Born to Parse: How Children Select Their Languages Lightfoot David W.
An argument that children are born to assign structures to their ambient language, yielding a view of language variation not based on parameters defined at UG.In this book, David Lightfoot argues that…
Specifikacia Born to Parse: How Children Select Their Languages Lightfoot David W.
An argument that children are born to assign structures to their ambient language, yielding a view of language variation not based on parameters defined at UG.In this book, David Lightfoot argues that just as some birds are born to chirp, humans are born to parse--predisposed to assign linguistic structures to their ambient external language. This approach to language acquisition makes two contributions to the development of Minimalist thinking. First, it minimizes grammatical theory, dispensing with three major entities: parameters; an evaluation metric for the selection of grammars; and any independent parsing mechanism. Instead, Lightfoot argues, children parse their ambient external language using their internal language. Universal Grammar is "open," consistent with what children learn through parsing with their internal language system. Second, this understanding of
Teaching children how to learn