The Acquisition of Principles and Parameters by Children Learning Urdu

Abstract

The present study attempts to explore the parameters and principles set by children while acquiring Urdu. Learning a language involves the acquisition of lexical as well as syntactic knowledge. The objectives of the study were to find out the parametric setting and wh-parameters used by the children while learning Urdu. Principles and parameters theory of Chomsky advocates that language learning involves learning lexical items and syntactic knowledge which is basic knowledge of putting words together in a sentence. The utterances of a child of 24 months were recorded for four months and analyzed using the theoretical framework of Principles and Parameters presented by Chomsky. The analysis of the data focused on null subjects, word order variation, wh parameter, and head position parameter. The study found that children set the parameters quite early on in life and follow them consistently. The present study did not find any evident deviation or miss-setting of parameters. This research recommends to exploring the gender variation in parametric settings using a large sample.