Universal Grammar and Language Acquisition

In Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey, A Companion to Chomsky. Wiley. pp. 348–363 (2021)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Universal Grammar (UG) is a theory about the innate linguistic knowledge that child language learners bring to the task of language acquisition. This chapter examines the findings of experimental research on children's knowledge of one principle of UG, called Principle C. It presents the defining properties of Principle C. The chapter reviews empirical evidence showing that children apply Principle C to a range of disparate‐looking phenomena. It also presents empirical findings that document children's assignment of hierarchical structure to strings of words. The empirical evidence supports a conclusion – that child language learners access a level of linguistic representation in addition to the constituent structure that is formed using Merge. This additional component of the language apparatus is called Logical Form. The chapter looks at a string of words where Principle C applies at the level of Logical Form. Cleft sentences are one such case.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,388

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Language acquisition in the absence of experience.Stephen Crain - 1991 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14 (4):597-612.
Second Language Acquisition.Roumyana Slabakova - 2021 - In Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey, A Companion to Chomsky. Wiley. pp. 222–231.
Nature, nurture, and universal grammar.Stephen Crain & Paul M. Pietroski - 2001 - Linguistics and Philosophy 24 (2):139-186.
The Oxford Handbook of Universal Grammar.Ian G. Roberts (ed.) - 2016 - Oxford University Press UK.
How Statistical Learning Can Play Well with Universal Grammar.Lisa S. Pearl - 2021 - In Nicholas Allott, Terje Lohndal & Georges Rey, A Companion to Chomsky. Wiley. pp. 267–286.

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-06-15

Downloads
26 (#892,543)

6 months
9 (#328,796)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references