LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Indigenous Languages Of The Americas, Wukchumni, Universal Grammar

• School: UConn
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 1010
• Professor: Hendrikus Van der hulst

Document Summary

As a potential argument for the innateness hypothesis. Step two: explanation: formulating hypotheses, building theories. Languages can differ in all aspects of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics) Nevertheless, all languages seem to share certain properties (linguistic) universals shared properties. Something that appears to be true of everything. E(cid:454): it is a u(cid:374)i(cid:448)ersal fa(cid:272)t that all people are . In all society, children learn languages in the same way: without explicit instruction, by just being exposed to it. Any child, growing up anywhere can learn any language. Universals support the idea of an innate ug because the postulation of an innate system predicts that language share properties in common. This prediction is borne out by the existence of universals. But, the logic is not accurate, because what have to show that for at least some universals there is no other plausible alternative explanation. Just because we cannot find an alternative explanation, that does not mean there is none.