz

Vivian Cook

To describe the possible relationships between Universal Grammar and language teaching.

An overview of the principles and parameters theory of syntax.

To show how this relates to the UG model of language acquisition.

To describe some of the issues in applying the UG model to second language learning.

To draw some implications for language teaching.

Aims:

The Chomskyan UG model of aquisition is

based on the theory of syntax.

Language is knowledge stored in the mind.

Principles and parameters grammar.

Princip

le

s

Paramete

rs

Do not vary from one person to another

Settings that vary

according to the particular language that

the person knows

The human mind has built-in language “principles” that are part of its knowledge of any language.

It also has “parameters” within these principles whose values are set to the actual language it learns.

PERMANENT

tune the principles to a particular language.

Is Sam the cat that is black?

Is linked to a similar structure to that seen in: Sam is the cat that is black.

Forming a question involves knowing which of the two examples of is can be moved to the beginning of the sentence to get the grammatical sentence:

Is Sam the cat that is black.Instead of:

Is Sam is the cat that black?

I know!

A person who knows English knows the same

principles and parameters as a person who knows Spanish but has set the value of the pro-drop parameter differently.

A pro-drop language  is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in

some sense pragmatically inferable

He’s going homeIt´s raining

Voy a casaLlueve

This claims that principles of language do not

need to be learnt as they are already build

into the mind.

No child needs to learn structure dependency

because he or she already knows it in some

sense.

The Universal Grammar model of language

acquisition

Learning English means setting all the values for UG

parameters to those for English.

Parameters are like electric switches that are moved

to one position or the other.

Example:

A child learning English needs to move the switches to

non-pro-drop.

A child learning Spanish to move the switch to pro-drop

Learning comes

down to the setting

of values for the

parameters to

moving the

switches.

What is the initial setting for a parameter?

A child starts from a neutral parameter setting and then adopts one or other of the possibilities that the switch is initially in the middle instead of one way or

the other.

Setting A (pro-drop)Neutral initial setting Setting B (non-pro-drop)

Example

A child learning English would start with a neutral

setting for pro-drop and change it to non-pro-

drop. In other hand, a child learning Spanish

would start from the same natural setting and

change it to pro-drop.

Hymes (1986) claims that young English

children often produce sentence without subjects

Want more bubblesNow wash my hands

And gradually learn that the subject is compulsory.

Access to UG in second language

learning

The main interest for L2 learning has been in the role

that the UG plays in L2 learning. In a no access

model L2 learners acquire the L2 grammar without

consulting the UG in their minds; the grammar is

learnt thorough other mental faculties. In a direct

access model L2 learners acquire the L2 in exactly

the same way as L1 learners by using UG

In an indirect access model L2 learners have access to UG throught what they know of L1, but they starrt with parameters in their L1 setting instead of in their original state

Let start with some of general arguments for the

no-access position

While L2 learners show some effects o UG, they

do not use it as consistently as L1 natives

The knowledge of L2 learners is not complete as

that of L1 learners and they are not as successful

Children manage to learn any L1 with equal ease;

some language are clearly much more difficult

for L2 learners than others, for instance Chinese

versus italian for speakers of english

If the learner breaks principles of language or has

impossible values for parameters, the UG position is discomfited. To make these arguments for no-access pertinent, it would have to be shown that these core areas were different in L2 learning.

Claim that L2 learners know less of their L2 than

their L1 are certainly true in a general sense, with

some demurrals to be made later; but a little of

the research shows that the learners know less of

core UG grammar. If L2 learners knew principles

partially or if L2 different in difficulty so far as

central UG areas are concerned or principles are

parameters were “fossilied” in some way the

argument would have some weight.

The sentences involving wh words such as who and

what are regarded as being derivate from other

structures via who movements

Who did he say that John liked?

Is based originally on an underlying structure

similar to:

He said that John liked who?

