Children are able to acquire language despite being exposed to incomplete and erroneous data. Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar (UG) explains this by proposing that the human brain contains innate knowledge about language in the form of principles and parameters. According to UG, all languages share common structural properties governed by principles, but they can vary in terms of parameters like word order. UG allows for both systematicity and variation across languages during language acquisition.

1. Universal Grammar and Parametric
Variation

2. How do children acquire
language?
 Children are exposed to (1) data containing
errors, (2) incomplete data
 Different children are exposed to different
data
 Their errors are rarely corrected by their
parents
 Even when they are corrected, they still
„make‟ the same errors during early
childhood
Child
Language
acquisition

4.  CHILD: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and
we patted them. ADULT: Did you say your
teacher held the baby rabbits. CHILD:
Yes. ADULT: What did you say she did? CHILD:
She holded the baby rabbits and we patted
them. ADULT: Did you say she held them
tightly? CHILD: No, she holded them loosely.
 How is it then that all children are able to
acquire their first language effectively?

5. Chomsky‟s explanation:
 Children are guided by innate knowledge during
language acquisition which gives an acquisition
procedure for picking the correct grammar
 This innate knowledge is known as Universal
Grammar

6. UG: Definition
the study of general
principles believed to
underlie the grammatical
phenomena of all
languages

7.  The theory of UG was developed by Noam
Chomsky who made the argument that the
human brain contains a limited set of rules for
organizing language. In turn, there is an
assumption that all languages have a common
structural basis.
 This set of rules is known as universal grammar.

8.  O‟Grady: UG refers to “the system of
categories , operations and
principles that are shared by all
languages”.

9.  Universal grammar suggests that all languages
are fundamentally alike with respect to the basis
of syntax.
 Eg:
Every language has a basic word order
(English – SVO, Japanese – SOV, Malay?
Mandarin?)
Known as PRINCIPLE of UG

10.  Note:
 UG does not assume that languages must be
alike in all respects.
 It posits that languages tend to differ with respect
to certain parameters.
 Parameters:
- Variations that a principle of grammar manifests
among different languages
(A Dictionary of Linguistics and phonetics)
- Alternatives from which individual languages
may choose (O‟Grady & Archibald)

11. Examples of parameters in syntax :
(1) head-direction parameter
whether heads, such as Verb, Noun, and Preposition precede or follow
their complement
English: head precedes complement (eg took some money)
Malay?
Tamil?
(2) the null-subject (or ‘pro-drop’) parameter
whether finite clauses can have empty pronominal subjects
Eg. Italian:
Non vuole mangiare.
[She] "Does not want to eat."

12.  3. word–order (branching)
 Some languages such as English are right
branching (VO); others are left branching (OV)

13. In short:
 UG provides all languages with the same general
type of syntactic mechanisms (principles).
 But variations (parameters/parametric variations)
do exist.

14. UG shows that grammar is not only systematic
but also creative
As O‟Grady notes:
“The syntactic component of the grammar is
both creative and systematic”
.