It has been and remains a mystery to many people why children so quickly master the ability to speak their native language. Much less effort is required for them to master foreign speech. A relatively new section of linguistics, called generative linguistics, is able to provide answers to these questions.
Psychologists point of view
Generative linguistics is far from the only science dealing with this problem.
Psychology, for example, explains this phenomenon with the help of such a property of the human consciousness as the sensitive period. This is such a stage in the development of a child when his cognitive abilities are at an extremely high level.
Currently, the book by Masaru Ibuka, Japanese writer and one of the founders of Sony's electronics company, Masaru Ibuka, is very popular. In this work, the author talks about how important it is to pay attention to the early development of children's intelligence. At the core of his teachings is the same theory of the sensitive period. Repeatedly, other attempts have been made to explain the nature of such a pronounced ability to learn native and foreign languages in the first 5 years of a person’s life.
Behavioral Theory
Her supporters tend to consider human behavior and other features of his consciousness with the help of reflexes generated by certain external factors. Such scientists, as a rule, do not take into account in their work the processes that occur in the brain, but try to identify the cause of all phenomena, based on information about the surrounding reality.
Defending their scientific method, they argue that mental processes are not well understood in order to be used for research purposes. These scientists argue that their theory is quite suitable for explaining the mystery of people's ability to quickly learn speech skills in the first few years of life.
They say that this property of cognitive activity of children is easily explained by the instinct of self-preservation. In their opinion, the language of communication is also necessary for a person, like food, water and much more, in which he feels a natural need.
Father of Generative Linguistics
Noam Chomsky, a professor at a technical institute in the US state of Massachusetts, made an attempt to look at this problem from a fundamentally new point of view in the fifties and sixties of the 20th century.
He expressed the opinion that the ability to learn languages was originally laid down by nature, as an innate property of human consciousness. These ideas were expressed by him in the framework of a new theory, which was called generative linguistics.
Foundation basis
Chomsky's generative linguistics has several variants of its name. Most often, scientists use the term “generative grammar”. This name accurately enough conveys the range of interests of this science.
To put it most briefly, generative linguistics is busy revealing grammar rules that are universal for all languages of the world. This linguistic knowledge is stored in the human brain initially, from the moment people were born.
What is innate knowledge for?
Based on this information, further study of any of the world languages may occur. What knowledge does generative linguistics consider inborn, and what kind of knowledge is acquired?
Scientists say that in the minds of people the basic information about the syntax structure was originally laid down. This information is universal, and therefore may be applicable in the development of any language.
The lexical stock is accumulated by a person during his life, under the influence of various external factors, such as the frequency of an individual's communication with people like him, the class characteristic of the society in which the child is brought up, and so on.
Inherited language information
As already mentioned in the previous chapters of this article, generative linguistics studies the basic rules of syntax. Noam Chomsky and his associates in defense of his theory cite, among others, the following fact.
In the affirmative sentence, the numeral always faces the noun to which it refers. As an example, the following phrases: twenty sweets, five puppies, seven dummies, and so on. If you swap the words, then this phrase will get a slightly different shade. Twenty chocolates, five puppies, seven dummies. In such phrases, a shade that conveys the nature of inaccuracy, assumptions is clearly traced.
However, this rule does not always apply. It may be applicable only if it comes to numbers not exceeding one thousand units. When the sentence or phrase contains large numbers, this scheme can no longer be used. For example, the phrase "I bought a kilogram of two dumplings" is constructed correctly in terms of grammar. But you can not say: "The train traveled twenty-five thousand kilometers."
Scientists involved in generative linguistics argue that this rule, along with many others, is basic for all the grammars of the world, which means that information about it is embedded in the human mind from birth. This hypothesis has been tested in practice. This is done as follows. Children who have already studied the words denoting the number, were invited to express an assumption about the number of certain objects, not exceeding several hundred. The guys easily coped with this task. When they needed to name the approximate number of stars in the sky, the children began to doubt the correctness of their speech constructions. Because all phrases like this one: “Five thousand stars are visible in the night sky,” they sound illiterate.
