1. Language Acquisition and linguistic theory

Abstract

Although the relevance of language-acquisition research to issues in linguistic theory has been recognized for some time, this is the first book to bring together contributions that focus entirely on the relationship between the two areas.In particular, it provides new data about child language that suggest ties between children's developing grammar and adult grammars, and proposes approaches to the study of child language that have testable hypotheses within a unified theoretical framework. Language-acquisition data are related to a wide variety of theoretical questions, including anaphoric interpretation, proposed universal constraints, the structure of the base, and structural analyses of complex sentences. In each case, links are established between children's developing grammars and the target adult grammar.Contents: Introduction, Thomas Roeper; Acquisition Markedness, and Phrase Structure, Edwin S. Williams; Lexical Approach to Language Acquisition, Thomas Roeper, Steven Lapointe, Janet Bing, Susan L. Tavakolian; The Acquisition of Structural Restrictions on Anaphora, Lawrence Solan; Constraints on Anaphora in Child Language: A Prediction for a Universal, Barbara Lust; Children's Interpretations of Sentences Containing Reciprocals, Edward H. Matthei; Children's Interpretation of Negation in Complex Sentences, Marianne Phinney; Children's Grammar of Complement-Subject Interpretation, Helen Goodluck; The Conjoined-Clause Analysis of Relative Clauses, Susan L. Tavakolian; 'Little Linguist' Model of Syntax Learning, Virginia Valian, Judith Winzemer, Anne Erreich. References, Index.

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