PRINCIPLES AND

PARAMETERS OF UNIVERSAL
GRAMMAR
Presented To:
RESPECTED SIR IRFAN LODHI

Presented By:
SADIA QAMAR
Roll No. 1
M.Phil
1st Semester

ISLAMIA UNIVERSITY,
BAHAWALPUR
0

PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS OF

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
Universal Grammar (UG)
The system of principle,.
Conditions and rules that are properties of all human languages .
the essence of human language.
(Chomsky 1976)

The term principles and parameters

theory has, however become more popular in recent years as it conveys
that unique central claim of the theory that language knowledge consists
of principles universal to all languages and parameters that vary from one
language to another.

The

combination

of

Universal

Grammar with principles and parameters theory inevitably leads to a

complex overall theory involving several sub theories, but at the same
time it creates a new simplify: knowledge of language comes down to
variations in a small number of properties.

UG is a theory of knowledge, not of

behaviour, its concern is with the internal structure of human mind.

UG theory holds that the speaker

knows a set of principles that apply to all languages, and parameters that
vary within clearly defined limits from one language to another.

UG theory is not making vague or

unverifiable suggestions about properties of the mind but precise
statements based on specific evidence.

The general concepts of the theory are

inextricably connected with the specific details.

The importance of UG theory is its

attempt to integrate.

PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS OF UG

1.

Structure Dependency

Structure dependency asserts that knowledge of language relies on the

structural relationship in the sentence rather than on the sequence of words.
To understand this, we first need to establish the concept of phrase structure.

A major assumption in linguistics

since the 1930s has been that sentences consist of phrases structural
groupings of words: sentences have phrase structure.

For example:

The child drew an elephant.

It breaks up into
Noun Phrase (NP) the child
Verb Phrase (VP) drew an elephant the VP further breaks up into a verb (V)
drew
Noun phrase (NP) an elephant.

Tree Diagram
Sentence

Noun Phrase
the child

Verb Phrase

Verb
Phrase

Noun
Phrase
an elephant

Sentence

These phrases also break up into smaller constituents. The (NP) the child
Noun Phrase
Verb Phrase
consists of a determiner (Det or D) the and an Noun (N) child, while the
NP an elephant consists of a Determiner an and a Noun elephant.
Determiner

the

Noun

Verb

child

drew

Noun Phrase

Determiner

Noun
3

an

elephant

Labeled bracketing
[S [NP The child] [vp drew [NP an elephant]]]
Rewrite rule (Chomsky 1957)
S

NP

VP

VNP

VP

Consist of

Principle of structure-dependency through the relationship of

active and passive sentences in English:

Passive sentences are formed from

active sentences by moving various elements of the sentence around.

The passive sentences:

Barnes was fired by the manager, is taken to be related to the active
sentence.
The manager fired Barnes

The object (Barnes) in the active

sentence moved to be the subject of passive.

The active subject the manager moves

after the verb in the passive and gains a preposition by [thus becoming
a prepositional phrase (PP)].

The verb changes from the active

form fired to the passive form was fired.
The manager, fired the Barnes

Barnes was fired by the manager.

One possibility is that it is the word that occurs in a particular place in the
sentence say the fourth word.

The

manager

fired

Barnes.

But this is not for other passive sentence.

For example, if the prepositional phrase on Tuesday came in the sentence:
On
1

Tuesday
2

the
3

manager
4

fired Barnes
5

Moving the fourth word yield a nonsense passive.

Manager on Tuesday the was fired Barnes.
English passives do not depend on moving the fourth word, or the fifth word
or indeed any other word in a particular numbered place in the sequence of
the sentence.

Major aspect of the principle of structure dependency

Movement in the sentence is not just a matter of recognizing phrases and
then of moving them around but of moving the right element in the right
phrase.

Structure dependency can therefore be

put forward as a universal principle of language: whenever elements of
the sentence are moved to form passives, questions, or whatever, such
movement takes account of the structural relationships of the sentence
rather than the linear order of the words; all known formal operations in
the grammar of English, or of any other language are structure
dependent.

2.

The Language Faculty

Chomsky says:
Human mind has separate part for language acquisition and it differs with
the learning of other things.

