 I will start with a personal note. I am an MA in English Literature and I was teaching English Literature. Now I happened to go to a place which was called at that time Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages. Now it is a flu, it is in Hyderabad where I did a kind of diploma course in teaching of English. In the first semester there were some three courses that I was doing related to language studies. In particular there was a course on Introduction to Linguistics, a course on grammar and a course on phonology and phonetics. So I was doing these courses and I found, I mean let me share this with you, I found the entire subject of linguistics absolutely banal. You know there was nothing of infonology and phonetics, there was hardly anything that was of any interest to me and grammar you know sort of, I mean hardly, I did not particularly care for grammar and during those days there was a negative attitude towards the grammar and all that. So grammar was considered to be something fit enough to be taught at school and not at higher levels. So I carried that you know prejudice with me. So at that time you know I thought I am not, it is okay you know I do not really, I am not bothered about this. When it came to linguistics we were taught things like the difference between human language and animal systems of communication. It was a very traditional kind of topic in the courses of, in introductory courses during those days and that is one topic I found extremely easily. I am not bothered about you know how animals communicate. I am going to go and I will go and teach English to human beings and I am not bothered, why waste my time. And then questions like phonological structure, morphological structure etc. etc. I thought okay I mean these may excite some people but there was absolutely you know nothing that heightened my or that you know made me interested in these subjects. The course was ending and the last 3 or 4 classes were there and my teacher, all the teachers are excellent but the subjects were uninteresting and the last few classes, 3 classes were devoted to a topic called Transformation of the Lama. And I remember in the first lecture, in his first lecture the course instructor said that there is a person called Noob Chomsky and he says that all languages are identical at the level of some underlying representation as a level of you know they share common structural features. Now I am not exaggerating, I am telling you I woke up. I thought what kind of a thing is this? You know I mean we know that languages are I mean I was in Hyderabad so Telugu was unintelligible to me. The fact of language unintelligibility is you know was nothing new and we know that 2 languages which are mutually unintelligible may not it may not be the case that they have entirely different structures that we knew we had that much understanding of abstraction. We knew that structurally you know the I mean let us say you know Tamil and Odia that is my language you know. So they are unintelligible mutually unintelligible but they share a structure so we knew that that is fine. But then languages which are which do not which cannot be linked in terms of history, genealogy, nothing absolutely unrelated languages okay and then here is a person who is saying that they have an identical structure at some level of at some underlying level. I thought this is something which is marvelous and he is saying such he is saying something which sounds patently absurd and so many people take him seriously. So I think I was in my early 30s then now till I retired from IIT Kanpur those 30 years I devoted to finding out what is all this about okay and I do not regret a moment of it you know so fascinating. I mean see it was it we know that if you say languages are different and languages have different structure each language has its own unique structure you know fine I mean that does not disturb anybody because one would think that okay that is experience you know English has a subject verb object kind of structure my language has subject you know object and verb kind of structure. So there are in many ways languages could differ like this at the level of structure so that is not surprising okay but what is surprising is the fact that there is a kind of common sharing in terms of structures. So what is that so I forgot my PhD research on EM Foster and thought that okay let me see what this is all about I mean it is almost like you know sort of going on a discovery trip sort of finding out what all this is about isn't a kind of you know powerful intellectual experience many many people would have joined you know would have tried to do linguistics for the same reason how come you know sort of how does one account for the fact that languages share that is the claim common features at some underlying level and yet you know they demonstrate different structural properties at other levels okay so that is something which that is what is how does one articulate the underlying similarities between languages and their systematic differences languages do not differ from each other in structural terms in absolutely unpredictable you know ways the ways languages differ from each other in structural terms are predictable right so we know that a language the two languages can differ along certain lines they cannot differ arbitrarily okay it cannot be the case that there would be a language in which take a sentence of you know sort of a take a sentence of a considerable length right and create a sentence which is the mirror image of that sentence and think that if the first sentence is grammatical the mirror image of that sentence is also grammatical nothing of this kind you know so there cannot be languages like this so so you know sort of so this kind this is very fascinating that languages differ surely but they differ in predictable ways in limited ways so you know how what kind of a theory is there to be able to account for all this so that's where you know sort of I think many many people you know I mean I was a small fry but many many people would have been interested in trying to find out what is this all about so that's one and when Chomsky came into the scene you know the kind of grammar that was written was