Abstract
Up until now, studies of natural language processing and acquisition in relation to Universal Grammar Chomsky, 1982 and 1987) have been conducted independently to a large degree. When they have been related, e.g. in studies of relations between language learnability and parsability, these studies have mainly argued that learnability and parsability put functional constraints on Universal Grammar. In contrast, in this paper, we will pursue a program of study of the relations between language processing and acquisition which hypothesizes that Universal Grammar itself significantly determines certain aspects of language processing as well as language acquisition. In particular, we will hypothesize that parameter setting in UG has as one deductive consequence, a systematically different organization of parsing across language types. Since we consider that parameter-setting for UG occurs very early, we predict that this differential organization of parsing is a characteristic of processing in very early stages of language acquisition, as well as in the adult
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Mazuka, R., Lust, B. (1990). On Parameter Setting and Parsing: Predictions for Cross-Linguistic Differences in Adult and Child Processing. In: Frazier, L., De Villiers, J. (eds) Language Processing and Language Acquisition. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3808-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3808-6_7
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