The Principle of structure dependency

does not necessarily apply to all aspects of human thinking, it is not at
all clear that such UG Principles could operate in areas of the mind
other than language.

Language faculty separates from

other language faculties such as mathematics, vision, logic and soon.

Language knowledge is separate from

other forms of representation in the mind; it is not the same as knowing
mathematical concepts, for example.

Thus the theory divides the mind into

separate compartments separate modules, each responsible for some
aspect of mental life.

UG is a theory only of the language

module, which has its own set of principles distinct from other modules
and doesnt inter relate with them.

This contrasts with cognitive theories

that assume the mind is a single unitary system, for example
connectionism.

In some ways this resembles the

nineteenth century tradition of faculty psychology which also divided
the mind into autonomous areas (Foder, 1983).

We speak of the body in terms of

organs the heart, the lungs, the liver etc. why not talk about mind in

terms of mental organs the logic organ, the mathematics organ, the
common sense organ, the language organ?

We may usefully think of the

language faculty, the number faculty, and others as mental organs,
analogous to the heart or the visual system or the system of motor
coordination and planning
(Chomsky 1980)

The language faculty is concerned

with an attribute that all people posses.

So Chomsky asserts that language

knowledge is independent of the other aspects of mind.

3.

The Head Parameter

It specifies the order of certain elements in a language.

One distinctive claim is that the

essential element is each phrase is its head.

Thus the verb phrase

Drew an elephant has a head verb (drew)

Noun phrase
The child has a head noun (child)

Prepositional phrase
By the manager has a head preposition (by).

Complements
An important way in which language very concerns where the head occurs
in relationship to other elements of the phrase, called complements.

The head of the phrase can occur on

the left of the complements or on their right.

In the NP:

Education for life

the head noun education appears on the left of the complement for life.

In the VP:

Showed her the way.

One head verb showed appears on the left of the complement her and the
way.

In the PP:

In the car
The head preposition in appears and the left of the complement the car.
There are two possibilities for the structure in human languages.
Head-left

Head-right

Chomsky (1970) suggested that the relative position of heads

and complements needs to be specified only once for all the phrases in a
given language.

Human beings know that phrases can be either head-first or

head-last; an English speaker has learnt that English is head-first; a
speaker of Japanese that Japanese is head-last and soon.

The variation between languages can now be expressed in terms

of heads occur first or last in the phrase. This is head parameter, the
variation in order of elements between languages amounts to a single
choice between head first or head last.

4.

The Projection Principle

Speaker of a language knows

1) What do words in language means?
2) How they can be combined to make sentences?

The theory integrates the syntactic description of the sentence

with the properties of lexical items via the projection principle, which
requires the syntax to accommodate the characteristic of each lexical
item.

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It has always been recognized that there are restrictions on

which words can occur in which constructions.

Some verbs are followed by object NP.

Ayesha prefers could drink but not Ayesha prefers.

Other verbs are not followed by NP, for instance peter fainted.

Not:
Peter fainted the cat.

The linguistics description expresses this through the lexical

entry that each item has in the lexicon.

The lexical entry for each verb in the dictionary has to show
whether or not it is followed by a NP, i.e. whether it is transitive or
intransitive.

A particular verb has it sown combination of possibilities.

The verb want for example can be followed by an object ND.

I want some money

or a phrase starting with to:
I want to leave but it may not be followed by a phrase starting with that
I want that bill leaves. Unlike for instance, believe I believe that bill left.
Hence the entry of want is something like:

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Want verb (-NP/To-phrase) where the slash / shows either / or the

projection principle is a further universal of human language integrate their
syntactic rules with their lexical entries in this fashion.

There is no logical necessity for

language to be this way and no obvious means by which a child could
acquire it, the projection principle also seems a built in feature of the
mind.

5.

The Government Theory

This refers to a syntactic relationship of high abstraction between a

governor and an element that it governs.

A verb governs its object NP as in:

Kate

likes

me

Verb

NP

Where the verb likes governs the NP me.

A preposition also governs its NP the traffic warden

spoke to her
P

NP

The preposition to governs the NP her

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The

possible

governors

are

the

categories Noun, verb, adjective and prepositions.

