The current study establishes the reliability of the Holy Qur'an as one of the earliest treatise on language acquisition by humans. This is not to say that it is a scientific treatise: Rather what we know as modern 'knowledge' finds mention in a book much older. This applies to many aspects of human life, whether they spring from scientific…

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language that originated in South Africa as a descendent of Dutch. It displays discontinuous sentential negation (SN), where negation is expressed by two phonologically identical negative particles that appear in two different positions in the sentence. The negation system is argued to be an innovation that came about…

A central question in language acquisition is how children build linguistic representations that allow them to generalize verbs from one construction to another (e.g., "The boy gave a present to the girl" ? "The boy gave the girl a present"), whilst appropriately constraining those generalizations to avoid non-adultlike errors…

Children are thought to learn second languages (L2s) using primarily implicit mechanisms, in contrast to adults, who primarily rely on explicit language learning. This difference is usually attributed to cognitive maturation, but adults also receive more explicit instruction than children, which may influence their learning strategies. This study…

Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

We present a hierarchical Bayesian framework for modeling the acquisition of verb argument constructions. It embodies a domain-general approach to learning higher-level knowledge in the form of inductive constraints (or overhypotheses), and has been used to explain other aspects of language development such as the shape bias in learning object…

Cross-linguistic research on the development of tense-aspect marking has revealed a strong effect of lexical aspect. But the degree of this effect varies across languages. Explanation for this universal tendency and language-specific variation is still an open issue. This study investigates the early emergence and subsequent development of four…

The theory that language acquisition is guided and constrained by inborn linguistic knowledge is assessed. Specifically, the "no negative evidence" view, the belief that linguistic theory should be restricted in such a way that the grammars it allows can be learned by children on the basis of positive evidence only, is explored. Child language…

The second language learner, in acquiring grammatical rules, must draw hypotheses about language from exposure to examples and use these hypotheses for creating further utterances. Mistakes which force the formation of new hypotheses are a natural part of this process. A sample lesson taking these factors into consideration is presented. (FWB)

It is proposed that, in contrast to Chomsky's argument, it is possible to arrive at an empirically grounded definition of innate linguistic competence that guides the child in the construction of grammar, particularly when this process is viewed as developmental. This approach treats language acquisition as a process of change. It is suggested…

A study of the late acquisition of the passive in Zulu used data from transcripts of naturalistic speech gathered in a longitudinal study of several children's speech development between 1.10 and 3.6 years of age. It was hypothesized that the productivity of the passive construction in Zulu is a factor facilitating acquisition. A range of…

Learnability theory involves the construction of formal mathematical proofs whose goal is to demonstrate how the child can successfully induce a mature grammar. An empirically adequate learnability proof constitutes a detailed hypothesis concerning the boundary conditions within which acquisition proceeds and can provide a general framework for…

This paper reviews evidence for and against imitation as a factor in the acquisition of syntax. It is concluded that the effects of imitation of children's speech are too pervasive to be dismissed as irrelevant. An important question is how a child extracts grammatical information from imitated sequences. (CHK)

Children's ability to learn aspects of their language in the absence of supportive evidence is discussed. Specifically, the learnability of null subjects in languages in which they appear is examined when indirect negative evidence is present. It is concluded that parameters such as the null subject parameter may not generate languages, strictly…

Disagrees with Ellis's claim (1996) that learning the grammatical word class of a particular word, and learning grammatical structures more generally, involves in "large part" the automatic implicit analysis of the word's sequential position. The article maintains that some grammatical acquisition, but not "vast amounts," derives from the analysis…