The Role of Innate Knowledge in First and Second Language Acquisition - by Hasanbey Ellidokuzoglu - Education - http://maxpages.com/thena/Universal

VII. UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (UG) IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (SLA)

It is quite interesting that even the fervent advocates of UG turn out to be hardline reductionists, when it comes to the role of UG in SLA: Pinker and Jackendoff are typical examples. Even Chomsky in his earlier theorizing speculated that innate linguistic knowledge is not accessible to L2 learners. Still for many UG theorist innate mechanism for language acquisition atrophies especially after puberty which is generally assumed to be the critical period for natural language acquisition (Gregg, 1984; Bley-Vroman, 1988; Clashen and Muysken, 1989)

However, the argument in favor of UG in first language is almost equally valid for L2 learners who can attain high levels of linguistic knowledge which cannot be attributed to input or instruction alone. Felix (1988), for instance, shows that L2 learners do have access to UG principles like Superiority Effects, Parasitic Gaps etc. "which are neither learnable on positive evidence nor transferable from corresponding structures of the learner's mother tongue" (pp. 286-7). Similarly Bulut (1996) and Cem (1996), reports that advanced Turkish learners of English are able to acquire the L2 reflexive system which cannot be attributed to grammar instruction nor to input alone.

Another innate constraint which is neither applicable to Turkish nor can be found in grammar instruction, concerns the use of WANNA. So if Turkish learners of English can judge "3b" type of sentences as ungrammatical then this can only be attributed to an active UG in SLA. In this paper the results of a small-scale research is discussed.

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8. Wanna and Turkish Learners of English

9. Conclusion

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