A Parameterized Exploration On The Interface Between UG And IL

According to Chomskyan theory, Universal Grammar (UG) is the initial state of human's faculty of language (FL), consisting of two systems—principles and parameters. The principles are invariant, born with human; while different parameters which are group of switch-like options in FL are set by acquired linguistic experience and different parameter values are the source of differences among languages. In Minimalist view, variances are constrained in lexicon, part of FL. The content of lexicon is the result of parameter setting. The feature of lexical item determines the form of specific syntax within the constraint of UG. The acquisition of L1 is that the FL grows from the initial state to the stable state.However, with the acceleration of globalization and informationization, researchers of SLA also try to adopt the Chomskyan theory in the study of acquiring an L2. The results of researches of UG's access to SLA and UG's role in IL indicate that the past studies are still at the phase of exploring the possibility of applying Chomskyan theory in SLA without building up truly rationalist SLA theory. In addition, the misinterpretation of Chomsky's theory and limitation of research methods also violate the reliability of the existing findings.The present study is trying to construct a bridge between Chomsky's theory and SLA by studying the Chinese learners'acquisition of English reflexive–self based on corpus study from a parameterized perspective, and finally proposes an innovative model of interface between UG and IL. This finding formalizes the internal mechanism of SLA and enriches the theory of SLA.By corpora retrieval of Chinese reflexives ziji and +ziji, and cross-linguistic comparisons with modern English and Old English, the study discovers that differences between Chinese and English reflexives lie in the different phonological features and different weight of [pronominal] and [anaphora] features shown in different syntactic positions. And the two aspects constitute the parameters of reflexives in Chinese and English.By comparing corpus data collected from CLEC and Brown, the present study finds sameness and differences in Chinese learner's IL and target language. Based on these findings, an interface model between IL and UG is constructed to account for the procedure of SLA and its development. The main idea of the interface model is that the initial state of IL, noted as IS<0>, is activated by intensive L2 input data, consisting of principles in UG and processed L2 parameters based on parameters of L1. In the development of SLA, with constant L2 data input, the size of L2 data in IL is growing larger and larger, and if L2 parameters are set successfully, this part of IL will move out of the parameter system of L1 and the final ideal state of IL is the same as L2 which is hardly to attain. By virtue of the unstability of IL, the IS<0> is recursive. By being activated by more intensive L2 data stimulation, IL system will yield a new initial state IS<0>'which shares same mechanism with IS<0> but different physiological conditions.Evidences that support the present hypothesis are found in existing psycholinguistic experiments on SLA.