Carroll's Autonomous Induction Theory: Combining Views from UG and Information Processing Theories

Abstract

Without other mechanisms such as induction and parsers, UG-based approaches to linguistic cognition seem to fail to explain the logical problem of language acquisition. Hence, a property theory has to be adopted to combine UG views with other cognitive mechanisms like information processing and restructuring (Ellis, 2008). Pienemann (1998, 2003)'s Processibility Theory, and Levelt’s (1989) psycholinguistic theory of speech production, Jackendof's (1987, 1997, 2002) MOGUL, and Carroll’s (2001, 2002) Autonomous Induction Theory (AIT) are among the models which try to add new views to the UG-based approaches. Although suffering from a number of criticisms and having a high degree of abstractness, AIT with its major premises and conceptions related to the role of induction, attention, input, input processing, feedback, learning, and UG seems to be able to explain some of the UG enigma in second language acquisition.