Chomsky’s OTayAelastel Grammar V. J. Cook and Mark Newson1 The Nature of Universal Grammar ‘The idea of Universal Grammar (UG) put forward by Noam Chomsky has been a crucial driving force in linguistics. Whether linguists agree with it or not, they have defined themselves by their reactions to it, not only in terms of general concepts of language and language acquisition, but also in how they carry out linguistic description. From the 1960s to the 1980s, UG became a flash-point for disciplines outside linguistics such as psychology, computer parsing of language and first language acquisition, even if these areas have tended to lose contact in recent years. The aim of this book is to convey why Chomsky’s theories of lan- guage still continue to be stimulating and adventurous and why they have important consequences for all those working with language. This book is intended as an introduction to Chomsky’s UG Theory for those who want a broad overview with sufficient detail to see how its main concepts work rather than for those who are specialist students of syntax, for whom technical introductions such as Adger (2003) and Hornstein et al. (2005) are more appropriate. Nor does it cover Chomsky’s political views, still as much a thorn in the side of the US establishment as ever, for example Chomsky (2004a). While the book pays attention to the current theory, called the Minimalist Program, it concentrates on providing a background to the overall concepts of Chomsky’s theory, which have unfolded over six decades. Where possible, concepts are illustrated through Chomsky’s own words. The distinctive feature of the book is the combination of Chomsky’s general ideas of language and language acquisi- tion with the details of syntax. ‘This opening chapter sets the scene by discussing some of the general issues of Chomsky’s work on the notion of UG, Following this, chapter 2 discusses central concepts of the framework and how these relate to Chomsky’s views on language acquisition. The next two chapters provide an introduction to the syntax of Government/Binding Theory in terms of structure and 6f movement respectively. Chapter 5 looks at Chomskyan approaches to first language acqui- sition, chapter 6 at second language acquisition. Then chapters 7 and 8 outline the current Minimalist Program, again separating structure and movement. Two conventions followed in this book need briefly stating. As usual in lin- guistics books, an asterisk indicates an ungrammatical sentence. Example sentences, phrases and structures are numbered for ease of reference, i.e.:2. 1 The Nature of Universal Grammar (2) “That John left early seemed. While much of the discussion is based upon English for convenience, the UG Theory gains its power by being applied to many languages. Indeed the past twenty years have seen a proliferation in the languages studied, which will be drawn on when possible. It should perhaps be pointed out that the sentences used in this book are examples of particular syntactic issues rather than necessarily being based on complete recent analyses of the languages in question. 1.1 The early development of Universal Grammar Theory ‘The approach adopted in this book is to look at the general ideas of the Chomskyan theory of UG without reference to their historical origins. Nevertheless some allu- sions have to be made to the different versions that have been employed over the years and the history of the theory needs to be briefly sketched, partly so that the reader is not confused by picking up a book with other terminology Development has taken place at two levels. On one level are the general concepts about language and language acquisition on which the theory is based. The origins of such ideas as competence and performance or the innateness of language can be traced back to the late fifties or mid-sixties. These have grown continuously over the years rather than being superseded or abandoned. On this level the UG Theory is recognizable in any of its incarnations and the broad out- lines have remained substantially the same despite numerous additions. On another level come ideas about the description of syntax, which fall into definite historical phases. Different periods in the Chomskyan description of syntax have tended to become known by the names of particular books. Each was characterized by certain concepts, which were often rejected by the next period; hence the statements of one period are often difficult to translate into those of the next. Unlike the continuity of the general ideas, there are shifts in the concepts of syntax, leading to a series of apparent discontinuities and changes of direction. The original model, Syntactic Structures, took its name from the title of Chomsky’s 1957 book, which established the notion of ‘generative grammar’ itself, with its emphasis on explicit ‘generative’, formal description through ‘rewrite rules’ such as $ + NP VP, as described below. It made a separation between phrase structure rules that generated the basic structures, called ‘kernel sentences’, and transformations which altered these in various ways by turning them into pas- sive or negative sentences etc.; hence its popular name was ‘transformational gen- erative grammar’ or ‘TGG’. Its most memorable product was the sentence: (2) Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. intended to demonsirate that sentences could be grammatical but meaningless and hence that syntax is independent of semantics. This sentence became so widely known that attempts were made to create poems that included it naturally (after all, Andrew Marvell wrote of ‘a green thought in a green shade’).