Abstract
Modern theory has provided evidence that universal grammar contains principles of a general, but specifically linguistic, form that apply in all natural languages. A goal of this paper is to extend the notion of principle theory to language acquisition. In such a theory each choice that the child makes in his or her growing language is determined by a principle of language or by a principle of learning or by the interaction of these two kinds of principles. The language principles and the learning principles are obviously related (they interact). However, it seems to be a promising approach to see if the two kinds of principles can be separated to some degree. That is, we attempt a modular approach to language acquisition theory. Some aspects of language and its acquisition seem better stated not in linguistic theory, but outside it, in, say, a learning module.
This paper reports research we developed and presented in the 1983–84 UC Irvine Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition Seminar. For very helpful comments, we wish to thank Hagit Borer, Noam Chomsky, Neil Elliott, and Nina Hyams. We also wish to thank Bob Berwick, Yu-Chin Chien, Kyle Johnson, Ed Matthei, and Edwin Williams. This research was partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant #BNS 78–27044–05 to UC Irvine. Rita Manzini was supported by a grant for Cognitive Science from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to the University of California, Irvine.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baker, C. L.: 1979, ‘Syntactic theory and the projection problem’, LI 10(4).
Berwick, R.: in press, The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Borer, H.: 1984, Parametric Syntax, Foris Publications, Dordrecht.
Brown, R. and C. Hanlon: 1970, ‘Derivational complexity and the order of acquistion of child speech’, in J. R. Hayes (ed.), Cognition and the Development of Language, Wiley, New York.
Chomsky, N.: 1980, ‘On binding’, LI 11(1).
Chomsky, N.: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris Publications, Dordrecht.
Chomsky, N.: in press, Knowledge of Language: Its Origins and Use, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Higgenbotham, J.: 1983, ‘Logical form, binding and variables’, LI 14(3).
Hyams, N.: 1983, The Acquisition of Parameterized Grammars, Ph.D. Dissertation, CUNY.
Jakubowicz, C: 1984, ‘On markedness and binding principles’, NELS 14.
Johnson, K.: 1984, ‘Some notes on subjunctive clauses and binding in Icelandic’, ms., MIT.
Koster, J.: 1984, ‘On binding and control’, LI 15(3).
MacNamara: 1972, ‘Cognitive basis of language learning in infants’, Psychological Review 79(1).
Manzini, R.: 1983, ‘On control and control theory’, LI 14(3).
Manzini, R.: in preparation, ‘On control and binding theory’, paper presented at the conference on Mental Representations and Properties of Logical Form, London, April 12–14, 1985.
Manzini, R. and K. Wexler: 1984, ‘Parameters, learnability and binding theory’, ms., Irvine (in press, Linguistic Inquiry).
Otsu, Y.: 1981, Universal Grammar and Syntactic Development in Children: Toward a Theory of Syntactic Development, Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT.
Pinker, S.: 1984, Language Learnability and Language Development, Harward University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wexler, K.: 1981, ‘Some issues in the theory of learnability’, in C. L. Baker and J. J. McCarthy (eds.), The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wexler, K.: in preparation, ‘A representation theorem for the learning of linguistic parameters’, Irvine.
Wexler, K. and Y.-C. Chien: in press, ‘The development of lexical anaphors and pronouns’, in Proceedings of the 1985 Child Language Research Forum, Stanford University.
Wexler, K. and P. Culicover: 1980, Formal Principles of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Wexler, K. and H. Hamburger: 1973, ‘On the insuffiency of surface data for the learning of transformational languages’, in K. J. Hintikka, J. M. E. Moravcsik and P. Suppes (eds.), Approaches to Natural Language, D. Reidel, Dordrecht.
Williams, E.: 1981, ‘Language acquisition, markedness and phrase structure’, in S. Tavakolian (ed.), Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Yang, D. W.: 1983, ‘The extended binding theory of anaphors’, Language Research 19(2).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wexler, K., Manzini, M.R. (1987). Parameters and Learnability in Binding Theory. In: Roeper, T., Williams, E. (eds) Parameter Setting. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3727-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3727-7_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-277-2316-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3727-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive