Dear Yu,

Chomsky's first attempt to operationalize the knowledge of language by humans has a long history. It started with the theory of syntactic structures. Based on the criticism received,  Chomsky then revised it into TG, and eventually, he offered a number of alternatives to explain the working limitations of T-rules. The result was the birth of a theory called government and binding which later was called principles and parameters theory. Subsequently, the G&B evolved into UG. All these theories may be accommodated within the umbrella term generative  theory of language,  for the logical reason that ,human language is a creative machine using a number of finite rules to create an infinite number of well-formed sentences. As a consequence, you are right to assume that TG and UG are off springs of the fundamental theory known as  the generative theory of language.

Good luck with your linguistics class.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Dear Yu,

Chomsky's first attempt to operationalize the knowledge of language by humans has a long history. It started with the theory of syntactic structures. Based on the criticism received,  Chomsky then revised it into TG, and eventually, he offered a number of alternatives to explain the working limitations of T-rules. The result was the birth of a theory called government and binding which later was called principles and parameters theory. Subsequently, the G&B evolved into UG. All these theories may be accommodated within the umbrella term generative  theory of language,  for the logical reason that ,human language is a creative machine using a number of finite rules to create an infinite number of well-formed sentences. As a consequence, you are right to assume that TG and UG are off springs of the fundamental theory known as  the generative theory of language.

Good luck with your linguistics class.

Best regards,

R. Biria

@Reza Biria Thank you very much for your reply. 

the innate knowledge of  the basic grammatical  structure  common to all human language is often referred as universal grammar.In transformational grammar   the syntax  which can be characterised by a formal grammar in particular a context free grammar extended with transformational rules.

My friend Yu

As we know that TG is like a tool to provide judgment whether particular language's syntax production is grammatical or ungrammatical. Several widely-known rules such as X-bar, Minimal Link Condition and Binding are derived from TG which may works and overgeneralize to other language. However, Criticism arises since the test was only taken from English. Yet, it could be benefit to do the similar approach to apply in other languages which may have syntactic rules. In my understanding, thus, that is the reason it's called "universal grammar". 

WIth humble, sorry if my explanation is not sufficient.

Best wish

Edi Ramawijaya Putra 

The similarity between the two is that they are both associated with Chomsky. Transformational generative grammar is the idea that by applying a set of rules you can produce an an infinite number of correctly-formed sentences , and only those sentences, in a given language. Universal grammar is the hypothesis that because all humans possess language, there must be an underlying biological structure that all speakers have in common, and therefore a level of structure that all languages have in common. It has, in practice, been very hard to find non-trivial features which are common to all languages.

Dear friend,

UG is the biological structure that generates any human languages including gesture languange and among other para-languages. The pursuit of UG is the goal of generative grammar. The transformation-generative grammar, however, was the earlier stage of the generative enterprise. In the mininmalist program (1995) until now the transformation rule has been replaced by the moving-α. The T-G stage involves the surface structure and deep structure. The MP stage has excluded the deep-surface concept, though some are still preferring the transformation-generative one, which is helpful for the translation theories to some extent.

Hope it can be of some use.

Best

Thank you all for your replies. One thing that I have to add is that Universal Grammar can be understood in two different ways, one is in terms of a linguistic theory, a framework or means of explanation, anyway, modern linguistics is descriptive and explanatory in nature. The ultimate purpose of generative linguistics is to devise a method of explanation which can describe or explain most, if not all, linguistic phenomena of human languages, so it does not reside in any particular language. The other interpretation is to regard grammar as the knowledge of language, an underlying system of rules in the generative perspective, in this sense, the ultimate purpose of generative linguistics is to discover the initial, or universal  knowledge of language, which is the basis, according to Chomsky and other generative linguists, on which knowledge of particular language develops. My question mainly focuses on the first interpretation, TG and UG as explanatory mechnicisms. 

The underlying grammatical principles are the same.  Arguably, the most significant difference between the two is that, facing growing criticism from cognitive linguists regarding the emphasis on syntax to the exclusion of semantics, Chomsky decided to include elements of lexical semantics in his development of UG.  The problem is that lexical semantics is explanatorily limited and fails to take into account the embodied nature of language.  

The difference may be in emphasis. While Transformational Grammar is about generating infinite number of acceptable sentences in one particular language, Universal Grammars aims at applying rules that account for common structures in languages of the world.

Thanks, Prof. Dennis. That helps. I have just uploaded Universal Grammar to this platform and, even though it does not address the query, its reading may be of relevance. The idea is not studying what exists and extracting common places, but generating a common place for all through agreements. 

Excuse me. Can you help me to understand the difference between Universal Hypothesis and Universal Grammar? Thank you

@Yonia Valdespino-Muñoz Universal Hypothesis is a hypothesis about linguistic universals across various languages, e.g., Greenberg et. al. think that there are universal typological features existing across the world's languages, and they seek to discover these features through detailed comparison of these languages. Universal Grammar, on the other hand,  is more a theoretical construct, an important component of Chomsky's Generative Grammar theory, which states that there is innate knowledge of language existing right before knowledge of any particular language develops, and this knowledge is hardwired, having a biological fundation. These two approaches are rather different.