Notes from the course Bilingualism and Language Acquisition

Principles and Parameters - A linguistic Theory of Language Acquisition

Principles: apply to all languages and do not vary from one language to another. They reflect the nature of our minds.

Parameters: vary from one language to another, but only within certain limits

Principle:
“Every sentence has a subject”
x FALL
x KISS y
x PUT y, z
Parameter:
The subject may/may not be NULL.

Principle:
“Every head (nucleus) is responsible for selecting the participants in a grammatical relation”
Preposition, verb, tense, inflection
Parameter:
HEAD+complement or complement+HEAD?

Language Acquisition
When the child learns that (N N)/(N N N) is possible in the language, the followng structures follow:
Phrasal verbs
Preposition stranding
Double objects
Resultative structures