1. Universal Grammar Chomsky and his followers no longer use the term LAD, but refer to the child’s innate endowment as Universal Grammar (UG). UG is a theory in linguistics, usually credited to Noam Chomsky, proposing that the ability to learn grammar is hard- wired into the brain. The theory suggests that linguistic ability manifests itself without being taught (see Poverty of the stimulus), and that there are properties that all natural human languages share.

2. Universal Grammar: The system of categories, operations, and principles shared by all human languages and considered to be innate. In linguistics, the theory of universal grammar holds that there are certain basic structural rules that govern language that all humans know without having to learn them. This is one way to explain how humans acquire language — if the brain is already primed to understand certain sentence structures, it explains how children can understand and speak sentences that they've never heard before. Supporters of this theory point to the elements that are common in different languages as evidence.

3. Universal Grammar (UG) continues the tradition which Chomsky introduced in his earlier work. Two concepts in particular have been of central importance: (1) What needs to be accounted for in language acquisition is linguistic competence, or speaker/hearers’ underlying knowledge of language. This is distinguished from linguistic performance, or speaker-hearers ’actual use of language in specific instances. (2) Such knowledge of language goes beyond what could be learned from the input people receive. This is the logical problem of language learning, or the poverty-of- the stimulus argument.

4. Chomsky and his followers have claimed since the 1950s that the nature of speaker/hearers’ competence in their native language can be accounted for only by innate knowledge that the human species is genetically endowed with. If a language faculty indeed exists, it is a potential solution to the “logical problem” because its existence would mean that children already have a rich system of linguistic knowledge which they bring to the task of L1 learning. They wouldn’t need to learn this underlying system, but only build upon it “on the basis of other inner resources activated by a limited and fragmentary linguistic experience”.

5. UG- Principles and Parameters 1.the invariants of human language (the principles) 2.Cross-linguistic variation (the parameters) The central idea of principles and parameters is that a person's syntactic knowledge can be modeled with two formal mechanisms: A finite set of fundamental principles that are common to all languages; e.g., that a sentence must always have a subject, even if it is not overtly pronounced. A finite set of parameters that determine syntactic variability amongst languages. Example for parameters: In English and in French, the plural is formed by adding (s) to the singular. However, there are many exceptions: first, you cannot add (s) if the word ends in (z) and second, when the word ends in (eau), the plural is formed by adding (x). There are also six words that also form their plural with (x): bijou, caillou, chou, genou, hibou, joujou, pou. Here are some examples:

6. An example of an early principle which Chomsky posited stipulates that every phrase in every language has the same elements including a Head: e.g. a noun phrase (NP) must always have a noun head (N), a verb phrase (VP) must always have a verb head (V), a prepositional or postpositional phrase (PP) must always have a preposition or postposition head (P), and so forth. The only choice, or parameter setting, that speakers have in different languages is Head Direction, or the position of the head in relation to other elements in the phrase. There are only two possible choices: head-initial or head-final.

7. UG-Principles and Parameters Children who are learning English L1 receive input that lets them know that English generally has a head-initial parameter setting. This is because they hear sentences with the following word order: a. John [kicked the ball] VP I have put brackets around the VP in this example, and underlined the head of that phrase, which is the verb kicked. The word order of this VP provides evidence that the English parameter setting is headinitial, because the verb kicked comes in front of the ball. b. John rode [in the car] PP Brackets are around the PP in this example, and its head is the preposition in. This provides additional evidence that the parameter setting for English is head-initial, because the preposition comes in front of the car in the phrase.

8. UG-Principles and Parameters In contrast, children who are learning Turkish L1 receive input that lets them know that Turkish has a head-final parameter setting. They hear sentences with the following word order: a. Ali [topa vurdu] VP This provides evidence that the Turkish parameter setting is headfinal, because the verb «vurdu» comes after ‘topa’ in the VP.

9. UG-Principles and Parameters Children acquiring English or Turkish as their L1 need to hear only a limited amount of input to set the parameter for this principle correctly. That parameter setting then presumably guides them in producing the correct word order in an unlimited number of utterances which they have not heard before, since the general principle stipulates that all phrases in a language tend to have essentially the same structure.

11. Because knowledge of principles and parameters is postulated to be innate, children are assumed to be able to interpret and unconsciously analyze the input they receive and construct the appropriate L1 grammar.

12. UG-P OSITIVE EVIDENCE &N EGATIVE EVIDENCE Positive evidence is evidence that something is possible in the language being learned. For example, if a learner of Spanish encounters sentences that have no subject, this serves as positive evidence that subjects do not (always) have to be overtly expressed in Spanish. Negative evidence is evidence that something is not possible. For example, in English, one can say He sometimes goes there, Sometimes he goes there, or He goes there sometimes, but it is ungrammatical to say *He goes sometimes there.

13. UG-P OSITIVE EVIDENCE &N EGATIVE EVIDENCE The child language literature suggests that negative evidence is not frequent and can therefore not be a necessary condition for acquisition. Because positive evidence alone cannot delineate teh range of possible and impossible sentences, and because negative evidence is not frequently forthcoming, there must innate principles that constrain the possibilities of grammar formation.

14. I NITIAL S TATE The initial state refers to the beginning point of learning. A initial state view based on UG argues that babies are born with an innate capactiy for language. But for SLA the following question can be asked: What is the nature of the linguistic knowledge with which learners begin SLA process? There are two contrating views about that: 1. Fundamental Difference Hypothesis 2. Access to UG Hypothesis

15. Fundamental Difference Hypothesis This hypothesis starts from the belief that, with regard to language learning, children and adults are different in many important ways. Thus, FDH argues that L2 learners do not have access to UG.

16. Access to UG Hypothesis According to this hypothesis we need an explanation for the fact that learners eventually know more about the language than they could reasonably have learned if they had to depend entirely on the input they are exposed to. The implication is that knowledge of UG must be available to second language learners as well as to first language learners.

17. The Bottleneck Hypothesis: This hypothesis states that L2 learners are able to acquire syntax and semantics, but the main challange is the inflectional morphemens. Inflectional morphemes serve as grammatical markers that indicate tense, number, possession, or comparison. Inflectional morphemes in English include the suffixes -s (or -es); 's (or s'); -ed; -en; -er; -est; and -ing.

18. Markedness Differential Hypothesis: One way to think of markedness is that an unmarked form, whether phonological or syntactic, is one that more common, more usual, in the world’s languages than a marked one

19. In phonology, the most common syllable structure which occurs in languages of the world is CV (consonant + vowel, as in me and ba-nana), so this structure is “unmarked.” In vocabulary, the preposition in denotes location while the preposition into is more complex, denoting both location and directionality. Into is thus “marked” in contrast with in because it is both structurally and conceptually more complex. In syntax, the basic word order in sentences of SVO (subject–verb– object) is more common in languages of the world than is SOV. SVO is thus relatively “unmarked” and SOV relatively “marked.” "Lion" can refer to either male or female lions, whereas "lioness" refers to only female lions. In this example "lioness" is marked and "lion" is unmarked. This is because "lion" is the more general term.