When language is treated as a world unto itself
Universal Grammar (UG), in its classical Chomskyan formulation, presents itself as a strikingly Platonic project: a pre-existing, idealised structure that underwrites all human languages. The promise is alluring—if we can articulate this “core” of grammar, we gain access to a timeless, cross-cultural, species-specific blueprint for linguistic competence.
But relationally construed, this is precisely where the trouble begins.
1. The Illusion of Precedence
UG is treated as prior to linguistic experience. The system is assumed to exist independently of interaction, acquisition, or social context. Language becomes something to be instantiated, not something to be engaged with or co-constructed.
Relationally, this is the first over-closure: the model is stabilised before relation is considered. Interaction, usage, and communicative contingency are bracketed; they appear only as “noise” against the Platonic ideal.
2. Grammar as Closed System
Within this frame, grammar is defined by its internal coherence, not by its relational effects. Principles, parameters, and transformations form a mathematically elegant apparatus. But elegance is mistaken for ontological authority. The formal system claims reality independent of context, implying:
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linguistic competence is fully contained within the mind,
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social and environmental factors are secondary,
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acquisition is merely the triggering of pre-existing structures.
The relational ecology—the learner, interlocutors, environment—is conceptually exiled.
3. Over-Abstraction and Stabilisation
By stabilising UG as a closed, abstract system, Chomsky’s framework achieves remarkable predictive power within its own domain. Yet this very success hides the consequences:
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The cut between grammar and use becomes fixed, not analytic.
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Variability, ambiguity, and evolution are treated as peripheral phenomena.
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Language appears as a “thing” rather than a process of relational actualisation.
In short, UG transforms the possibility space of linguistic activity into a formal object, reified and insulated from the relational conditions that give it life.
4. Consequences for the Study of Language
The Platonic framing yields an enduring methodological bias:
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Phenomena that resist formalisation—creativity, idiom, style, context—are treated as secondary or anomalous.
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Cross-linguistic variation is understood primarily in terms of parameter setting, not as emergent relational patterns.
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Meaning and pragmatics are bracketed, often relegated to psychology or sociolinguistics.
All of these are signals of the cut, not flaws of reality. The system’s over-closure generates precisely the puzzles and debates that dominate contemporary linguistics.
5. Looking Ahead
This post has established the first over-closure in the lineage of linguistic theory: the Platonic ideal of grammar. The cut has been made, and relation exiled.
In the next post, we will see how Cartesian dualism enters the mind itself, isolating computational syntax from context, interaction, and meaning. The exile of relation is deepened, and the consequences for acquisition, interpretation, and language evolution become unavoidable.
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