What is Grammar? A set of rules that explain a language. What does grammar aim for? What are the criteria to be satisfied to devise a theory of grammar? Theoretical Linguistics shows four major concern:
Universality: in the sense that grammar must enable us to devise a descriptively adequate grammar for every natural laguage.
Explanatory Adequacy: in the sense that grammar is able to explain how speakers arrive at a descriptively adequate knowledge of their language.
Restrictability: ihe theory should be constrained so that it can be used only to descibe natural language.
Learnability: theory must provide grammar which are learnable by young children via relatively short period of time.
So moral of the story is that linguistic theory should provide grammar which makes minimum theoretical apparatus, in other words it should be as simple as possible. In fact, MP is motivated to minimize the complex structure and principles of 1980s syntax (Principles & Parameters approach) and the acquisition burden placed on the child and thereby maximizes the leatnability of natural language grammars.
The two levels of representation in MP, Logical Form (LF) and Phonological Form (PF) must satisfy three basic conditions of adequacy----
- it must be universal in the sense that any actual or potential human language or meaning of an expression is representable within it.
- it must be an interface in that its elements have an interpretationin terms of sensory motor systems for PF and for LF, elements have an interpretation in terms of other systems of mind/brain involved in thought.
- it must be uniform, that its interpretation is uniform for all languages so as to capture all and the only properties of the system of languages as such.
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