Children who participated in the experiment did not have the slightest idea about this rule.
Nevertheless, they expressed uncertainty about the correctness of their statement.
Therefore, the assumption of Noam Chomsky, the father of generative linguistics about the innate knowledge of the basics of syntax, is not unfounded. This can not be said about the rules of word formation. Indeed, even many adults often make mistakes in the numerals denoting the years of the 21st century. Often you can hear instead of "Two thousand eighteen" a variety of incorrect variations of this phrase.
It can be concluded that such information is not contained in the set of innate linguistic knowledge.
American scientist's innovation
Noam Chomsky argues that the main unit of language for generative linguistics is not a phoneme, morpheme or word, as in other branches of linguistics, but a sentence (in some cases, a phrase).
As evidence, he cites the fact that initially in the human mind ideas of whole sentences appear, which are then embodied in oral and written speech.
It follows that it is precisely knowledge of the basic rules of syntax that is innate.
Therefore, it can be argued that the professor at the Massachusetts Institute Noam Chomsky is twice a pioneer in the modern science of language. First, he, unlike other researchers, began to consider the proposal as the main unit of linguistics. And secondly, the scientist tried to explain the ability of a person to learn languages with innate properties that are equally common to all people who inhabit planet Earth.
A fundamentally new approach
The goal of generative linguistics is to prove that there is certain knowledge about the languages of communication that are inherited from parents to children. This discipline also considers the content of this universal information. For the first time in the history of science about the means of human communication, scientists wondered not about the internal structure of each of the many languages of the world, but about the general principles that unite them. In addition, the researchers set themselves the task of finding the cause of speech. That is, this branch of linguistics is trying to answer the question not about how the language is arranged, but why is it created in this way?
Noam Chomsky and his followers are trying to explain the structure of the means of communication by studying the processes that occur in the brain. Moreover, most of the phenomena studied by them lies in the field of the unconscious, which in many respects brings his scientific activity closer to the works of the outstanding psychologist Sigmund Freud.
Along with the works of this researcher, Chomsky also uses the results of the latest data in the field of mathematics, biology and many other sciences. Initially, his idea was to study linguistic issues on the principle of exact disciplines.
Problems and difficulties
In his work, Noam Chomsky had to face a number of difficulties. One of them is the lack of knowledge about the features of the brain, in particular its department, which is called the subcortex and is responsible for unconscious thinking processes.
Therefore, new editions of the theory of generative linguistics appeared periodically, which took into account the new achievements of different areas of human knowledge, as well as the latest scientific developments of the creator of this branch of the science of language, Noam Chomsky.
Work Summary
In the process of developing generative linguistics, the results obtained by scientists can most often be presented not in the form of general rules, but rather in the form of universal prohibitions. According to the opinion, which Noam Chomsky himself expressed more than once in interviews and his scientific works, the main thing in the human mind is information not about how a phrase can be said in different languages, but rather about how it cannot be built either in one of them.
For example, supporters of the theory considered in this article believe that people have been given from birth to know that any proposal includes two main segments. These parts are called subject and predicate, but, unlike traditional grammar, here the rest of the sentence is not perceived as independent phenomena, but as components of one of the main groups.
Progressive Linguistics
Noam Chomsky is often called a revolutionary in the field of linguistics. His ideas, expressed by him for the first time in the late fifties of the 20th century, literally turned upside down ideas about the possibilities of studying the main means of human communication. The study of its nature always remains relevant, since language is one of the most important features by which a person differs from all other representatives of the animal world that inhabit planet Earth.
The results of the work carried out by adherents of Noam Chomsky's theory have also found practical application. The information obtained by them was used including for the development of computer programs for speech generation.
Conclusion
This article attempted a brief overview of generative linguistics, the goals and results obtained in the framework of research in this discipline.
The creators of this branch of linguistics are rightly called a revolutionary in science, one of the most prominent people of the 20th century.