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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 2
(1990). The computations will be reduced if frequency effects are taken into consideration (Mintz, Newport and Bever 1995; Mintz 2003). • UG principles make reference to syntactic categories (Lasnik 1990) • The early acquisition of functional categories and core syntactic structures in early child language. The issue of continuity in language development. Knowledge of inflectional categories by two years of age (Poeppel and Wexler 1993, Wexler 1998, 2003; Pierce 1992; Deprez and Pierce 1993). Knowledge of structure-dependence by three years old (Crain and Nakayama 1987) Knowledge of numerous subtle properties of grammar (Constraints on wanna-contraction, and Principle A and Principle C of the Binding Theory) (see Crain 1991, Crain and Thornton 1998 for a review of relevant studies; also Chien and Wexler 1987, 1990). 2. What counts as evidence for category acquisition Typically the advocates of UCH and CCH do not use the same criteria for category acquisition, or the same kinds of data, and often ignore the crucial evidence produced by the other side. Tomasello (2000). Crain vs Tomasello debate at BU Conference on Language Development (2004). Linguists do not have a consensus on the kinds of criteria that count as decisive evidence for children's knowledge of syntactic categories. 2.1 Observance of category distribution in adult language Table 1. Determiner use by two-year-old English children (Valian 1986) Child Age MLU Utterances Tokens *post-adj *alone *two /utterance or Dets in *post-N sequence A 2;0 2.93 420 .36 0 0 0 D 2;3 3.21 532 .50 0 0 1 I 2;5 3.31 200 .37 0 0 0 S 2;5 3.47 689 .30 0 0 0 E 2;5 3.58 358 .36 0 0 0 N 2;0 4.14 52 .42 0 0 0 Example 1: Determiners in English (Valian 1986) 3
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