If the relationship of government

obtains between two elements in the sentence, there is one-way flow of
influence from the governor to the governed.

So the fact that the preposition to governs the NP means that the pronoun
has the form her rather than she.
To

her

To

she

not

In more technical terms, the object of

the preposition appears in the accusative case (her) rather than in the
nominative case (she)

Similarly the objects of verbs also

appear in the accusative rather than nominative case.
Kate

likes

me

likes

Versus
Kate

The verb likes governess the NP object and thus determines that it appears as
the accusative form me rather than the nominative for I

Inflection (INFL)
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The element INFL represents inter alia the grammatical elements tense and
agreement.
Tense is associated with time reference such as past or present and mostly
concerns the verb.
1. You play the piano very well.
2. You played the piano very well.
The (1) sentence is present and has no inflection.
The (2) sentence is past and requires an inflection (ed).

Agreement
Agreement concerns whether the subject is a singular or plural.
1) He plays the piano.
2) They play the piano.
In the (1) example where the subject is singular the verb has the inflection.
In the (2) example where the subject is plural there is no inflection.
Sentences with tense and AGR are called finite clauses.
For example
Azhar plays the piano very well. It is a finite clause because it contains the
ending s to show both present tense and singular AGR.
Sentences which do not have tense and agreement are called non-finite
clauses.

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For example:
(He considers) Azhar to
play the piano very well.
Non finite clauses such as Azhar to play to piano very well appears only
inside other clauses such as he considers.
To sum up, INFL is a separate and independent element in the sentence
which comes between the subjects on NP.
-

6.

It can be either finite or non finite.

Relating Sound and Meaning

One of Chomskys insight is that each language can be regarded as a

particular relationship between sounds and meaning.
(Chomsky 1972)

The sentence:
The moon shone though the trees consists on the one hand of a sequence of
sounds, on the other of a set of meanings about an entity called the moon
and the past relationship of its light to some entities called trees.

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The meanings are the internal face of

language, it contact with the mind; they are abstract mental
representations, independent of physical forms.
Relationship between the external sounds and the internal meanings.
Sounds

meanings

The difficulty of the task is due to the

complex links between them.
Gill teaches physics

the grammar must know how the sentence is pronounced the sequence of
sounds, the stress patterns, the intonation and so on.

It needs a way of describing actual

sounds a phonetic representation.

It needs a way of representing

meaning a semantic representation.

It needs a way of describing the

syntactic structures that connects them a syntactic level of
representation.

Syntactic structure plays a central

mediating role between physical form and abstract meaning.

The sound meaning bridge:

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Syntax

Phonetic

Semantic

representation

representation

sounds

meanings

Principles

and

parameters

theory

captures this bridge between sound and meaning through the phonetic
form and logical form.

Syntax

Phonetic

Logical

Form (PF)

Form (LF

Phonetic form and logical form have the own natures for
which distinct P/F and LF components are needed within the model. They
form the contact between the grammar and other areas, at the one end
physical realization of sound, at the other further mental systems:
PF and LF constitute the interface between language and other cognitive
systems, yielding direct representation of sound on the one hand and the
meanings on the other as language and other systems interact .
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(Chomsky 1986)
Hence PF and LF are known as interface levels.

Most research in principles, and

parameters theory has concentrated on central syntactic component
rather than on PF or LF.

If syntax is a bridge, independent

theories of PF or LF are beside the point: however elegant the theories
of PF and LF in themselves, they must be capable of taking their place
in the bridge between sounds and meanings.

The

same

is

true

of

language

acquisition; the central linguistic problem is how the child acquires the
syntactic interface rather than sounds or meanings.

The bridge between sounds and

meanings represented in the last figure is still not complete in that
LF represents essentially syntactic meaning.
By the phrase logical form I mean that partial representation of
meant that is determined by grammatical structure (Chomsky 1979)

LF is not itself a full semantic

representation but represents the structurally determined aspects of
meaning that form one input to a semantic representation.
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For example:
The difference in interpreting the direction:
Its right opposite the church as:
Its [right opposite the church].
meaning exactly opposite the church
or as:
Its right [opposite the church].
meaning exactly opposite the church
or as:
meaning turn right opposite the church

The simplest version of linguistic

theory needs two levels to connect the computational system with the
physical articulation and perception of language on the one hand and
with the cognitive semantic system on the other.

