The Place of Universal Grammar in the Study of Language and Mind: A Response to Dabrowska (2015)

• Main Author: Boxell Oliver
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: De Gruyter 2016-09-01
• Series: Open Linguistics
• Subjects: Universal Grammar; I-language; psycholinguistics; neurolinguistics; evolutionary linguistics; language acquisition
• Online Access: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opli.2016.2.issue-1/opli-2016-0017/opli-2016-0017.xml?format=INT

Generative Linguistics proposes that the human ability to produce and comprehend language is fundamentally underwritten by a uniquely linguistic innate system called Universal Grammar (UG). In her recent paper What is Universal Grammar, and has anyone seen it? Ewa Dabrowska reviews a range of evidence and argues against the idea of UG from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective. In the current paper, I take each of Dabrowska’s arguments in turn and attempt to show why they are not well founded, either because of flaws in her argumentation or because of a careful consideration of the available empirical evidence. I also attempt to demonstrate how evidence from the fields Dabrowska reviews actually supports the notion of UG. However, arguments are additionally presented in favor of integrating an understanding of domain-specific UG with an understanding of domain-general cognitive capacities in order to understand the language faculty completely.