Slides

In theory, language could vary without limit in the way word classes are formed and
in the features utilized to encode the category. A language may have major categories
with a large membership, such as nouns and verbs, as well as idiosyncratic minor
categories or sub-categories consisting of very few members. The set of syntactic
categories in human language is potentially unbounded.
Empiricist views on the acquisition of syntactic categories have had a long history,
going back to the early pivot grammar of Braine (1963), the limited scope forumulas
of Braine (1976), the semantic-based proposals of Bowerman (1973) and Schlesinger
(1982), the semantic-distributional analysis of Maratsos and Chalkley (1980),
Maratsos (1982), the inductive learning account of MacWhinney (1982) that takes
into account the function of rote-learning, analogy and item-based patterns; and the
more recent usage-based proposal of Tomasello (1992, 2000, 2003) which argue for
the predominance of lexically based patterns rather than abstract categories in early
development.
Very Early Parameter Setting (VEPS): "From the earliest observable ages (around
18 months), children have set their parameters correctly." (Wexler 1998, 2003)
'Do young children have adult syntactic competence" (Tomasello 2000):
"...the 2-year-old child's syntactic competence is comprised totally of verb-specific
constructions with open nominal slots. Other than the categorization of nominals,
nascent language learners possess no other linguistic abstractions or forms of
syntactic organization." (Tomasello 2000:214)
1.3. Arguments in favor of the Universal Category Hypothesis
• Inherent circularity in the definition of syntactic categories (cf. Pinker 1987).
Criteria for the English determiner (Valian 1986):
a) Must appear, if present in NP, pre-Adj or pre-Noun or pre-both.
b) Must not stand alone as sole content of an utterance or phrase.
c) Must not be sequenced (exceptions: certain quantifiers).
Criteria for the Cantonese classifier (Wong 1998:58)
a) A classifier can occur immediately after a determiner, a numeral, or a VP.
b) A classifier usually occurs immediately before a noun or an adjective modifying the
head noun.
c) A classifier can occur immediately before an adjectival phrase or relative clause.
• A purely item-based distributional account will involve astronomical computations
Caveat: The learner may not consider all combinations of words out of other
constraints such as processing limitations; the idea of 'less is more' of Elissa Newport
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