Abstract

This essay proposes and defends a developmentally oriented alternative to the genetic nativism which dominates generative linguistics. According to the rationalist orthodoxy, language acquisition involves an innate body of universal grammatical knowledge which is triggered by experience. The alternative offered in this paper is that the acquisition of grammar involves a process of constructive interaction between the child and her environment. Her knowledge of grammar emerges through the dynamic and sequential epigenesis of a specialized faculty of mind. ;Contrary to the assumptions behind the generative mainstream, our biological endowment for grammar can be captured from a developmental perspective. In particular, it is possible to provide an appealing explanation of the limited adaptive flexibility of children learning a first language. I contend that the universal 'principles' of grammar reflect those aspects of the grammatical knowledge which are most generatively entrenched in the interactive process of acquisition. The 'parameters' which separate natural languages represent diverse stable endpoints of this process. This proposal does not reflect a move to empiricism but is a means of conceptualizing language acquisition without relying on the well worn innate/acquired distinction. ;Acquisition data supports such a developmental approach. Children do not acquire adult-like competence instantaneously but, rather, in stages of increasing complexity. Early child speech seems characterized by a semantically transparent phrase structure grammar which has no transformational component. The initial achievement of this thematically oriented grammar may explain some of the fundamental similarity of natural languages. The morphological properties which separate languages represent different ways of adding functional elements to this underlying grammar. Some of the universal features of early child language, such as existence of null subjects, are best explained in terms of such an initial stage. ;The aim of this essay is not to undermine the generative enterprise but is, instead, to provide a more perspicuous account of the biological system responsible for language. Linguistics must transform itself from a special science which abstracts away from the temporal dimension of language acquisition to one which takes development seriously