A tale of two theories: response to Fisher

Abstract

1. IntroductionThere are currently two theories about how children acquire a language. The first isgenerative grammar, according to which all human children innately possess a universalgrammar, abstract enough to structure any language of the world. Acquisition then consistsof two processes: (1) acquiring all the words, idioms, and quirky constructions of theparticular language being learned (by ‘normal’ processes of learning); and (2) linking theparticular language being learned to the abstract universal grammar. Because it is innate,universal grammar does not develop ontogenetically but is the same throughout the life-span – this is the so-called continuity assumption (Pinker, 1984). This assumption allowsgenerativists to use adult-like formal grammars to describe children’s language and so toassume that the first time a child utters, for example, “I wanna play”, she has an adult-likeunderstanding of infinitival complement sentences and so can generate ‘similar’ infinitivalcomplement sentences ad infinitum.Tomasello (2000) reviewed a number of observational and experimental studies whichshow – contrary to the continuity assumption – that children are not very productive withtheir early language, suggesting that they do not possess the abstract linguistic categoriesand schemas necessary to effortlessly generate infinite numbers of grammatical sentences.He also pointed out that there are no satisfactory explanations in the current literature ofhow a child might possibly link an abstract universal grammar, if there were such a thing,to the particularities of the specific language being learned (the linking problem).The second theory, one version of which was sketched in the final part of Tomasello(2000), simply does away with universal grammar and the theoretical problem of how achild links it to a particular language. The approach advocated is based on theories inCognitive-Functional (usage-based) Linguistics (e.g. Bybee, 1985, 1995; Croft, 2000, inpress; Goldberg, 1995; Langacker, 1987, 1991), and so it is a single process theory.Children acquire the more regular and rule-based constructions of a language in thesame way they acquire the more arbitrary and idiosyncratic constructions: they learnthem. And, as in the learning of all complex cognitive activities, their initial learning is