Born to Parse How Children Select Their Languages

• Main Author: Lightfoot, David W. (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge The MIT Press 2020
• Series: The MIT Press
• Subjects: Language acquisition; Grammar, syntax & morphology; Cognitive science; Parameters; Universal Grammar; parsing; language acquisition; variable properties; syntactic change; internal language; external language; learnability; phase transitions; domino effects; interfaces; population biology; individualism; Darwin's finches; Scandinavian languages; English
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

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 st...