WHAT DOES UG CONSIST OF?

We have seen earlier that, according to this view of language learning , the learners initial state is supposed to consist of a set of universal principles which specify some limited possibilities of variation, expressible in terms of parameters which need to be fixed in one of the few possible ways (Saleemi 1992, p.58).

PRINCIPLE
Principle of structure dependency which states that language is organized in such a way that is crucially depends on the structural relationships between elements in a sentence. WORD, MOPRPHEMES, ETC
( this means is that words are regroup into higher-level structures which are the units which form the basis of language. )

Example case
a) She bought a new car yesterday. b) My friend bought a new car yesterday. c) The friend that I met in Australia last year bought a new car yesterday. d) The friend I am closest to and who was so supportive when I lost my job two years ago bought a new car yesterday.

 We know that all the subject in the sentence She,

Are THE SAME kind of GROUPING and perform SAME ROLE in the sentence, and in fact might refer to one single individual.

 More over we also know that we could carry on adding details about friend more or less ad infinitum by using devices such as and, or that, which, etc. This kind of structural grouping is called as Phrase, and in the examples we actually are dealing with a NP as the main element. Alla languange in the world are strutured in that way, which a sentence consist at least NP and VP
she is playing

my mom is cooking

 Many operations we routinely perform on language. For example, we ask a question in English we change the canonical oreder of the sentence ( SUBJECT VERB-OBJECT) your cat is friendly is your cat friendly? That is not based on the linear order of the sentences, but is structure-dependent. We do not move the first auxiliary we encounter, or say, the third word in the sentence

The cat who is friendly is ginger is the cat who friendly is ginger? Who is the cat is friendly is ginger? the correct answer is of course is the cat who is friendly ginger? There is no obvious reason why this should be the case, computers would have no problems dealijg with either of the two artifical rules above. If fact computer find it considerably more difficult to apply a rule which is based in a hierarchical structure as is the case in this natural language example.

 Same restriction apply to passive sentences the car hits the girl Can be made into a passive by raising the object NP to the in front at the subject position. Other language also exactly the same
Structure-dependency can therefore be put forward as a universal principle of a language; whenever elements of the sentences are moved to form passives, questions, or whatever, such movement takes account of the structural relationships of the sentences rather the linear order of words.
( Cook and Newson 1996, p.11 )

 The UG theory claims that the fact that children never use computationally simple rules based on linear ordering but instead use computationally complex structure-dependent rules is because the hierarchical nature of human is part of the human mind, and does not have to be learnt as such.

PARAMETERS
If structure dependency principle seems common to all language in terms of phrases, there are many other rules which differ between language. This is where parameters come in.

HEAD PARAMETER
Specifies the position of the head in relation to its compliment within phrases for different languages. Deals with the way in which phrases themselves are structured. Each phrases has a central element, called a head. In NP, head is the noun, in VP, head is the verb and so on.

 One dimension along which language vary is the position of the head in relation to other elements inside the phrase, called complements. Example: NP the girl with blue trousers, the head noun girl appears to the left of the complement with blue trousers. English is a head-first language, because the head of the phrase always appears before its complements.

 Meanwhile, Japanese is a head last language, because complements precede the head inside phrases. E.g.: e wa kabe ni kakatte imasu (picture wall on is hanging) English the picture is hanging on the wall.

 We have a universal principle which tells us that languages are structured into phrases containing a head and optional complements. Parameter has two possible settings which is, head first or head last. This means, children who equipped with UG, do not need to discover that language is structured into phrases, as this principle forms part of the blueprint for language in their mind.

 In theory, the only input the child needs in order to set the head parameter to the correct value is one example of one phrase, and they will then automatically know the internal structure of all other phrases. Radford (1997) claims that: young children acquiring English as their native language seem to set the head parameter at its appropriate head first setting from the very earliest multiword utterances they produce (at around age 18 months), and seem to know (tacitly, not explicitly, of course) that English is a head first language.

 According to Chomsky, a language is not, then, a system of rules, but a set of specifications for parameters in an invariant system of principles of UG (1995, p. 388).

MINIMALISM
Chomskys minimalist programme is proposing concerns parameters. Instead of being linked to specific principle and contained in the structural part of the grammar, parameters would now be contained within the lexicon. Language are different from one another only because their lexicons are different, and all that language acquisition involves is the learning of the lexicon.

 Lexical parameterization hypothesis suggests, is that the parameters are contained in a specific type of category in the lexicon, called functional categories.

FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES
Functional categories are perhaps best explained by contrast to lexical categories which we are already familiar with. Lexical categories are groups of so-called content words such as Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, etc. Other way of conceptualizing the difference between lexical and functional categories is in terms of an open class of words, and a closed class of words.

 Open class of words can add elements quite freely. Close class of words elements cannot easily be added. Recent theory claims that these function words or morphemes also have phrases attached to them in the same way as lexical words do. In fact, these functional phrases are organized in the same way as any other phrase, with the function word of morphemes as head of that phrase.

 The structure of these functional phrases is basically the same as that of lexical phrase, and they can be represented in the same way.