7.

Syntactic Movement
It is the relationship between the two levels of syntax:

Deep structure: where the underlying

form of sentence is given before movement.

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Surface structure where the related

form of the sentence after movement is described, including traces(t) of
the original posititions of the moved items.

For example:

D Structure

John will see who.

S Structure

Who2 will1 John t, sect2

Surface Structure

Who & will John see?

S Structure is not just the Surface

Structure of the sentence but is enriched by traces of movement

marking the original of elements that have moved.

The S Structure level of syntactic

representation is where the effects of movement can still be seen, as
these are necessary for determining both the phonetic form of the
sentence in the PF component and its logical form in the LF component.

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T Model
Movement can now be integrated with the bridge between PF and LF into
the so called T model.
D Structure
Movement
S Structure

PF Component LF Component
Sounds
Meanings
The bridge between sounds and meanings is maintained in the link between
PF and LF; the intervening computational system is now more complex,
having two distinct levels.
D Structure is related to S Structure by movement: S Structure is
interpreted by the PF and LF components in their respective ways to yield
the phonetic and semantic representations.

8. The Pro drop parameter

The Pro-drop parameter sometimes

called the null subject parameter determines whether the subject of the
clause can be suppressed.

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The concerns whether a language has

declarative finite sentences without apparent subjects, known as null
subject or subject less sentences, hence it is also known as null
subject parameter.

A starting point can be the Beatless

line.
I am the walrus.
In Intalian it can be translated as a null subject sentence.
Sonoil, tricheco (am the walrus)
But in English the null subject counterpart is ungrammatical:
Am the walrw.

A pro-drop language such as Itallan

can have finite null subject declarative sentence; a non pro-drop
language such as English cannot.

It is important to theories of language

acquisition whether children learning English produce null subject
sentences and whether native speakers of Italian use them in English.
In Italian it is also possible to say:
Code la notte (falls the night)
But English speakers cannot say:
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Falls the night.

English declarative sentences have the

order
Subject verb
Inversion is usually kept for questions.
Italian can have the order
Verb subject

Some language will null subject

sentences, such as Italian and Spanish also permit Verb Subject order,
the languages that behave like English do not.

Pro

drop

is

therefore

generalization about human languages, a parameter of UG on which

they vary.

Empty Category

A division was made earlier between

lexical categories such as Noun and Verb and non lexical categories
such as INFL.

A further type of category needs to be

introduced, the empty category.

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The symbol e is used to represent an

empty category in general.

Pro drop languages have declarative

sentences without apparent subjects as in the Italian.
Sono di Torino
(am from Turin)
I am from Turin

Principles

and

parameters

theory

treats such sentences as having an empty category in subject position,

rather than having no subject at all, the basic assumption is that all
sentence have subjects.

These subjects may not be visible in

pro drop languages; while the structure of the sentence requires a
subject position, in pro drop languages it may be filled by empty
category.

The D Structure of the Italian

sentence is then:
Pro sono di Torino

Empty category does not appear on the surface of the sentence.

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Empty Category Principle

An empty category must be properly governed. In pro drop languages
sentence may have a null subject; it follows that in these languages the
empty category pro is properly governed.

Finite INFL governs the subject

therefore in pro drop languages finite INFL must be a proper
governor; it has that same properties as the lexical categories. The
empty category of pro is licensed by the AGR feature of INFL.

Let us for the moment refer simply to

AGR rather than INFL. In the D Structure
pro AGR Sono di Torino
the AGR category must be a proper governor for the empty category
pro.

In non pro drop languages, a

sentence may not have a null subject, the empty category pro is not
properly governed and so AGR is not a proper governor.
The English. D Structure:
Pro AGR speak
Is ungrammatical became the AGR constituent cannot properly govern
pro: it does not have lexical properties.
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So the language that has INFL as a

proper governor will permit null subject (since the empty category pro
is properly governed); a language that does not have INFL as a proper
governor will not (as pro will not be properly governed).