what was called you know descriptive grammar structural you know grammar there was a there was a school of linguistic thought called structural linguists so they are very hardworking and people they did a lot of creative things in their own domain but then when you know they said that you see linguistics is a science they were the first people who said that linguistics is a science and a classificatory science you know it's a classificatory science so what did what did it mean it meant something like this that you let us say you know talking about sentences so let us say we we divide all sentences from the language into various you know sub parts various groups so call a particular kind of category various categories you know call a category simple sentences another category you know simple negatives another category you know sort of simple questions then compound questions you know so categorize sentences and label each category so simple sentences compound sentences complex sentences within simple negatives questions you know imperatives whatever so you know so you collect data very carefully using the most sophisticated instruments of data collection and arrives at sentence level you do lot more you start from the phonological level and then you come to the sentence level and then when you come to the sentence level what you do is you you categorize your sentences in terms of sub categories like simple compound complex just as a tool now see categorizing categorization is not a simple task it's a it's a fairly challenging intellectual task because you are you are looking at the features and carefully trying to say which are the distinctive or distinguishing features of each category so it's not a small thing we should not really you know think that is it's unimportant but when I was teaching at IIT Kanpur I used to say that this is like what happens in Bhattadhukan you go to a Bhattashu shop and you have Panchanambarshu, Sathnamarshu, Artnamarshu in different you know in different you know sort of slots okay now of what great interest is this you know I I mean we trivialized it but now I don't know trivialize you know the categorization is a serious task you know I mean you find out features common features you know distinguishing features so it's it's not unimportant but you see when it comes at the end of it what have you done at the end of it you simply have you know sort of slotted them into different categories and that's about it now Chomsky said no this cannot be a very interesting and serious science you know it can't be interesting and what and science is not concerned about classification although much later I came to learn that today's in today biology is a very sophisticated subject but only 50 years ago biology was a classificatory science I mean about 50 years ago okay it was more or less a classificatory science okay so maybe disciplines have to undergo a stage of classification you know maybe I mean questions of explanatory nature maybe it's difficult that such questions are asked at a certain level of an intellectual enterprise so maybe a kind of you know a kind of stage has to be gone through where classification becomes extremely important but then Chomsky said no we need explanatory theories okay so what kind of explanatory theories we need what do we explain okay so you know for the first time I mean he not only he said what kind of a science linguistics would be what kind of a science is this you know at that time today it's slightly different but at that time there are no experiments you know you couldn't conduct experiments okay right you know you you come up with you postulate linguistic rules but there are no experimental that there are no experimental evidence for the same right so some people you know who wrongly associate science with explanation sorry associate science with experimentation you know I mean mature sciences like physics and all we know that I mean sort of you know the how important experimentation is there for those sciences so because of the success of the natural sciences so sometimes you know people tend to associate experimentation with scientific inquiry so if your science or what you are claiming to a science has no experiments right you know your science cannot be taken seriously it is at best a kind of you know folklore or it's at best a kind of you know pre-scientific science or whatever if you call it a science okay right so don't make any scientific claims for that you know so you don't have an experiment so how does one get support I mean for the postulations that you are making okay so that was there but then that's not a very serious I mean I you know see for example in astronomy okay what kind of experimentation do you have in astronomy and is astronomy art I wish it were but you know is it art you know it's not so it is not the case that in all sciences you know you would like to have experimentation now if you don't have experimentation in your you know in I mean in in your domain of inquiry which you want to call science okay how how does one evaluate the findings right how does one evaluate the findings now whatever findings you have arrived at how do one check now if there is no way to check whether your findings are correct or incorrect or whatever right then we are not doing any you know we are not into any rational enterprise we are into some kind of mystic enterprise okay you say something and by definition or definitionally that's true you know it's almost making a claim like that so what so so you know so what does one do so all right so you write a grammar of English let's imagine you write a grammar of English okay now so what do you do how do you test it okay the simplest thing is so long as you are writing a grammar of English you test it against the data so does it account for all data okay does it you know account for in this case will mean does it cover all data right so if it covers all data you think that okay maybe you know there is I mean it's it's right okay but soon you know that I mean you are not you know an enterprise cannot stop with writing the grammar of or working out the grammar of a single language because English is a language so is Hindi so is Odia so is Swahili so are many other