De Villiers Jill, Roeper Thomas (Editors). Handbook of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition

Springer, 2011. — vii, 403 pages. — (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics). — ISBN: 978-94-007-1687-2; ISBN: 978-94-007-1688-9.The volume represents the paradigm of generative approaches to language acquisition, and does so unabashedly. There are shared assumptions about universal grammar as a guide to acquisition, about the formal nature of syntax, and of the child’s biological preparedness for learning. Working within the shared paradigm allows researchers to pursue exquisite details in both empirical and theoretical work. But that does not hold the authors back from addressing and sometimes questioning foundational assumptions in many of the papers. There are many theories of acquisition beyond generative grammar and many new theories will arrive in the future. What is unquestionably clear is that work in the generative paradigm has produced an enormous amount of empirical data relevant to any future theory. This volume summarizes a great deal of it.Missing Subjects in Early Child Language
Grammatical Computation in the Optional Infinitive Stage
Computational Models of Language Acquisition
The Acquisition of the Passive
The Acquisition Path for Wh-Questions
Binding and Coreference: Views from Child Language
Universal Grammar and the Acquisition of Japanese Syntax
Studying Language Acquisition Through the Prism of Isomorphism
Acquiring Knowledge of Universal Quantification