Parameters and Learnability in Binding Theory

Abstract

Modern theory has provided evidence that universal grammar contains principles of a general, but specifically linguistic, form that apply in all natural languages. A goal of this paper is to extend the notion of principle theory to language acquisition. In such a theory each choice that the child makes in his or her growing language is determined by a principle of language or by a principle of learning or by the interaction of these two kinds of principles. The language principles and the learning principles are obviously related (they interact). However, it seems to be a promising approach to see if the two kinds of principles can be separated to some degree. That is, we attempt a modular approach to language acquisition theory. Some aspects of language and its acquisition seem better stated not in linguistic theory, but outside it, in, say, a learning module.