L1 Grammar Acquisition

Universal Grammar in L1 acquisition

A major task for the first language (L1) acquirer is to arrive at a linguistic

system which accounts for the input, allowing the child to build linguistic representations

and to understand and produce language. UG is proposed as part of an

innate biologically endowed language faculty (e.g. Chomsky 1965, 1981b; Pinker

1984, 1994), which permits the L1 acquirer to arrive at a grammar on the basis of

linguistic experience (exposure to input). UG provides a genetic blueprint, determining

in advance what grammars can (and cannot) be like. In the first place, UG

places requirements on the form of grammars, providing an inventory of possible

grammatical categories and features in the broadest sense, i.e. syntactic, morphological,

phonological and semantic. In addition, it constrains the functioning

of grammars, by determining the nature of the computational system, including

the kinds of operation that can take place, as well as principles that grammars

are subject to. UG includes invariant principles, that is, principles that are generally

true across languages, as well as parameters which allow for variation from

language to language.

Throughout this book it will be presupposed that UG constrains L1 acquisition,

as well as adult native-speaker knowledge of language. That is, grammars of children

and adults conform to the principles and parameters of UG. The child acquires

linguistic competence in the L1. Properties of the language are mentally represented

by means of an unconscious, internalized linguistic system (a grammar).

As Chomsky (1980: 48) puts it, there is : ‘a certain mental structure consisting of

a system of rules and principles that generate and relate mental representations of

various types’.1

UG constitutes the child’s initial state (S0), the knowledge that the child is

equipped with in advance of input. The primary linguistic data (PLD) are critical

in helping the child to determine the precise form that the grammar must take. As

the child takes account of the input, a language-specific lexicon is built up, and

parameters of UG are set to values appropriate for the language in question. The

grammar (G) may be restructured over the course of time, as the child becomes

responsive to different properties of the input. In due course, the child arrives at

a steady state grammar for the mother tongue (SS).

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