Linguistic Theory and Syntactic Development

Abstract

The process commonly referred to as “language acquisition” involves the development of a great number of cognitive systems and social skills. For example, the child must learn the form and meaning of the individual lexical items which comprise the lexicon of his language. He must develop a processing system which will enable him to produce and comprehend the sentences of the language in real time; this processing system will depend, in part at least, on a growing memory and attentional span. He will also acquire a set of pragmatic and social skills which allow him to use his language appropriately in various contexts. Finally, he must uncover the system of rules — morphological, phonological, syntactic, and semantic — which comprise the grammar of the language he is to acquire.