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Language Acquisition Device
Universal Grammar
Chomsky's Minimalism
Generative Grammar
Chomsky Quotes
100
Chomsky was the first linguist to propose a language acquisition device, an innate capacity to understand and produce language located in this human organ.
What is the brain?
100
Universal grammar argues that all human languages abide by a common set of these.
What are rules?
100
Chomsky first introduced the idea of minimalism in this famous 1993 document.
What is "A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory"?
100
This "T" stands for the name given to earlier versions of Noam Chomsky's generative grammar theories.
What is transformational grammar?
100
In his discussion of language, Chomsky is quoted as saying, "Language is a process of free ________; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied."
What is creation?
200
A commonly referenced support for the LAD includes that the stages of language development occur at the same general ages in most children regardless of their _________.
What is environment/culture/native language? (All are acceptable answers)
200
Adapted from the Language Acquisition Device, Chomsky used FL to refer to this, or the areas of the brain that allow for it to learn language.
What is faculty of language?
200
One of the primary goals of Chomsky's minimalist program was to do this to the symbolic representations of language, or to make them less complex.
What is to simplify them?
200
To better illustrate generative grammar, Chomsky developed this, which divides grammar structures into different levels of expressive power.
What is a hierarchy?
200
In discussing Universal Grammar, Chomsky once said, "There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human _________."
What is mind?
300
The Language Acquisition Device is a component of this theory of language, which contrasts the empiricist theory.
What is the nativist theory?
300
Centuries before Noam Chomsky popularized the term "Universal Grammar" in the 1950s, this Franciscan philosopher first introduced the concept.
Who is Roger Bacon?
300
Borrowed from Government and Binding theory, Chomsky's minimalism focuses on PF and LF, or these, which are two levels of grammar representation.
What are phonetic form and logical form?
300
Generative grammar makes use of these two "P"s, one representing abstract rules of grammar and the other representing language-specific markers.
What are principles and parameters?
300
Later a primary component of generative grammar, Chomsky once wrote, "We thus make a fundamental distinction between the ___________ (the speaker-hearer's knowledge of his language) and __________ (the actual use of language in concrete situations)."
What are competence and performance?
400
According to Chomsky's LAD theory, children master most of the basic rules of their native language by this age.
What is age four?
400
Often cited as support for Universal Grammar are pidgins and these, new languages which derive from them and have first generation native speakers.
What are creoles?
400
According to Chomsky, these Rs and Ds are the most minimal syntactic features when considering their constraints to interact with performance systems.
What are representations and derivations?
400
The foundational P&P approach that drives generative grammar theory may also be called GB, or this.
What is government and binding theory?
400
In his book Syntactic Structures, Chomsky famously wrote, "This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and ________ components."
What is semantic?
500
Chomsky's main argument supporting the LAD was the _____________, which argued that children must have an innate understanding of grammar in order to acquire language as quickly as they do without negative evidence or direct instruction.
What is poverty of stimulus?
500
Led by Daniel Everett, research involving this indigenous Amazon language that contains no recursive rules allows it to serve as a counterexample of Universal Grammar.
What is the Piraha language?
500
This term refers to the point in the minimalist program at which the derivation of larger syntactic objects split into logical form and phonetic form.
What is spell-out?
500
When accepting an award in India in 2001, Chomsky made a point to say that the first generative grammar in the modern sense belonged to this Sanskrit grammarian from 6th century BC.
Who is Panini?
500
As a way to illustrate human syntactic understanding, Chomsky created the famous nonsense sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep _________."
What is furiously?