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The term principles and parameters also known as Government and Binding theory is a framework within which the syntax of any natural language is described in accordance with general principles. According to this framework principles and parameters are parts of genetically innate Universal Grammar (UG) which all humans posses. As such, principles and parameters are not learned by exposure to language. Rather exposure to language merely triggers the parameters to adopt the correct setting. Principles are highly abstract properties of grammar which apply to language in general. They are the underlying grammatical rules of all natural languages. No principle is contravened by any language. For example all languages have noun phrases and verb phrases.
Parameters on the other hand are those principles that vary from one language to another in certain restricted ways. Different languages set their parameters differently thereby creating the characteristic grammar for that language (Brown 1993). For example all languages of the world have noun phrases but these structures are represented differently in different languages. In other words each language has its own rules for representing structures. This is well illustrated by English and Kiswahili languages. The two languages both have noun phrases but they are represented differently. Thus using parameters, languages can be described as left hand or right hand depending on the position of the specifier in a noun phrase. Let’s have a look at the following statements from Kiswahili and English languages.
Kiswahili English
Wasijana warembo Beautiful girls
[Girls beautiful]
Head specifier specifier head
In the English noun phrase (NP) the specifier is placed on the left of the head while in Kiswahili it is placed on the right; we therefore say that English is a left hand language while Kiswahili is a right hand language.
francis1897 answered the question on March 9, 2023 at 05:58
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