The Learnability of Syntactic Categories

Abstract

"It is a common position in generative acquisition studies to accept Chomsky's view that first language acquisition is determined by a set of innate grammatical a priories. The development of the child would be more a matter of biological maturation than a matter of input-control. Because language universals are innate in the human mind, they cause grammar to grow into the mind almost automatically under the slightest provocations. Early child language would already show the relevance the grammatical a priories. Generative grammarians guided by this view have often drawn far-reaching conclusions about the structure of early child language. The present paper will present an alternative view, the derivation of UG principles from structural acquisition steps. It acknowledges that it is indeed a sentence-generating system that is acquired, but contends that generative systems are learned from the language-specific input material. The basic argument for this approach is that all eventual ‘UG’ properties are identified due to local relations with language specific shapes. One might see the language specific shapes as an entrance to the UG distinctions. Unless a grammar offers a way to identify UG properties, it will not be learnable. This suggests that UG properties may be seen as the outcome of an acquisition procedure rather than being its source"