Natural languages exhibit many "semantic universals," that is, properties of meaning shared across all languages. In this paper, we develop an explanation of one very prominent semantic universal, the monotonicity universal. While the existing work has shown that quantifiers satisfying the monotonicity universal are easier to learn, we…

"Wh"-words have been analysed as existential quantifiers (Chierchia in Logic in grammar: polarity, free choice, and intervention. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Fox, in Sauerland U, Stateva P (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Palgrave…

The vocabulary of human languages has been argued to support efficient communication by optimizing the trade-off between simplicity and informativeness. The argument has been originally based on cross-linguistic analyses of vocabulary in semantic domains of content words, such as kinship, color, and number terms. The present work applies this…

This special issue revisits a classic topic in linguistic theory, A-bar movement, applied to developing and bilingual grammars. We claim that A-bar movement, or filler-gap dependencies, is still the quintessential linguistic phenomenon to illustrate the interaction between the biological endowment, the experience with language (past and present),…

Languages that have complex syllable patterns also share linguistic features with each other. These features can be identified through diachronic paths developed by these syllable patterns this study aimed to show the universality of syllabemes in Kazakh and other languages, focusing on questions like evolution of syllables in the Turkic…

I argue that the variation within and across contexts detailed by Shin & Miller is indicative of a broader phenomenon in which morphosyntax and the discourse context are intertwined, including elements like perspective, discourse relations, information structure, and common ground. Appealing to independent evidence highlighting the role of…

This dissertation is about the learnability of different generative, Separationist approaches to nominal morphosyntax. The core of my investigation is number, gender, and declension class, as manifested across nouns, adnominals (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, and quantifiers), and articles. An extreme position would require that all of…

Classical quantifiers (like "all," "some," and "none") express relationships between two sets, allowing us to make generalizations (like "no elephants fly"). Devices like these appear to be universal in human languages. Is the ubiquity of quantification due to a universal property of the human mind or is it…

The first part of this paper discusses the rationale for universal grammar (UG) theory to explain first language acquisition. It also illustrates the issues of language acquisition Chomsky argued which could not be supported by behaviourist theories and shows how Chomsky proposed a solution to this problem through his theoretical model of…

"Wh"-words have been analysed as existential quantifiers (Chierchia in Logic in grammar: polarity, free choice, and intervention. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013; Fox, in Sauerland U, Stateva P (eds) Presupposition and implicature in compositional semantics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Palgrave…

Universals in natural language have long been a focus of the generative syntactic and typological literature. However, the source of these universals is not clear. Within Chomskyan generative syntactic literature, it is assumed that children are endowed with innate knowledge of language structure (see for example, Lightfoot 1999). However,…

Westergaard's microcue account raises the question of the exact nature of language transfer in the acquisition of languages as well of how L1/Ln input interacts with the principles of universal grammar (UG) during processing. In order to consider in more detail the actual representation building, processing mechanisms that would be involved, her…

Research on second language (L2) acquisition in the generative tradition (GenSLA) addresses the nature of interlanguage competence, examining the roles of Universal Grammar, the mother tongue and the input in shaping the acquisition, representation and use of second languages. This field is sometimes dismissed by applied linguists as irrelevant…

This provocative article raises many important issues that need to be addressed and in so doing will advance the fields of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition in several important ways. Fundamental questions concerning multilingual development persist especially with respect to the role of Universal Grammar in this language…

Based on data from numerous languages, such as English, Frisian, and Danish, Merchant (2001) proposes the "preposition stranding generalization" (PSG), which states that only languages that allow preposition stranding under wh-movement also allow preposition stranding under sluicing. The availability of this generalization has been the…