languages right they are all objects of the same type you know they are all objects of the same type right so so a kind of descriptive mechanism or a descriptive device that you have arrived at for one language right should apply in you know two other languages as well because there is no science where for each object of inquiry there is a there is a kind of theory so and it's not like the it's not like the it's not it's so it cannot be the case that for Hindi there will be a theory of grammar for English there will be a theory of grammar and these theories of grammar will have no there will be no way to converse I mean no conversation would be possible between these theories of grammar that's a false thing it was noted way back in 57 it was noted that all grammars of languages you know I mean people wrote grammars of various languages now then you had notions like subject your notions like object your notions like noun verb pronoun like that verb you know right so is it accidental that when somebody writes a grammar of English he uses these terms you write a grammar of Sanskrit you also use these terms you know right so is it accidental that languages when you write grammars of different languages you know the grammatical vocabulary is something which is largely similar how does it happen okay huh so the question that arises is where do you get your basic terms from okay right where do you get the terms from so these have to come from some kind of a theory there has to be a theory of grammar and from that that theory of grammar would itself specify that these are the kinds of notions that we were going to have and these are the kind of interactions that we are going to have between you know whatever entities so what are the entities how do the entities and you know sort of interact so these are things which cannot be just for one language they have to be for all languages okay it's not an accident that you know you have I mean as I said you know sort of it's not an accident that subject object verb you know noun pronoun etc categories category labels whenever you write a grammar for any language these are the categories which you use how come okay huh so if you have to find an explanation for this you cannot find an explanation from history of writing of grammars no you can't say oh let's write a history of grammars of all languages you know and in somewhere you won't get it anywhere you have to have something like a linguistic theory a grammatical theory and the theory will give us the terminology the basic concepts the interactions everything right so for the first time in the history of linguistics in the linguistics there was felt the need for a theory of language or a theory of grammar see linguistics is not you know I mean linguistics are not always called linguistics it was called grammar or whatever else okay but linguistics is a civilizational subject you know it is not something which is recent 2500 years ago in Greek civilization you know sort of linguistics was being done and even earlier in India people are doing linguistics we talk about Panini who is probably 2500 years old but Panini is only the finest flowering of a tradition that existed Panini you know it's not that grammatical tradition started with Panini no lots of people had worked before Panini worked so this rich traditions you know so grammatical studies are that old okay but for the first time in the history of grammatical studies you know the need for a general language the general grammatical theory or general linguistic theory was felt I am not saying that people who wrote grammars before did not have a theory of grammar they had a theory of grammar but what that theory of grammar was never it was never explicated because it was not necessary to spell out the kind of grammar that they had okay kind of theory of grammar that they had in other words you know what is the theory of grammar what are the goals of study of grammar right what does it explain something does it categorize something what does it do okay what are the upper boundaries and lower boundaries you know the usual question that you ask about theories right right so you know and what is architecture you know they had some notion surely if you don't have these theoretical notions you cannot write a grammar right you know the person who wrote a grammar of you know Sanskrit phonology morphology etc etc or Karaka had an idea of what a grammatical system is like what a language is like what kind of structural you know system the language is likely to have that is why he divided them into phonology morphology whatever he had but then there was no articulation of it there is no explicit articulation of it so the need for an explicit articulation of the theory of grammar felt so strongly and you know was realized and you know it I mean this is I mean when Chomsky came into the scene so we must remember Chomsky as a man right you know who for the first time articulated the the the need for an explicit linguistic or grammatical theory okay and then you know the the other thing so you know so you have a theory and all these will follow the grammatical terminology will follow and terminally just you know I mean one part of it because you are talking about what is that what are terms the terms are terms are labels of entities and next is interaction between entities and you know they they interact within a framework and that's the architecture so all these things would come okay at at at later stage all these things would come okay and then you write your grammar in terms of that right now suppose you have postulated something right in your model and you are saying that you know this is something which is a general feature of all languages imagine something like you know what I am going to say okay imagine something like you have done phrase structure rules right you are familiar with phrase structure rules okay imagine that what that that phrase structure rules are part of universal grammar a term with which you are familiar right let us imagine that phrase structure rules are a part of universal grammar now how do you know the coming back to the question as to if we don't have experiments right how do we test you know our findings our hypothesis okay