Haskins Publications

Number	605
Year	1987
Drawer	11
Entry Date	11/17/1999
Authors	Crain, S., & Nakayama, M.
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Publication	Language, Vol. 63, No. 3, 522-543.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0605.pdf
Abstract	A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to account for language acquisition. At the heart of the problem is the poverty of the stimulus, which underdetermines the hypotheses that children formulate. Generative grammar proposes that the form for expressing rules is innately constrained, & one putative constraint is structure-dependence. This proposal was subjected to an empirical test. In experiment 1, yes/no questions - amenable in principle to both structure-dependent & structure-independent analyses - were elicited from children (N = 30, aged 3-5). Experiment 2 contrasted a structurally based account of the acquisition of interrogatives with one based on semantic generalization. The results of these experiments support Noam Chomsky's contention that children unerringly hypothesize structure-dependent rules (Problems of Knowledge and Freedom, New York: Pantheon Books, 1971). Moreover, it was found that the rules that children invoke are formally insensitive to the semantic properties of NPs - a finding that supports the developmental autonomy of syntax.
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