SUMMARY. Universal Grammar and first language acquisition.

Universal Grammar and first language acquisition.

The world’s languages are made up of phrases that have and invariant structure consisting of a head category and of complements that optionally modify the head. According to the Universal Grammar theory, the same underlying structural configuration of head, complement and specifier applies to all phrases in a given language.

All phrases are organized in this manner:

X°   =  Head Element
X’  =  Head-Element + Complement
N°  =  Noun
V°  =  Verb
A°  =  Adjective
P°  =  Preposition
D°  =  Determiner
INFL°  =  Inflection

The specifier typically precedes the head element, and the complement follows it. The last possible ordering that is found in natural languages comprises head followed by both complement and specifier.

Radford suggests that the initial grammars formulated by young children show clear evidence of the acquisition of a well-developed set of symmetrical lexical category system. According to the Universal Grammar theory, children have to set the parameters for the particular language they are exposed to in order to learn the liner ordering of constituents within the phrase. There is also evidence that the kind of parametric variation of functional features is acquired in children in a cluster-like fashion.

The principles and parameters model of acquisition enables us to explain why children manage to learn the relative ordering of heads and complements in such a rapid and error-free fashion. The answer is that learning this aspect of word order involves the task of setting a binary parameter (head-first or head-last) at its appropriate value. The child could, then, set the parameters correctly on the basis of minimal linguistic experience.

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