Three Hypotheses on Early Grammatical Development*

Abstract

Bilingual children provide an opportunity to investigate the role of innate vs. environmental factors in the process of language acquisition. In this paper we examine how far the conversational speech data from two bilingual children shed light on the stage of early grammatical development. We focus on functional categories (FCs, Abney, 1987), because these are subject to striking developmental and cross-linguistic variation: in terms of the principles and parameters model of Universal Grammar (Chomsky, 1986; Hyams, 1986; Freidin, 1992; Meisel, 1995), they are highly parameterised. Within this framework, the main developmental issue has been stated as between the continuity and maturation hypotheses. By the continuity view (Pinker, 1984), all UG principles are available from the outset and minimal exposure to the primary linguistic data is required for parameters to be set. By contrast the maturational view (Borer & Wexler, 1987; Radford, 1995) allows for certain linguistic principles to form over time, with the implication that exposure to primary linguistic data is effective only once a maturational threshold has been reached.

Article Footnote

*The research reported in this paper was supported by a grant from the ESRC, No. R000222072. The authors are grateful to the editors for their comments on the submitted version. Address correspondence to the first author at the Department of Linguistic Science, The University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 218, Reading, RG6 6AA.; e-mail m.a.g.garman@reading.ac.uk.