right so how do we test so it is like this if you can arrive at a grammar where you can dispense with phrase structure rules completely right you know that you would say that that is something you know that's a that that's a test so when you you know you you can postulate a theory of grammatical universals right but then this theory of grammatical universals whether you know a particular rule or a particular mechanism or a particular you know whatever right kind of rule etc huh so if I mean this rule has to has to stand the test of scrutiny you know from other languages right so you write a grammar of another let's say there is a you know let's say you are postulating some some rule on the basis of English let us say that you can do you can say that we have phrase structure rules in English grammar and we our hypothesis is that phrase structure rules do not simply belong to the grammar of English phrase structure rules belong to you know they are a part of universal grammar now if somebody works in on I mean if somebody is working on some other language and is able to argue that you don't have a need for the phrase structure rules that you have postulated and you are claiming universality or universal status for them right then the phrase structure rules are not sort of I mean they are question they cannot be so the test so the testing device come from careful analysis of another language of the grammatical you know features of another grammatical systems of another language okay huh so please notice one thing you know you can't you I mean data cannot falsify a theoretical claim right suppose you know you are making a theoretical claim about further phrase about the fact that phrase structure rules exist as part of universal grammar right they are a part of universal grammar okay so let's imagine that this is a theoretical claim that you are making at the moment it is an assumption you have posited it on the basis of study of a single language a careful study of a single language okay right the testing comes not from the fact that there are sentences in other languages right which you know seem to falsify the claim say data cannot falsify the theoretical claim right data cannot direct on analyzed raw data cannot falsify a theoretical claim okay what can is analyze data into a system of rules a rule I mean if there is a rule that exists or you are claiming a rule to universal a counter example will be from you know from the grammar from another grammar in terms of another rule rules you know that kind of thing you cannot you cannot falsify you know direct on analyzed data cannot be used to falsify you know or question or undervalue you know theoretical postulations in this particular case as something like a theory of rule okay so you know you know what move alpha okay right know what move alpha okay if you find an example from another language which says that we really don't need something like move alpha okay we can do whatever we have what whatever move alpha does we can do by using some other device and we can do something more and if you know so look at the level of claim the claim is being made at the level of a rule not at the level of you know I mean direct raw data okay right so so what Chomsky did was you know it's interesting what he did was he not only created a sort of field in the sense he raised new questions with respect to grammar he also provided a way of how to test them because experimental testing at that time was not there okay okay now today there are experiments you know people do conduct experiments right but you know I am not going to get into that and there are all kinds of questions that can be raised with respect to those experiments as if you want to use them to falsify the original there are complications there you know they are not straightforward so let's not go into that okay so all that I am so far what I have tried to suggest is this that linguistics was considered to be a classificatory science when Chomsky came into the scene Chomsky said classificatory science is okay but not sufficient a discipline has to be you know it has to be explanatory in nature so you have to come up with explanations now what kind of explanation what is that you are explaining okay data the data or what you are explaining you know right and and and what is what is explanation you come up with more and more you know simpler more elegant grammars so the grammar itself is a kind of explanation you know for the kind for the data so you know it's explained by grammar okay and the falsification of this or testing of this will come from grammars of other languages right okay so something like that you know so roughly sort of so this is what it is and many many interesting questions started getting raised say for example you know consider something like subject object and verb right you know take them as three different categories so how many combinations are possible eight combinations I think you know you can permute them and combine them in eight ways right so you know so what would we expect we would expect that we will encounter languages in the world right which will have which will which will demonstrate each one of these categories right so there will be no languages which will demonstrate each of these categories but the fact is that it's not really like this you know most of the languages are SOV Hindi type SOV languages you know I'm quite a large number of languages are English type you know is VO some are VSO okay and maybe there are certain other types okay and I'm forgetting details but there are certain categories we do not show up at all okay so so that's the kind of thing so you see if you have a certain kind of you know I mean if you have this VSO right you know I'm sorry if you take this terms you know subject verb and object right okay and think in term and you know sort of think of languages right so you will expect something like eight categories and you will expect the world to demonstrate this category but that doesn't happen so what we are dealing with here is not a question of logic but something else logically you would expect all these you know sort of categories of languages to be there in the world but they are not there so what we are dealing