LAD

powerpoint

1. WELCOME…

2. LANGUAGE Acquisition DeVICE & UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR A Presentation by Dhanya Vijay. P.V

3. Noam Chomsky was an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. He is also known as the “father of modern linguistics.” Chomsky is of the view that children are born with an innate propensity for language acquisition, and that this ability makes the task of learning a first language easier than it would otherwise be.

4. The human brain is ready naturally for language in the sense when children are exposed to speech, certain general principles for discovering or structuring language automatically begin to operate. Chomsky originally theorized that children were born with a hardwired language acquisition device(LAD) in their brains. He later expanded this idea into that of Universal Grammar , a set of innate principles and adjustable parameters that is common to all languages. The LAD is activated when the child enters the world.

5. The child exploits its LAD to make sense of the utterances heard around it, deriving from this ‘primary linguistic data’- the grammar of the language. LAD is exploited to explain the remarkable speed with which children learn to speak, and the considerable similarity in the way grammatical patterns are acquired across different children and languages. According to Chomsky, the presence of Universal Grammar in the brains of children

6. allow them to deduce the structure of their native languages from mere exposure.

7. U niversal G rammar: According to Chomsky UG focuses to answer three basic questions about human language: What constitutes knowledge of language? How knowledge of language is acquired? How is knowledge of language put to use? Answers for 1 and 2: UG claims that, a set of principles and parameters of grammar is inherited genetically by all human beings.

8. Chomsky’s proposed principles are unvarying and apply to all human languages similar to one another. The biologically endowed UG equip the children naturally with a clear set of expectations about the shape of the language . It also helps the child to construct an internalized grammar quickly when they are exposed to a particular language.

9. Competence and Performance: Linguistic competence is concerned with the child’s grammar, the linguistic input and construction of the grammatical structures. Performance deals with the nature of child’s rule system; the psychological processes the child uses in learning the language.

10. Criticism of Universal Grammar: Primary concern of UG is only syntax. Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse are completely excluded. Social and psychological variables are ignored.

11. THANKYOU…