But in English its ungrammatically to say:

The task which I didn't know to whom they would

entrust

Although this sentence is derived from the

underlying structure similar to that of the

grammatical sentence

I didn't know to whom they would entrust the task

The reason for it doesn't works for the items must

not to be move across too many barriers in the

sentence; the principle of subjacency says that

an item can be move across one such barrier but

not across more

Research by Bley-Vroman, Felix and Loup (1988)

tested whether L2 learners who spoke and L1 that

did not have subjace3ncy showed signs if having

acquired it in English; if they did, this would show

that their UG was still available. Schater (1989)

performed an experiment with a similar logic on

L2 learners of English with Chinese, Korean and

Indonesian as L1; she gives the learners both a

syntax test to see if they knew the structure

involved and a subjacency test.

Clahsen ans Muysken (1986) compared the

learning of german word order by native children

and foreign adults using many published studies.

German has a Subject, Object and Verb (SVO)

Ich sage, dass ich dich liebe (I say that I love you)

A word order in the main clause in which the verb

comes second is an SVO order

Ich liebe dich (I love you

Dich liebe ich (You love I) (OVS)

And adverb VS:

Immer liebe ich dich (Always love I you)

Many linguistics treat the SVO order as the norm, and

derive the order found in the main from it by moving

the verb into second position.

The claim for differences between L1 and L2 learners of

germna is scarcely by itself sufficient to disprove

access to UG by all L2 learners for all aspects of

syntax. For instance, adults learners have a larger

memory processing capacity than children; for this

reason children may start by not distinguishing

subordinate from main clauses, and so use the verb

final forms interchangeably with the verb second

forms

What are the initial L2 parameter settings?

PARAMETER

UG and L2 acqisition

Direct Access

L2 learners would start

with the same values for

parameters from scratch.

Indirect Access

The starting point for L2 learners is the

values of their first languages, which may

or may not be the unmarked settings for

L1 acquisition.

Do the principles and parameters change as

the L2 learner learns?

UG might depend upon the learner´s age, on the one hand, the development of the L2 in children might be in step with the development of the L1.

On the other hand UG is more accessible with the learner´s choice learning access.

The UG main point is how a mind comes to

acqire grammar of one language in the form of the language principles and the values for parameters.

But L2 learning is predicated on the fact that the mind can learn two grammars, both obeying the same principles but having different settingfor parameters.

Multicompetence

The state of the mind with two languages has

been termed “multicompetence”, this means that ‘the compound state of a mind with two grammars’.

Cook says “ the mind of a person who knows two languages should be taken as a whole rather than as equivalent to two minds that know one language each.”

Language teachers must look

elsewhere for ideas about

communicative competence,

pragmatic competence, or

listening and speaking “skils”.

UG and Language Teaching

UG is concerned by definition with “obvious”

things about language. Ideas like structure-dependency are built into the mind; they are not mentioned in typical grammar books for a language, because it can be taken for granted that all readers know them.

As Chomsky has pointed out, a single sentence such as “John ate an apple” can set the values for the major word-order parameters in English.

In first language acquisition, for instance,

Cromer (1987) showed that exposure to ten

sentences with easy/eager to please

constructions every three months was enough

to teach children the difference between

these two constructions.

Morgan (1986) demonstrates that certain

aspects of syntax may be unlearnable if the

input does not have clear clues to its phrase

structure.

UG theory minimises the acquisition of syntax,

maximises the acquisition of vocabulary items

with lexical entries for the privileges of

occurrence and so on.

Cook (1990) drew some implications for the

classroom of the distinction between External

Language and Internal Language approaches to

linguistics introduced by Chomsky (1986).

External Language

Internal Language

At the level of goals, it suggests that teaching

should not produce ersatz native speakers

so much as people who can stand between

two languages and interpret one to the other

– what Byram (1990) calls “intercultural

communicative competence”.

The UG model is a reminder of the cognitive

nature of language: L2 learning is the

creation of language knowledge in the

mind as well as the creation of the ability

to interact with other people.