universal grammar

Noun

(linguistics) A hypothetical innate abstract system in the human brain that underlies the grammar of all human languages.

Japanese Meaning

言語学における普遍文法とは、人間の脳内に生得的に備わっていると仮定される抽象的なシステムで、すべての人間言語の文法構造の共通基盤をなす概念です。 / また、この概念は人間が言語を習得する際の基本的能力や、言語習得の普遍的なメカニズムを示すものとしても理解されます。

Chomsky argued that universal grammar explains why children learn language so quickly.

チョムスキーは、生得的な抽象的文法体系が子どもたちが言語を迅速に習得する理由を説明すると主張した。

Sense（1）

(linguistics) A hypothetical innate abstract system in the human brain that underlies the grammar of all human languages.

At this point, let's gather together various loose ends, and try and paint a

simple picture of the overall model of grammar which we are moving towards.

We might suppose that Universal Grammar makes available a set of category-

neutral pairs of rule-schemas such as those numbered (i) and (ii) in (168–170)

above. The members of each pair of rule-schemas differ only in respect of the

relative ordering of constituents. The task of the child acquiring the grammar

of a particular language is thus to determine which ordering options are

selected in the language he is acquiring. For example, the child has to deter-

mine whether a given language is a head-first language incorporating rule-

schema (168) (i), or a head-last language incorporating schema (168) (ii): in

other words, the child has to ‘setʼ the relevant word-order parameter for Com-

plements, Specifiers, Adjuncts, and so forth. The picture is complicated by the

fact that some languages permit more than one ordering option: for example,

as we have already seen, English selects the head-first and specifier-first orders

as the unmarked option, but also selects the ‘mirror imageʼ orders as a marked option.

universal grammars

（ plural ）