Universal Grammar And Its Implications For Second Langage Learning And Teaching

To what extent does Universal Grammar put constraints upon Second LanguageAcquisition? More and more SLA researchers have applied Chomsky's Principles andParameters Theory to their theoretical framework research since its first appearance, andthey have made considerably remarkable achievements in this field. In fact whether SecondLanguage Acquisition still has access to UG. is the most frequently asked question in thepredominant SLA research within the past twenty years. As far as this question isconcerned, different SLA experts have drawn completely different conclusions based ontheir own research results. Generally speaking, as regards the role of UG in SLA, threepossible hypotheses have been proposed. The first is the no-access hypothesis, which holdsthat L2 learners totally depend upon problem-solving strategies rather than properties ofUG to construct the L2 grammar. Another is the indirect-access hypothesis claiming thatUG is accessible to L2 learners only in the form in which it appears in the L1. The third isthe direct-access hypothesis, believing UG is in its entirety available to L2 learners.In this paper, after having a literature review of SLA research and a brief description ofChomsky's Principles and Parameters Theory, I in person carry out four experiments on two UGprinciples and two UG parameters. Basing on my own experimental results and that of theSLA researcher (Takayuki Nakamori 2001), I come to this tentative conclusion: UGPrinciples are accessible to all L2 learners, no matter whether the principles are instantiatedin the L1 or not; with respect to the parameters, the parametric values instantiated in the L1are initially available; while the two languages differ in parameter settings, someparameters can be resettable but to some other parameters, such as the Spec-parameter that isassociated with functional categories, become difficult even closed to the resetting; otherwiseevery L2 learner can acquire the target language successfully as well as the native speakerdoes. The paper is concluded by my tentative results on implications for the L2 learningand teaching and the orientation future SLA research pursuing.