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What is really wrong with universal grammar (Commentary on Behme)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Francis Y. Lin
Francis Y. Lin*
Affiliation:
Beihang University
*
School of Foreign Languages Beihang University Xueyuan Road, Haidian District Beijing 100191, China [ylin@buaa.edu.cn]
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Extract

Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven (2014; AP&L) identify three problems with universal grammar (UG), namely: linking, data coverage, and redundancy, and argue for an alternative approach to child language acquisition. Behme (2014) aims to make a stronger case against UG. She attempts to show, by combining AP&L’s arguments with evidence from developmental psychology and formal linguistics, that UG should be rejected. In this commentary, I argue that Behme’s article does not present strong enough evidence to reject UG. Although Behme has pointed out some problems for UG theorists to consider, she fails to pinpoint where UG has really gone wrong. I then try to make clear what the fatal problem with UG is.

Keywords

universal grammarsubjacencyresearch methodscientific theoryevidence

Information

Type
Perspectives
Information
Language , Volume 91 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. e27 - e30
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Linguistic Society of America

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References

Ambridge, Ben, Pine, Julian Μ.; and Lieven, Elena V. Μ.. 2014. Child language acquisition: Why universal grammar doesn’t help. Language 90. 3.e53–e90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behme, Christina. 2014. Focus on facts not fiction: Commentary on Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven. Language 90. 3.e97–e106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearl, Lisa. 2014. Evaluating learning-strategy components: Being fair (Commentary on Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven). Language 90. 3.e107–e114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar