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Universal Grammar (UG) is a theory in linguistics, usually credited to Noam Chomsky, proposing that the ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain.〔 It is sometimes known as 'mental grammar', and as opposed to other 'grammars', e.g. prescriptive, descriptive and pedagogical. The theory suggests that linguistic ability manifests itself without being taught (see the poverty of the stimulus argument), and that there are properties that all natural human languages share. It is a matter of observation and experimentation to determine precisely what abilities are innate and what properties are shared by all languages. == Argument == The theory of Universal Grammar proposes that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions (not conditions of extreme sensory deprivation), then they will always develop language with a certain property X (e.g., distinguishing nouns from verbs, or distinguishing function words from lexical words). As a result, property X is considered to be a property of universal grammar in the most general sense (here not capitalized). There are theoretical senses of the term Universal Grammar as well (here capitalized). The most general of these would be that Universal Grammar is whatever properties of a normally developing human brain cause it to learn languages that conform to universal grammar (the non-capitalized, pretheoretical sense). Using the above examples, Universal Grammar would be the innate property of the human brain that causes it to posit a difference between nouns and verbs whenever presented with linguistic data. As Chomsky puts it, "Evidently, development of language in the individual must involve three factors: (1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible; (2) external data, converted to the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range; (3) principles not specific to FL." (is the faculty of language, whatever properties of the brain cause it to learn language. ) So (1) is Universal Grammar in the first theoretical sense, (2) is the linguistic data to which the child is exposed. Occasionally, aspects of Universal Grammar seem to be describable in terms of general details regarding cognition. For example, if a predisposition to categorize events and objects as different classes of things is part of human cognition and directly results in nouns and verbs showing up in all languages, then it could be assumed that rather than this aspect of Universal Grammar being specific to language, it is more generally a part of human cognition. To distinguish properties of languages that can be traced to other facts regarding cognition from properties of languages that cannot, the abbreviation UG * can be used. UG is the term often used by Chomsky for those aspects of the human brain which cause language to be the way it is (i.e. are Universal Grammar in the sense used here) but here for discussion it is used for those aspects which are furthermore specific to language (thus UG, as Chomsky uses it, is just an abbreviation for Universal Grammar, but UG * as used here is a subset of Universal Grammar). In the same article, Chomsky casts the theme of a larger research program in terms of the following question: "How little can be attributed to UG while still accounting for the variety of I-languages attained, relying on third factor principles?" (I-languages meaning internal languages, the brain states that correspond to knowing how to speak and understand a particular language, and third factor principles meaning (3) in the previous quote). Chomsky has speculated that UG might be extremely simple and abstract, for example only a mechanism for combining symbols in a particular way, which he calls Merge. To see that Chomsky does not use the term "UG" in the narrow sense UG * suggested above, consider the following quote from the same article: "The conclusion that Merge falls within UG holds whether such recursive generation is unique to FL or is appropriated from other systems." I.e. Merge is part of UG because it causes language to be the way it is, is universal, and is not part of (2) (the environment) or (3) (general properties independent of genetics and environment). Merge is part of Universal Grammar whether it is specific to language or whether, as Chomsky suggests, it is also used for example in mathematical thinking. The distinction is important because there is a long history of argument about UG *, whereas most people working on language agree that there is Universal Grammar. Many people assume that Chomsky means UG * when he writes UG (and in some cases he might actually mean UG *, though not in the passage quoted above). Some students of universal grammar study a variety of grammars to abstract generalizations called linguistic universals, often in the form of "If X holds true, then Y occurs." These have been extended to a variety of traits, such as the phonemes found in languages, what word orders languages choose, and why children exhibit certain linguistic behaviors. Later linguists who have influenced this theory include Noam Chomsky and Richard Montague, developing their version of this theory as they considered issues of the Argument from poverty of the stimulus to arise from the constructivist approach to linguistic theory. The application of the idea of Universal Grammar to the area of second language acquisition (SLA) is represented mainly by the McGill linguist Lydia White. Syntacticians generally hold that there are parametric points of variation between languages, although heated debate occurs over whether UG constraints are essentially universal due to being "hard-wired" (Chomsky's Principles and Parameters approach), a logical consequence of a specific syntactic architecture (the Generalized Phrase Structure approach) or the result of functional constraints on communication (the functionalist approach). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Universal grammar」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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