UG approaches to language development: How have they responded to challenges from the usage-based approach?

Foredrag med Elena Lieven (University of Manchester) og medlemsdebat om Acta Linguistica Hafniensia.

Abstract

In this talk I assess the ways in which approaches to language development within the Universal Grammar framework have dealt with challenges from the usage-based approach.  I will suggest that, while, of course, humans are evolutionarily adapted for complex learning, nativist proposals including those of innate principles and parameters and linking rules are unnecessary to solve the problem of how children learn their language(s).  Many of the proposals coming from nativist approaches invoke learning and processing mechanisms that are similar to those of constructivist, usage-based theories but I will argue that they do not require the innate linguistic structures proposed.

Elena Lieven har i en årrække været tilknyttet Manchester Universitet og Max Planck Instituttet for Evolutionær Antropologi i Leizig. Hun arbejder inden for konstruktionsgrammatik og er er en af verdens førende forskere inden for førstesprogstilegnelse. Hun har blandt andet stået i spidsen for International Association for the Study of Child Language og ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development. Blandt hendes talrige udgivelser er Crosslinguistic and crosscultural aspects of language addressed to children (1994) og Child language acquistion: Contrasting theoretical perspectives (2011).

Program