with is not really a question of logic but something else okay now why is it that most of the languages are of you know SOV and SVO types and there are languages language types which are not simply there why is why is the world like this so there is a variety you know linguistic world you know there is a variety it's not you know it's not uniform in the sense that there is not just one type of language SOV no there is a variety okay but the variety is a constrained kind you know it is not that whatever is you know sort of whatever but the all the logical possibilities are realized in actual you know in actual reality of languages it's not like that okay so so this is a question to ask why is it like this now look at the kind of question that is being asked okay right these were never these were never the kind of questions were asked before Chomsky came into the scene you know right in the in the 60s and all these questions are early 70s questions were getting asked and these questions in all those thousands of years of our you know rich linguistic you know history no one ever asked these questions you know the reasons are of course simple I mean you always looked at one language so you wrote the most economical grammar of one language right you never thought that okay you know here is another language here is another language you know right okay so what I am saying for this language and if I find that there are similarities you know I find in other languages which I am exposed to in day to day life okay it never you know it never attracted the attention of anyone of them to find out is this similarity accidental okay it is not that you know sort of in our I mean panemi or our great Sanskrit grammarians did not know any other language or not exposed to any other language they were you know but you see there are certain there are certain attitudes because of his never cared to study them you know if you look up I mean the tradition I am in a sort of Bimal Mathilal says that our Sanskrit scholars you know grammarians would study the language of somebody of a category of people whom he called sister sister sister sister is one who is not just a scholar but also a man with you know spiritual attainments see so if you say that we are going to study the language of a set of people okay and this and this will be kind of you know elite okay and we will not bother about the study of any other you know sort of groups of people right what would you do this is one of the consequences that even though you find that you know the people who you have defeated in the defeated in some war and taken them as slaves to your households okay they speak a different language you will not treat that their language seriously consider the language seriously because you do not treat them seriously and you have decided that you would study the language of only you know I mean in some sense you know the purest kind of language okay all these terms make no sense in the democratic world okay right but you know if you decide to study that that is to everywhere in the western tradition you know look at the grammar books the best of writings of the best of authors were what where the data for grammatical analysis spoken language of hardly analyzed debased corrupt you know anyway sort of so so you see because I think you see it is very difficult to find a social I mean to to to you see if you are writing I you are looking at the history of knowledge it is very difficult to explain certain things in that history in terms of sociological facts you know I am not saying that they should explain that but perhaps you know if we did not you see all these things on I mean if we did not in our civilization consider the fact that if Sanskrit has a structure like this you know some other language has also similar structures even when you notice you know you did not raise any question out of it you know right and that is because we were possibly you know sort of we did not think that languages of others was considered to be a serious subject of investigation and sister so long as the sister attitude is there we will study the language of the sister the loan and sister you know is defined not as somebody who is a scholar but also as somebody who has spiritual treatments you know who is studying for the sake of the study who is studying for you know for not for any benefit but for general good you know things of this kind so if you do that you are your data domain is is shrunk okay so other similarities and dissimilarities you know you just ignore right it is only when you discover it is only when you note the similarities and dissimilarities that your mind gets challenged to find out how come you know there are how come there is a similarity and how come there are dissimilarities so you will try and explain this in terms of you know I mean in some term okay one is you know postulate something called a universal grammar and postulate parameters you know which will define you know the the systematic differences between grammars okay so you know only when you only when you notice this and when you only when you think that this is something that is worthy enough for investigation okay so languages the some features are similar some features are dissimilar how does one explain dissimilarity and similarity right how does one explain dissimilarity and similarity right so you can do it in many ways you know I mean you can do it let us try and see what we can do with with with this simple observation that you know let us say given two languages or three languages we find certain similarities between them at the structural level right and we find certain dissimilarities how do we go about it so suppose we say you know the fundamental principle all languages differ right structurally right you know suppose you saw all languages differ structurally right period you can't raise the question about similarity you know if languages differ from each other in you know and that is the story right okay that is what your observation is that languages differ from each other right so suppose you say we have a theory and we look at the grammars like this all languages are you know each language is unique and is describable in its own terms you know so