Abstract
This paper attempts to make a discussion of the differences between linguistic and grammatical theories. Although there exist relationships between grammatical theories and linguistic theories in their attitudes towards language, their goals, and their methods, they are both independent of and interacting with each other.
1.0 Introduction
At its most fundamental level, a theory is a set of statements about natural phenomena that explains why theses phenomenons occur the way they do. In sciences, theories are used in what Kuhn calls the job of “puzzle solving”. By this Kuhn means that the scientists look at observable phenomena as puzzles or questions to be solved. In short, the first duty of a theory is to account for or expalin observed phenomena. This paper will examine linguistic and grammatical theories in order to indicate the differences between them.
2.0 linguistic Theory
Linguistic theory is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language context. Linguists traditionally analyze human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning. Over the last fifty years, several theories have been put forward to explain the process by which children learn to understand and speak a language. They can be summarized as follows:
2.1 The Theory of Innateness
The Innate theory (also known as Innatist theory, Nativist Theory, Mentalist Theory) of language acquisition was developed in the mid-20th century (1959) by the renowned American linguist Noam Chomsky. It emerged as a reaction against the Behaviourist theory, and contradicted its model at almost every point of basic structure. Chomsky focused particularly on the impoverished language input children receive. Chomsky concluded that children must have inborn faculty for language acquisition. According to this theory, the process is biologically determined- the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain linguistic information at birth. The child’s natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech and the child’s brain is able to interpret what he or she hears according to the underlying principles or structure it already contains. This natural faculty has become known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomsky did not suggest that an English child is born knowing anything specific about English, of course. He stated that all human languages share common principles, for example, they all have words for things and actions – nouns and verbs. It is the child’s task to establish how the specific language she or he expresses have these underlying principles.
For example, the LAD already contains the concept of verb. By listening to such forms as “worked”, “played” and “patted”, the child will form the hypothesis that the past tense of verbs is formed by adding the sound /d/, /t/ or /id/ to the base form. It hardly needs saying that the process is unconscious. Chomsky does not envisage the small child lying in its cot working out grammatical rules consciously