Norm Chomsky and Universal Language (Grammar) .
(oliverabraham (at) gmx.de) Via Chomsky.info
Norm Chomsky is a well known linguist who was born to "Dr. William (Zev) Chomsky and Elsie Simonofsky in Philadelphia on December 7, 1928" (Szabó). He is considered the "best know linguistic in the words for about the last fifty years" (Rowe, p. 136). He is also one of the most cited living person and the top ten "most quoted people of all time" (Rowe, p. 136-137). His first book, Syntactic Structures, was a revolution to the study of language. Not only is Chomsky intelligent with language but also with logic and mathematics. Chomsky is very vocal in many areas outside of linguistic, especially politics.
The major school of though in the 1950's was the structural approach, which was championed by many in the field of linguistics, especially Leonard Bloomfield. The type of structuralism that Bloomfield devolved was descriptive. It starts with "describing and classifying sounds and then morphemes in terms of their function" (Rowe, p. 137). In a nut shell Bloomfields ideas were the study of meaning or semantics. "Bloomfield underscored the importance of surface structure, or the words a speaker says" ("Mentalism."). However others thought this idea was too abstract, so they ignored it. Chomsky's book started to challenge Bloomberg's ideas. His view was that language is learned by our internal motivation to acquire language. He believed that as humans evolved so did this idea. It seemed to evolve into a "universal innate human ability to learn and analyze linguistic information " (Rowe, p. 137). This universal language gives use rules that we all follow. These rules are general rules that allow us to learn rules that are specific to our own language.
(NewYorker.com)
Gary Marcus from The New Yorker Magazine did an article on Norm Chomsky in 2012 and is quoted as saying "For Chomsky, the interest in linguistics isn’t so much whether one language uses infinitives and another uses subjunctives but whether all languages are, at some level, deeply related and constrained by what Chomsky dubbed “universal grammar”(Marcus, 2012). Chomsky' ideas of universal grammar changed everything, not just in linguistics, but almost ever field that deals with the brain. For instance in developmental psychology this idea of universal grammar was pivotal in changing the entire field. Psychologist were asking if children actually knew anything about language before they start to use it. Chomsky's ideas emphasizes this ideas that a child subconsciously knows about their own language before they learn to speak, referring to the idea of deep structure. His book "laid a conceptual foundation for a new, cognitivist approach to linguistics and provided philosophers with a new framework for thinking about human language and the mind" (Szabó). This framework can bee seen well within this image of Chomsky's Mind Map
Chomsky's Mind Map 
(Gasto, Nicolas)
As a future educator, I see Chomsky's idea with English speaking students. We have students that subconsciously know when a sentence is not grammatically correct. When students are learning to read and pronounce new words they know which consonant sounds are aspirated when they follow a vowel. These ideas are subconscious to an English speaker. However, if I was attempting to teach English as a second language to a Japanese speaking student, I would run into difficulties because of the different between our two languages. Chomsky's idea of universal grammar does apply to all languages. However due to the differences within languages, teaching a child to learn a new language that is different from their native language can create difficulties for both the student and teacher. These differences would cause a teacher to have to explain some of these subconscious ideas that English Speakers already due without thinking about them. While Chomsky argues that there are an "infinite, with no end to the number of possible sentences that you can produce and comprehend"(Marcus, 2012) in any given language, we are also aware that in Japanese language compared to English that there are different sounds. In Japanese they do not have the sound for /l/. They do however have a /r/ phoneme causing a word like lucky to be pronounced more like /raki/ (Rowe, p. 72). Chomsky's idea of Universal Grammar really does apply to individual languages but does not transcend the lines of learning different languages.
(quotes.lifehack.org)
Chomsky takes his idea to a new level explaining that if "children bridge the gap between finite and infinite, from the finite input that they have heard to the infinity of what they can comprehend" (Marcus 2012). Then there is the idea of his hypothesis "that language arises in the mind of the child through a realization in the brain of a language faculty, which begins in an initial state (also called Universal Grammar), goes through a series of intermediate states, and reaches a steady state, which is no longer subject to fundamental changes" (Szabó). This idea was extremely controversial because it suggested that "the human brain is somehow equipped at birth with a Universal Grammar out of which all human languages later develop" (Cruse). Many recent studies of the brain and attempting to map it are showing us that what we thought we knew of the brain and its capacity are in fact just touching the surface. The brain is a way more complex organ then we ever though, so this lends itself to Chomsky's ideas of universal language and the ability for us to be born with these abilities for language. Up till now, Chomsky's ideas with regards to Universal Language can not be proved or disproved. Chomsky has argued "persuasively for the existence of a Universal Grammar out of which all human languages are born, but as a materialist he is required to believe (1) that this grammar is somehow concealed in the physical workings of the brain itself, and (2) that it is the end-product of a succession of evolutionary accidents (DNA mutations) occurring in Darwinian fashion over countless millions of years" (Cruse). With this idea Chomsky was faced with explaining his ideas more. While the idea of language being simply learned, or imitated has been suggested as only part of language, and that the universal grammar would help explain the other parts of language that children seem to just know. Chomsky is quoted as saying in the article "Chomsky and the Universal Grammar " by Don Cruse ,"We may think of UG as an intricately structured system, but one that is only partially "wired up". The system is associated with a finite set of switches, each of which has a finite number of positions (perhaps two). Experience is required to set the switches. When they are set, the system functions" (Cruse).