suppose you have this kind of a theory okay right the question of accounting for similarities cannot even be raised right now suppose you have a you have an alternative theory and says all languages you know I mean there is a lot of see you finding similarities we say all languages are similar and you know suppose you say this you know it is false it just cannot be right so then but if you take that kind of a view you at least have a possibility of trying to find out okay given the similarities how do I account for the differences okay and when you discover the differences are not you know I mean sort of wild and unpredictable right you know arbitrary then you will have a way of trying to find out how to you know sort of account for this similarity and dissimilarity right okay so that is universal grammar and that is parameters okay right parameters where you know sort of in one model they are called the sort of the term parameter is used for them in one model earlier the term was not used something else was used but essentially the fact is how do we account for the similarities between you know grammars of different languages and their systematic dissimilarities so you are working out in various models at various times in many ways okay huh so this is something okay now let us go to something else see in all cultures you know another two o'clock yeah in in in in our culture and I am sure in other cultures as well at least in our culture see look at you had people like you know we had a rich grammatical tradition you know Panini and all right so you ask them question okay how is what is the you know I mean what is the grammar of Sanskrit right one one extremely good answer is Panini's grammar an economical detailed economical sophisticated formal generative grammar Panini is the first generative linguist and not Chomsky because you look at Panini's funnish rules they they are generative rules okay so in any case you know that is another topic in any case also so I mean very sophisticated grammar right so what is the structure of Sanskrit Panini's grammar is the answer huh what is the structure of Sanskrit Panini's grammar is the answer how is Sanskrit learnt or how is you know how is Sanskrit learnt in Astadhyayi you will have no insights about how this is all learnt okay right so those who really worked out the structures did not address themselves to themselves to the question of how these structures are acquired by people or learned by people no right similarly you know at a later stage there are thinkers in our culture who raise this question how do children learn a language okay so and they came up with answers you know like see through observation you know some I mean they find that somebody is telling somebody bring the horse so actually somebody goes and brings a horse okay right and somebody to pass the salt so you know so I mean you they listen to the sentences through observation they make inferences and all that so you know they learn from experience they learn from explicit teaching they learn from the grammar books they learn from you know lexicon the dictionary so many ways you know right okay now what they said would resemble very much what our behaviorists said about learn you know the the behaviorists you know positivists you know what they said about how things are learned essentially things are learned from experience okay huh so nothing like my mind is a clean slate you know I mean I am overseeing everything really okay so the mind is a clean slate so there is nothing in it so from experience we keep on and sort of we abstract from experience and keep on adding knowledge right so that is how it is it is done so so somebody says you know bring the horse or sort of whatever okay right bring the horse or bring the food and you find that this is happening so from this the child infers the the the the drama and it is supplemented by classroom teaching grammar books blah blah blah and all these kinds of things okay so essentially this is a kind of behaviorists account essentially it is a behaviorist account of you know language learning okay right and these people who were concerned with the question of how a language is learned okay did not ask themselves the question what is the structure of a language so my the point that I am trying to make is that you see what is the structure of language was a question which was independent of the question how is that language is learned or how are those structures learned so the structure of a language and the learning of a language were two distinct questions okay huh and they were answered in in different ways right now what Chomsky did was in some sense he combined these and that is a great achievement okay huh so you know he said you know questions like this okay how do you compare you know in the beginning right when he came up with this you know generative grammar transformational generative grammar and there were the structural grammars before that you know structural grammars traditional grammars before that all those grammars existed so the so the natural the question arise how do you compare these grammars okay huh so you can say no you know sort of I mean generative grammars try to show sentence relationships you know that what is the relation between active and passive what is the relation between you know an imperative and a non imperative you know like what is the relation between sentences right so you apply a passive transformation or whatever and you get a passive sentence imagine you know that let us imagine this okay so you have an active structure apply a passive transformation so you get a passive sentence okay just one thing you know so transformations are not applied to sentences they are applied to structures okay in any case so you know you are trying to find relationships right okay that is coming is a fact it is a fact that is coming so you relate these sentences okay huh right so let us say generative grammar was trying to find sentence relationships and account for sentence relationships what what does that mean explain or account for in terms of the grammatical system the system would say that okay you know we can generate these sentences and all that in right okay now structural linguists would