Abstract
There has been much concern in recent linguistic theory for definition of restrictions on the class of grammars which might help to explain “learnability” of natural language (e.g., Baker and McCarthy, 1981). In this paper we provide empirical evidence for a ‘structure-dependent’ constraint on hypothesis formation in early first language acquisition of English. It concerns a central aspect of natural language, anaphora. This constraint determines that configurational structure is necessary to the computation of grammatical anaphora. This structure-dependent constraint is argued to be stronger than non-linguistic principles for anaphora, which the child may access. We argue that the empirical evidence for this structure-dependence supports a theory such as that proposed by Chomsky 1977, 1981 which claims that biologically determined cognitive capacities for natural language provide linguistically significant constraints on the form of possible representations of possible human language.
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Lust, B., Clifford, T. (1986). The 3D Study: Effects of Depth, Distance and Directionality on Children’s Acquisition of Anaphora. In: Lust, B. (eds) Studies in the Acquisition of Anaphora. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4548-7_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4548-7_6
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