In chapter 3, we examined head words and saw how phrases are attached to
them to form modifiers. The idea of head words also applies to the basic struc-
ture of languages. In English’s SVO pattern, the object follows the verb. This
pattern is repeated in prepositional phrases: The object NP follows the preposi-
tion. In these instances, the verb and the preposition serve as head words for
their NP objects. Moreover, we find this same pattern in many other languages.
As a result, we call them “prepositional” languages, signifying that the head
word is in the “pre,” or initial, position.
When we look at Japanese, we find the opposite pattern, SOV. That is, head
wordsfollowthe NP object. Thus, the English sentenceFred drank sakewould
be structured asFred sake drank(Fred-wa sake-o nonda) in Japanese. We
therefore call Japanese and other languages with this pattern “postpositional”
languages. What’s interesting is that about 95% of all human languages are ei-
ther prepositional or postpositional.
The idea of universal grammar is partially based on this observation.
Chomsky (1965, 1995) proposed that humans have only one grammar and
that the amount of variation is severely limited. Acquisition involves setting
the specific parameters that characterize the child’s home language, such as
whether it is prepositional or postpositional. The question that immediately
arises is whether this feature of grammar is unique to language or whether it is
a feature of human cognition in general. Although the current state of knowl-
edge does not allow us to answer this question definitively, it is the case that
cognitive operations are widely viewed as hierarchical (e.g., Bradshaw, Ford,
Adams-Webber, & Boose, 1993; Grossberg, 1999; Pinker, 2002;
Schilperoord, 1996).^4 Applying hierarchy to language means that there will
be a tendency to put the most important part of any utterance or sentence at the
beginning rather than at the end or in the middle. And this is just what we see:
Most languages have a word order that puts the subject first. On this basis, it
seems reasonable to suggest that if linguistic processes are not unique but
rather are a specialized manifestation of general cognitive operations, the
term “universal grammar” can be an obstacle to better understanding acquisi-
tion and language-specific grammars.
The language faculty is deemed to consist of four parts: the lexicon, logical
form, phonetic form, and the computational system—all of which are governed
NOAM CHOMSKY AND GRAMMAR 185
(^4) Note, however, that Edmondson (2000) pointed out that hierarchy in cognitive operations may be an
illusion based on the fact that all actions, even psychophysiological ones, are sequential. As he stated, “A
significant byproduct of the effect of the sequential imperative on cognitive entities is the generation of
structures which appear to be principles of organization—e.g., hierarchies—but which are in fact arti-
facts of behaviour” (p. 9).