say no we never tried this you know we did not try this so why are you comparing us with generative linguists and say that we are inferior in some sense okay because you know we never tried this you have changed the goalposts so right okay so you you can change the goalpost and score goals over us you know because we never you know what we do we never did then how do you compare grammars then now the answer that was given at that time was you know that grammar is the best or that grammar is the most appropriate the most suitable grammar which explains language acquisition facts better right so look at the connection now huh so you know sort of your there is a structural grammar and there is a generative grammar generative grammar is trying to account for sentence differences who is sorry sentence you know relatedness whose structural linguistic did not try to do so the question is these are incommensurable the goals are incommensurable we are trying to do x they are trying to do y and you can't compare you know these two models to these two models to grammar because you know their their objectives are different how can I do that okay then the answer to this is yeah you still can compare them on a different parameter and that parameter has nothing to the grammar that parameter has to do with you know how I mean which explains language acquisition facts better right look at the assumptions you are making now the assumption the assumptions you are making is I mean if if if if if if if a if an architecture of structure right can be evaluated in terms of how it is acquired right you know I mean what are you doing you are saying that you see we are acquiring that architecture because the mind is ready in some sense the mind is you know predisposed in some sense to learn that architecture or to acquire that architecture okay huh right you know if you are able to learn a system right you know right you learn that system because you already have some means in your mind some equipment in your mind in terms of which you learn that system okay huh so now the system and look at the relatedness between the system and cognizing that system or you know or acquiring that system you acquire the system right because there is some system in your mind which really you know in terms of which you acquire that system more easily than some other system right okay huh that is what you know that that makes you feel that okay maybe you know there is a genetic environment we are born with a certain capacity right we are born with a certain kind of you know I mean sort of gift nature's gift in terms of which we make sense out of our linguistic experience what does that mean to make sense of linguistic experience you know we are able to construct a grammar from the data that we are exposed to right as children right you know we are able to do that because there is already something in our mind right in terms of which we do this okay huh okay you know otherwise we can't right you cannot make you can make sense out of experience only in terms of an intellectual you know only in terms of knowledge without knowledge you know there is no way you can understand experience right this is a very very important thing that you know that we have to keep in mind okay huh okay so you know so I mean so how do I get that where do I get it from it cannot be taught okay you can't teach a one year old child you know right a grammar right you know what kind of instruction do they get they get some simple instruction about this is the object this is called this is called that is the mother this father no etc etc okay very simple but then no sophisticated information and yet a whole grammar you know a system is learned so that it simply means that by you know we are somehow by nature we are gifted with some kind of a knowledge right in terms of which we understand that we make sense of experience and acquire that knowledge okay call that knowledge now you know so I mean only saying this is not sufficient okay so what is that knowledge how do I describe it now call that knowledge universal grammar so what am I born with I am born with universal grammar right now another name for universal grammar is the initial state of knowledge of language okay the initial state of knowledge of language right what is and how do I describe initial state of knowledge of language by in by working out of the architecture of universal grammar now you see the connections now right you know which grammar is the best out of a number of possible grammars that grammar which explains language acquisition facts better right now what does it know I mean what does it really mean that you see in order to acquire language in order to acquire a language or the structure of a language we already have to you know sorry we have we have to have a structure in terms of which make sense of other structures explicitly available to us okay huh so now look at the connection and I think it is a supreme creative it is a you know it is a it is a it is a demonstration of the supremely creative mind of Chomsky which connected these questions he both of these are civilizational questions how do we learn a language okay look no civilization asks this question how do we learn geometry okay you know but it is asked you know I mean obviously the reason is very say you know I mean not a we know why because you know geometry is always I will learn at a later level okay but language is learned you know at by one year one year olds you know demonstrate their understand their command of language okay that does not happen in case of mathematics right so obviously you know you do not ask a question like you know how do you know Artha Shastra right okay you learn it you know to express it instruction but in language case it is different right so anyway so this question as to how a language is learned has been asked you know I mean by people in various cultures thousands of years ago how do I describe the structure of a language is also a question which had asked even probably before you know these acquisition questions were asked okay huh they were different questions in Panini Astadhyayi you will have absolutely no account of how this is learned in Kumarila Bhatta and other you know philosophers