I don’t think modern linguist(ic)s should bother discussing “universal grammar” and the ideas connected to this concept any longer. 

“Universal grammar” is a notion based on speculative introspection – Martin Haspelmath (p.c.) used to call it “philosophy of syntax” – and dogma rather than empirical evidence. Worse, proponents of “UG” usually keep staring at human language though an anglo-centric lens and plain out refuse to acknowledge facts that do not fit their dogma. This is unscientific methodology and in itself already reason enough to discard the theory.

Apart from dogmatism, there a handful of other problems concerning this theory.

1. It is based on circular reasoning. First, English is taken as the model for human language, widely ignoring data from typologically extremely different languages. Any “results” of UG-based ruminations on language structure or language acquisition are then generalized and taken to be evidence for the uniformity of human languages and proof for the universality of features or parameters posited in the beginning. 
   
2. It is mechanistic. There is no wholesale one-to-one correspondence between units of any given two languages. The rule are one-to many correspondences in translation. This is true not only for lexical units and idiomatic expressions, but also for grammatical morphemes and categorial distinctions.
   Not all of these differences can be made compatible by subsuming them under some abstract categories. 
3. It is insensitive to context. As any translator or interpreter can tell you, it is impossible to translate more than the most basic expressions without taking into account extralinguistic factors which make up the communicative setting, the so-called situational context of an utterance.
   Any model of automatic translation or of automated speech production must be capable of taking sociolinguistic, pragmatic and contextual information into account. Yet, this is not provided for in UG.
4.  It assumes unnecessary complexity. Some grammatical properties are taken to be universal. It has been demonstrated by several linguists working with natural languages in the field that languages exist and do function without some of these properties. Among them are things like recursion (Everett) or the existence of different lexical classes and parts of speech or of some kind of inflection (Gil 2005).  
   
5. It assumes innateness of linguistic structures and a genetically hardwired “language faculty”. Everyone who ever watched children acquire language knows what to think of that. So do neurologists, geneticists and psychologists. If there actually was an innate “universal grammar” that only needed parameter setting, feral children or other children growing up without relevant input should automatically produce some kind of self-made language which displays the “default setting” grammar that is claimed to be genetically preprogrammed.

Unfortunately, UG has nevertheless grown a huge number of loyal followers who themselves became influential figures in linguistics. Chomsky rose to stardom because he had a nice theory at the right time, when people at M.I.T. communications lab got an awful lot of money from the Pentagon and others to develop machine translation in the light of the experience in WWII and the Korean war. Military intelligence* needed to have huge amounts of intercepted communications in Japanese respectively Korean translated quickly yet efficiently. Admitting that one’s theory of “universal grammar” – which is an essential prerequisite for “easy” automated translation – is flawed or entirely useless would be killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

The longer one keeps up this (self-)deception, however, the harder it is to let go of it. That’s why these theories, though repeatedly proven use- and pointless, are being vehemently defended by those making a living off maintaining the illusion that “universal grammar” exists.

Literature:

• How Noam Chomsky’s world works by David Hawkes
  
• Most writings by Daniel L. Everett and/or on Piraha are directly opposing Chomsky’s views on UG.
  
• *The* eulogy on UG:  The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science by Nicholas Evans and Stephen C. Levinson in BBS 32 (2009), 429-492.
  
• Vyvyan Evans (2015): There is no language instinct.  http://aeon.co/magazine/culture/there-is-no-language-instinct/
  
• David Gil (2005): Isolating-monocategorial-associational language. In Cohen, H. and C. Lefebvre eds. Handbook of categorization in cognitive science. 347-379. Oxford: Elsevier. 
  
• Ewa Dąbrowska: What exactly is Universal Grammar, and has anyone seen it? In:  Front. Psychol., 23 June 2015, 
• See also: The linguistics wars
  

*) Yes, that is an oxymoron.

(JW)

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April 26, 2023 at 07:08AM