9. Binding Theory
Binding theory deals with whether expression in the sentence may refer to
the same entities as other expressions.

One of the topics in traditional

grammar was how pronouns related to their antecedents.
As Cobbett puts t

Never write a personal pronoun without duly considering what noun it will,
upon a reading of the sentence, be found to relater to

(Cobbett 1819)

Binding theory is basically concerned

with the same issue of how pronouns and other types of noun relate to
each other but it extends the antecedent / pronoun relationship to other
categories is a rigorous fashion.

Binding theory is concerned with

connections among noun phrases that have to do with such semantic
properties as dependence of reference including the connection between
a pronoun and its antecedent.
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For example:
Peter Killed him.
This implies that there is some entity to which Peter may be used to refer;
the noun Peter relates a piece of language to a postulated piece of the world,
hence it may be called a referring expression. To know who is being talked
about means knowing which person called Peter is referred to from other
information than that contained in the sentence.

The Same applies to him known as a

pronominal; another person is being talked about who is not mentioned;
we have to deduce for our selves who was shot. But one thing is clear
that Peter and him do not refer to the same person. Some structured
relationship or lack of relationship, between Peter and him prevents
them referring to the same entity.

In the sentence:
Peter shot himself.
himself refers to the same person as Peter.

This information depends not on

knowing who Peter is but on knowing the syntactic relationship
between Peter and himself, that is, on the internal structure of the
sentence.

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Binding theory accounts for the

differences in the interpretations of Peter him and himself how the
speaker knows when two such expressions may refer to the same person
and when they may not.

Binding

theory

describes

when

different expressions may be co indexed when him or himself may

refer to the same person as Peter.

One possible way of explaining

Binding is to consider the class of word involved.

Three word classes are relevant:

Referring expressions.

Anaphors

Pronominals

Nouns such as Peter are classed as

referring expressions in that their reference is necessarily to something
in the discourse outside the sentence rather than to some other element
in the sentence.

The word himself refers to the class

of anaphors.

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The word him belongs to the class of

pronominals.

Pronominals do not have antecedent

that are nouns within the same clause.

The

crucial

difference

between

anaphors, pronominals and referring expressions is the area of the

sentence within which they can be bound;
anaphors are bound within the clause.
pronominals may be bound by NPS in other clauses or be free
to take their reference outside the sentence.
referring expressions are always free.

Binding theory is chiefly concerned

with giving more precisions to the area within which binding may or
may not take place.

Binding theory in fact uses a slightly

different concept called the local domain, of which the clause is one
example.

Using this term, we can now sum up

in terms of the actual Binding principles.
A.

An anaphor is bound in a local domain.

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B.

A pronominal is free is a local domain.

C.

A referring expression is free.

For example:
Jane wanted [the girl to help herself]
Principle A applies because herself is an anaphor and therefore bound to
the girl within the local domain of the embedded clause, not to the Jane in
the main clause.
Principle C also requires the referring expression Jane to refer to some one
outside the sentence.

Finally Binding theory demonstrates

that UG is not concerned with information specific to one language, say
English, the Binding principles are couched at a level of abstraction that
may be used for any human language.

10. Core and Periphery

Core: - The core is the part of grammatical competence covered by UG, all
the principles are kept, all the parameters set within the right bounds.
Periphery: - The periphery includes aspects that are not predictable from
UG.

It is unrealistic to expect UG theory to

account for myriads of unconnected features of language knowledge.
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It deals with a core of central

language information and a periphery of less essential information.

core

language

is

system

determined by fixing values for the parameters of UG, and the

periphery is whatever added on in the system actually represented in the
mind / brain of a speaker hearer.

The theory of UG is far from a

complete account of the speakers entire knowledge of language, it
deals with the core aspects that are related to UG, not with the
periphery that is unrelated to UG.

Finally it will have become apparent

that discussion is not about language as such but about grammar, The
speaker knows a core grammar that incorporates the principle of UG
and has particular values for the parameters, conforming to English or
French, or whatever language it may be.

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