speculations who raise this question of how a language is learned you will find absolutely nothing about the phonological structure of the morphological structure of a language okay they are different questions now see these different questions are you know sort of seen as one by Chomsky okay huh so universal grammar can also be described as the initial state of knowledge of language okay huh and within that initial state of knowledge of language you know is what we are born with okay and I will conclude because there is a lot to say but I will conclude by making only one point see why is this enterprise so exciting this enterprise is so exciting you know because hundreds and hundreds of unresolved questions okay huh so you all the time feel that you know what we know is probably not right okay right maybe you know there is there you know I mean see we have some confidence okay but we are never sure that we have really we are even approaching we are you know going the right way we do not even know one simple you know problem is this see you know that I can I mean one can analyze the structure of a sentence without knowing the meaning of that sentence colorless green idea slay furiously you know you can you can assign a structure to this without you know bothering about this meaning okay so you know I mean NPVP whatever you know right you can you can work out the internal structure I have tested the following you know but I but you know I mean my testing coming wrong but you know I have I have done the following I have you know take it to the level of discourse a discourse comprises several sentences right you know 10 sentences let us say you know so I gave a paragraph I mean I gave some three you know I mean pays to my students okay and it was on the football or Pele okay you know a beautiful writer by Edward Gary I know so I just removed the paragraph for divisions and all that and gave the text to my students one would think that you know if you are talking about structure of a written text one would think that chunks you know you will you will divide them into chunks and in some sense a chunk would correspond to a paragraph in print okay suppose you know you do that so that is an assumption which I had what is the structure of it of the discourse you know right so we can think okay you know we can divide them into chunks which is what the computational language some of them who are working on discourse do and then you know I mean so let us say we do this okay now we give it to students right see you would find you know this is what I found you would also find that people divide them into paragraphs depending on the meanings because if they do not know the meaning they simply would not be able to arrive at any decision with respect to which which you know become a chunk and which not how does it and how is it if it is correct that the structure of a sentence can be analyzed or can be arrived at without reference to meaning at all you know that is absolutely clearly demonstrated right you know okay and you know whereas in course of discourse which is actually some total of sentences this simply does not seem to work then what is happening you know can we have one theory for sentences another theory for discourse which itself is you know comprises several sentences no I do not know what is happening you know so you see there will be there are 100 and there are much more technical internal questions right which we have and we do not know the answers to those questions right we are working on them you know we do not know the answers so an enterprise is alive and kicking if there are unresolved problems okay huh right so that is why you know I mean this program or doing generative linguistics is exciting I will end by making this one only one observation about the contribution of Chomsky see there are many people who have at many times said that Chomsky is has misled linguistic community by you know his theories okay right but he has done something you know and I would I would even say that maybe all that we know today principles and the parameters theory you know whatever all that we know today may turn out to be absolutely blatantly wrong possible you know maybe more interesting more formal grammars would arise and you know would I mean they would they would emerge and say that all this is wrong but there is one thing that you know cannot be proved to be wrong Chomsky has said the agenda of how to do linguistics okay right these formal mechanisms may be substituted but nobody can say that is you will have one theory for Sanskrit one theory for you know one grammatical theory for Sanskrit and one grammatical theory for you know Hindi you can't do that you have to you know tackle the question of universals you cannot go back to an earlier stage and say each language has its own structure no that is gone so you have to tackle the question of universals you cannot anymore say that when we talk about the structure of languages we will not raise these fundamental questions regarding acquisition no you know so whatever theories you come up with okay whatever you know new balances you come up with where you know what is a biologically given and what is learnt from experience there's the same thing not sure and nature and culture what is given what is learnt through experience so there may be many ways of you know fine tuning bit between the relations relations between these but the fact remains that there cannot be a day there will not be a day when you would say that okay we need separate grammatical theories for this for separate for different grammatical theories for different languages we will not ask acquisition questions when we raise questions of structure these are not the things you know that I mean we cannot go back to those days of innocence and that is you know I mean here is a man who has told us how to do linguistics so the technical solutions may all turn out to be wrong but there is no going back to universal grammar okay there may be different articulation of the grammar the architecture that we may come up with may not be the same but you know there's no question of saying that no it's wrong I mean that we don't want to do it anymore I think I'll stop here thank you