Indexing
All Issues
Submission
Author Guidelines
Reviewers
Editorial Members
Publication Fee
Vol.2 , No. 3, Publication Date: Jul. 5, 2019, Page: 102-107
| [1] | Dennis Michael Bryant, Faculty of Arts, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia. |
Given claims of falsification of the Universal Grammar premise, do such claims throw into question the curricula that were built under the influence of, and during the lifetime of, the Universal Grammar premise? Moreover, is urgency for English grammatical research renewal a factor if the influence of that premise was prolific, extending from mid twentieth century through to early twenty-first century? Believing that both answers are likely to be affirmative, and that re-evaluation of English grammar is imperative, this paper takes a step forward in the conceptualization and presentation of grammatical processes that operate universally across English sentences. The ‘step forward’ entails complementary approaches. While a diachronic approach has been taken as appropriate to understanding the historical past, and is reflected in the Literature Review, that approach is not considered to be a source of inspiration mainly because of the argued downfall of a paragon such as Universal Grammar. Rather, a synchronic analytical approach to English has been preferred because it reveals positively original insights which have been hiding in plain sight. The main point to note is the role of the active declarative sentence type as the underlying exemplar from which all other sentence types are generated, through a systematic but non-onerous process being referred to as Focus-Promotion. The main benefit of delving into English judiciously, it is argued, is that the results can inform curricula, native speaker and other fluent teachers and, by extension, can function to be vitally beneficial to assisting ESL student success.
Keywords
ESL Educational Practice, ESL Curriculum Redevelopment, ESL Teaching
Reference
| [01] | Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. Mouton: The Hague. |
| [02] | Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. New York: Harper & Row. |
| [03] | Bolinger, D. (1968). Aspects of Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. |
| [04] | Langacker, R. W. (1973). Language and its Structure: some fundamental linguistic concepts (2nd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovic, Inc. |
| [05] | Hockett, C. (1965). Sound Change. Language, 41, 196-198. |
| [06] | Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W. T. (2002). The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, how did it evolve? Science, 298, 1569–1579. |
| [07] | Sapir, E. (1921). Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. p. 4. |
| [08] | Sapir, E. (1929). The Status of Linguistics as a Science. Language, 5 (4), 207-214. |
| [09] | Everett, D. L. (2005). Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology, 46 (4), 621–646. |
| [10] | Tomasello, M. (2005). Comments on Everett's (2005) Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology, 46 (4), 640-641. |
| [11] | Berent, I. (2013a). The phonological mind. Trends in Cognitive Science, 17 (7), 319–327. |
| [12] | Berent, I. (2013b). The Phonological Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
| [13] | Everett, D. L. (2016). An Evaluation of Universal Grammar and the Phonological Mind. Frontiers in Psychology, 7: 15. |
| [14] | Pienemann, M. (1998). Language processing and second language development: Processability Thoery. Amsterdam: Benjamins. |
| [15] | Potter, S. (1950). Our Language (2nd. ed.). Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. |
| [16] | Greenberg, J. H. (1973). Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements. In J. H. Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of Language (pp. 73-113). London: MIT Press. |
| [17] | Wrenn, C. L. (1949). The English Language. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. |
