- Dec 2020
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www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
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Universal Grammar (
The theoretical or hypothetical system of categories, operations, and principles shared by all human languages and considered to be innate, as defined by Chomsky.
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In the context of child L2 acquisition, the emerging evidence regarding the status of functional projections seems to strongly suggest that functional categories and their projections
I'm just highlighting this because I think its an important point in understanding this paper.
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mars. One parameter, whose positive value is instantiated in languages with rich agreement such as Italian and Spanish, is the Null Pronoun Parameter, in which the null subject (i.e., pro) is identified through agreement. Another parameter, whose positive value is instantiated in languages without agreement such as Chinese and Japanese, is the Discourse Oriented Parameter (DOP). Such discourse-oriented languages allow null arguments in both subject and object positions, and the null argument is identified by a discourse topic or through co-indexation with a c-commanding nominal. A language such as English instantiates the negative value with respect to both the DOP and the Null Pronoun Parame
Examples of situations in which adults can omit subjects.
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ges of LI acquisition verb inflections are omitted and subjects are optio
Verbs do not change forms, and whether or not the subject is referential to outside context or explicitly within the sentence is optional.
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ry. One way of achieving this would be to use child L2 data as a testing ground for linguists' claims regarding the universal status of an invariant or parameterized prin
I think of this as the "taking a step back" step for research, after spending much time debating something with many details, going back to the more general perceptions of children who do not have the knowledge of linguists or even older school-aged children allows researchers so see things they could not see before.
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Most of the child L2 studies used spontaneous longitudinal production data in their inve
This seems to be one of the easiest ways to obtain information from young children, as they are quick to lose focus when asked to do tasks.
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estigated L2s and Lis such as English and French. To fully understand the issues concerning the source of the knowledge available to the child L2 learner, further research involving other Lis and L2s is necessary. In addition, we also need to investigate successive L2 acquisition contexts where the L2 and the LI involve different modalities, including, for example, spoken languages versus sign lan- guages.3
I personally haven't seen the explicit reasoning for using French in several of the French Tl studies I've read, but it is used a lot. In addition, many language studies would benefit from expansion that includes sign-language study.
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The overall picture emerging from these studies indicates that UG is indeed opera- tive in child L2 grammars. However, it is not fully clear whether knowledge of UG is available to child L2 learners directly or through the mediation of the LI. The findings thus far suggest that we cannot entirely rule out the influence of the LI in child L2 acquis
In the conclusion, there is basically more confirmation of the idea that young children are innately tuned to any language that they hear, but not many findings that indicate if the L1 plays a major role in something like this.
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syntact
regarding the formation of sentences
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