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How can children do what every second language learner dreams about - learn grammar without even thinking about it? Linguistic theories try and solve the puzzle.
Something very curious seems to happen to all children that begin to talk – they all know more about the language than they could reasonably have learned if they had to depend entirely on the input they were exposed to. This is what linguists call the poverty of stimulus theory – the fact that grammar is unlearnable given the linguistic data available to children. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that grammar cannot be learnt but is rather an innate knowledge of the possibilities and impossibilities for any human language. This means that children acquire language through trying out linguistic options that are available to them but never entertain options that extend beyond the boundary conditions imposed by these language parameters linguists have come to call "Universal Grammar". Evidence for Universal GrammarThe evidence for Universal Grammar is mostly taken from children at critical periods of language development. The evidence includes: - the spontaneous production of language - children’s grammatical judgment tests - the ability to change from one structure to another easily - that children can learn to speak on a basis of minimal linguistic experience - and the fact that language choices need to be constrained in order to make learning quick and efficient Structure DependencyAll languages are structure dependant and this relationship between different elements of a sentence is learnt by children through Universal Grammar. Rearranging structures of a sentence is not just a matter of recognising phrases and then moving them around but of moving the right element in the right phrase. If every structure had a rule our language systems would be too complicated and could not be adopted by adults, let alone infants. Because we rather have innate specifications for language learning and production the process of adopting a language is all about constraining the possibilities of what can be communicated. The only thing that children need to learn, for example, is that Mum went out and bought a lollipop, and not Mum went out an buyed a lollipop. No other suffix will ever be attached to represent the past tense however. A language is not, then, a system of rules, but rather a set of specifications for parameters in an invariant system of principles of Universal Grammar. Every single human language is dictated by the innate knowledge of the possibilities and impossibilities of what can be said. Even though theories like Universal Grammar have an exclusive focus on syntax it still resolves how language input undetermines linguistic competence.
The copyright of the article Children and Grammar in Infants & Toddlers is owned by Edurne Scott. Permission to republish Children and Grammar in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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