Rediscovering the Alphabet - On the Innate Universal Grammar
This addresses the long-standing issue in linguistics of defining a universal grammar, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing theories with a new perspective.
The researchers tackled the problem of identifying a unique Universal Grammar by proposing a cosmic, intrinsic Unique Universal Grammar (UUG) focused on communication and knowledge transfer, with initial positive results from analysis of a natural language.
Universal Grammar (UG) theory has been one of the most important research topics in linguistics since introduced five decades ago. UG specifies the restricted set of languages learnable by human brain, and thus, many researchers believe in its biological roots. Numerous empirical studies of neurobiological and cognitive functions of the human brain, and of many natural languages, have been conducted to unveil some aspects of UG. This, however, resulted in different and sometimes contradicting theories that do not indicate a universally unique grammar. In this research, we tackle the UG problem from an entirely different perspective. We search for the Unique Universal Grammar (UUG) that facilitates communication and knowledge transfer, the sole purpose of a language. We formulate this UG and show that it is unique, intrinsic, and cosmic, rather than humanistic. Initial analysis on a widespread natural language already showed some positive results.