(quotes.lifehack.org/)
Chomsky and other linguistic experts argues "that the constraints needed for English grammar are not learned"( Harman). The idea of Chomsky and these experts leads itself to believe that a "child is capable of acquiring any language depending on its environment, the same constraints should be found in the grammar of any language and should be part of universal grammar" (Harman). This idea that language, to some degree, is subconscious or event innate to each human born is strange to wrap our minds around, but makes some sense too. We don't truly teach a child to talk as an infant, but we encourage them to mimic our actions in order to repeat certain sounds or utterances. We know that as a child learns from its parents and the environment around them, will pick up the que that older humans already have subconsciously learned, therefore creating a cycle of learning. Chomsky's Universal Grammar lends itself to fill in the gaps of learning, and believes that what can't be taught is already ingrained into our brain at birth. Some evidence to support Chomsky's idea of ‘language acquisition device’ or LAD are how when a child learns to speak they never have grammatical errors where they put the subject, verb or object in the wrong order or placement. Another example is that when a child says "I drawed" instead of "I drew" we can see that children have learned more then just through imitation alone.
Take a moment to view this short video on YouTube.com about Norm Chomsky and this idea of Universal Grammar. This short video really reflect how Chomsky felt about all children being born with a fundamental concept of language. It goes on to reflect that all languages have nouns and verbs. All languages have negatives and questions, as well as plural versions of words.
Via the website www.aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/, they give us a great example of a conversation between an adult parent and a child. Within this conversation we see that children might use the incorrect language but when corrected understand what the adult is saying. These ideas are something that linguistics like Chomsky believe that a child must have innate understanding of their language even at birth. They believe that a child couldn't understand the ideas of adding -ed suffix or incorrect use of plural nouns from simply imitating.
Dialogue –
Parent and Child (3 years old)
Parent: What did you do today?
Child: Me drawed a cat. (applies –ed suffix rule but gets wrong)
Parent: You drew a cat?
Child: Yeah. (understands correction)
Parent: Who did you play with at breaktime?
Child: Me played with Sarah and Helen. (wrong pronoun – not learnt passively)
Parent: That sound fun. Now what do you want for tea?
Child: Dunno. What you having?
Parent: Daddy and I are having fish.
Child: You having fishes? (incorrect use of plural noun but shows child applying rules)
Parent: Yes. I’ll do you some fish fingers and if you’re a good girl and eat them all you can have a sweetie. (applying plural noun rule)
Child: Me want two sweeties.
Parent: Alright then. Now go and watch Postman Pat while I start the tea.
Child: When Daddy coming home? (gets SVO order correct all the time)
Parent: He’ll be here soon.
The ideas and concepts within linguistics is changing. Each year more words are created and we have new entrées into Urban Dictionary to mark these change. But according to Chomsky we need to continue to evolve and change and with doing so we need to teach our younger generations differently as we progress. These changes are fundamentally, and as a future teacher I agree whole heartedly. I am a big advocate of teaching to a child in the way they can learn, and since no two children are alike, I expect to have to teach my students today differently then they were taught five years ago. Even for Chomsky, he has had the idea of Universal Grammar put to the test with the new studies of the brain. His ideas as well as those of famous scientist before him, like Einstein and Newton, have been faced with either changing their original evaluations or building on what they believe and what science is exploring. So whether or not Universal Grammar is proven correct or not, we have to believe to some extent that we are all born with an idea of the language we will grow up speaking. There are so many finite things to learn within linguistics that it would be almost impossible to completely understand all of these ideas in our lifetime. We have to believe in what we can not see or prove to help explain how as infants we are able to communicate with universal grammar.
Work Cited Page
"4.1 Child Language Acquisition." I Love English Language. N.p., 10 Dec. 2007. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.
Chomsky-- Universal Grammer. Perf. Norm Chomsky. 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
Cruse, Don. "Chomsky and the Universal Grammar." Chomsky and the Universal Grammar. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2016
Gasto, Nicolas. "Mind Map: Noam Chomsky." Englishandliteraturenicolasgasto. Blogger.com, 18 Mar. 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2016.
Harmon, Gilbert. "Why Chomskean Linguistics Is Mentalistic." Princeton University. N.p., 3 July 2004. Web. 8 Feb. 2016
Marcus, Gary. "Happy Birthday, Noam Chomsky - The New Yorker." The New Yorker. The New Yorker, 06 Dec. 2012. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.
"Mentalism." Noam Chomsky's Mentalism. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.
"THE NOAM CHOMSKY WEBSITE." Chomsky.info : The Noam Chomsky Website. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016
"Norm Chomsky Quotes." Lifehack Quotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2016.
Rowe, Bruce M., and Diane P. Levine. A Concise Introduction to Linguistics. Boston: Pearson/A and B, 2009. Print.
Szabó, Zoltán Gendler. "Noam Chomsky." Noam Chomsky. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.
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