Vivian Cook

Kelvin Castillo Isabel Daz Espriella Italia Garca Enrquez Eduardo Rojas Cesar Ruz

 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:

Principles and parameters grammar.

The Chomskyan UG model of aquisition is based on the theory of syntax. Language is knowledge stored in the mind.

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.

within these principles It also has parameters

whose values are set to the actual language it learns.
P E R M A N E N T tune the principles to a particular language.

I know!

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?


A person who knows English knows the same principles and parameters as a person who knows Spanish but has set the value of the prodrop parameter differently.
Hes going home Its raining Voy a casa Llueve A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable

The Universal Grammar model of language acquisition

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.

 Parameters are like electric switches that are moved to

one position or the other.

Example: pro-drop.

A child learning English needs to move the switches to nonA child learning Spanish to move the switch to pro-drop


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-prodrop. In other hand, a child learning Spanish would start from the same natural setting and change it

to pro-drop.

young English children Hymes (1986) claims that

often produce sentence without subjects

Want more bubbles Now 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 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.

principles


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

 from the underlying Although this sentence is derived

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

L1 and L2 learners The claim for differences between

instance, adults learners have

the verb into second position.

of

germna is scarcely by itself sufficient to disprove access

to UG by all L2 learners for all aspects of syntax. For

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

UG and L2 acqisition
What are the initial L2 parameter settings? PARAMETER
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 learners 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 learners choice learning access.

Multicompetence
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.


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.

UG and Language Teaching

Language teachers must look elsewhere for ideas about communicative competence, pragmatic competence, or listening and speaking skils.

UG is concerned with obvious things about language. Ideas like structuredependency 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.

by definition

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.