A Construction-Based Analysis of the Acquisition of East Asian Relative Clauses

• Published in: Studies in second language acquisition Vol. 29; no. 2; pp. 311 - 320
• Main Author: Diessel, Holger
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.06.2007
• Subjects: Children & youth; COMMENTARY; Foreign language learning; Grammar; Grammatical clauses; Grammatical constructions; Language; Language acquisition; Language development; Language proficiency; Language universals; Languages; Linguistics; Nativism; Noun phrases; Nouns; Relative clauses; Sentence Structure; Verbs; Word Order; Germany
• ISSN: 0272-2631; 1470-1545
• DOI: 10.1017/S0272263107070167

Why are crosslinguistic generalizations like the noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) relevant to our understanding of language acquisition? The answer to this question relies on our view of language universals. In generative linguistics, it is commonly assumed that language universals are based on innate linguistic knowledge. In this approach, languages share some of their basic grammatical properties because the core of human grammar is innate (Crain & Pietroski, 2001). However, this view of linguistic nativism is incompatible with what we know about the neurological foundations of the human mind: Although language has genetic prerequisites, it is biologically implausible that these prerequisites consist of prespecified categories and constraints (Quartz & Sejnowski, 1997).