Noam Chomsky: Grammar is the Key to the Uniqueness of Language

Each of us can come up with an infinite number of sentences in our native language, and we're able to do so from an early age, almost as soon as we start to communicate in sentences. How is this possible. In the early 1950s, Noam Chomsky proposed the theory based on the observation that the key to this versatility, seems to be grammar, the familiar grammatical structure of an unfamiliar sentence points us toward its meaning. He suggested that there are grammatical rules that apply to all languages and that the rules are innate. The human brain is hardwired to process language, according to these rules, he labeled this faculty universal grammar, and it's launched lines of inquiry that shaped both the field of linguistics and the emerging field of cognitive science for decades to come. Chomsky and other researchers set out to investigate the two main components of universal grammar. First, whether there are in fact grammar rules that are universal to all languages. And second, whether these rules are hardwired in the brain in attempts to establish universal rules of grammar Chauncy developed an analytical tool known as the generative syntax, which represents the order of words in a sentence in hierarchical syntax trees that show what structures are possible. Based on this tree. We could suggest a grammar rule that adverbs, must occur in from the presence of with more data, it quickly becomes clear that adverts can appear outside of places, but this simplified example illustrates a major problem. It takes a lot of data from each individual language to establish the rules for that language. Before you can begin to determine which rules, all languages might have in common. When Chomsky proposed universal grammar, many languages, lacked the volume of recorded samples necessary to analyze them using generative syntax, even with lots of data mapping the structure of a language is incredibly complex. After 50 years of analysis, we still haven't completely figured it out.

As more linguist data was gathered and analyzed, it became clear that languages around the world differ widely, challenging the theory that there were universal grammar rules in the 1980s. Chomsky revised his theory, in an attempt to accommodate this variation. According to his new hypothesis of principles and parameters, all languages shared certain grammatical principles but could vary in their parameters or the application of these principles. For example, a principle is, that every sentence must have a subject, but the parameter of whether the subject must be explicitly stated could vary between languages, the hypothesis of principle 10 parameters. Still didn't answer the question of which grammatical principles, are you ever saw in the early 2000s Chomsky suggested that there's just one shared principle called recursion, which means structures can be nested inside each other. Take this sentence, which embeds a sentence within a sentence within a sentence, or this sentence, which embeds a noun phrase in a noun phrase in a noun phrase recursion was a good candidate for universal grammar because it can take many forms, however.