Abstract
Borer and Wexler present two types of arguments in favor of their ‘maturational account’ of language acquisition. One type is conceptual; claiming that, contrary to popular belief, there is no reason not to adopt a maturational theory. In addition, they claim that this framework is more compatible with the research goals and principles of linguistic theory. In addition, the account is also supposed to avoid the pitfall of unjustified reliance on evidence from the linguistic environment. The second set of arguments is designed to show that the maturational theory is more empirically justified in that it can use a uniform set of principles to handle certain cases better than non-maturational accounts.
I would like to thank Norbert Hornstein, David Lightfoot, and Tom Roeper for helpful comments.
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Weinberg, A. (1987). Comments on Borer and Wexler. 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_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3727-7_7
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