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

Abstract

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.

Introduction – German and Dutch in contrast: synchronic, diachronic and psycholinguistic perspectives

“…This debate is still unresolved today. While empirical data provide little support for universalist views of language and conceptual structure (Dabrowska 2015;Ibbotson/Tomasello 2016), some authors continue to argue in favor of universalist stances (Everaert et al 2015;Boxell 2016).…”

Bilingual language acquisition: The role of input and experience

“…Some believe that these accounts have resolved the controversy for good and have ‘overturned’ alternative less experience-driven approaches (e.g., Ibbotson & Tomasello, 2016; Dabrowska, 2015). Yet, casual inspection of recent research articles reveals that this announcement may be somewhat premature; see, for example, Everaert, Huybregts, Chomsky, Berwick and Bolhuis (2015), Boxell's (2016) rebuttal of Dabrowska (2015), and many acquisition studies published in the journal Language Acquisition .…”