Examines language as a multimodal sensory enhancement system, integrating recent neuroanatomical and neurophysiological findings on the ontogenesis of neuronal structures with the generative concept of Universal Grammar for determination of fundamental differences between primary and secondary language acquisition. (Author/CB)

This paper identifies a feature of human brain neural nets that may be described as the principle of ease of processing (PEP), and that, it is argued, is the primary force guiding a learner towards a target grammar. It is suggested that the same principle lies at the heart of Optimality Theory, which characterizes the course of language…

It is proposed that in studying the development of children's speech, the findings in the data are heavily influenced by what is expected to be found on the basis of our theoretical preconceptions. This phenomenon is actually more widespread than has previously been acknowledged, and our expectations about how children learn language may have to…