Language and the Learning Curve: A New Theory of Syntactic Development

Anat Ninio*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

89 Scopus citations

Abstract

Language development remains one of the most hotly debated topics in the cognitive sciences. In recent years, we have seen contributions to the debate from researchers in psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy, though there have been surprisingly few interdisciplinary attempts at unifying the various theories. This book offers a new view of language development. Drawing on formal linguistic theory (the Minimalist Program, Dependency Grammars), cognitive psychology (Skill Learning) computational linguistics (Zipf curves), and Complexity Theory (networks), it takes the view that syntactic development is a simple process and that syntax can be learned just like any other cognitive or motor skill. This book develops a learning theory of the acquisition of syntax that builds on the contribution of the different source theories in a detailed and explicit manner. Each chapter starts by laying the relevant theoretical background, before examining empirical data on child language acquisition. The result is a bold new theory of the acquisition of syntax, unusual in its combination of Chomskian linguistics and learning theory. This book challenges many of our usual assumptions about syntactic development.

Original languageEnglish
PublisherOxford University Press
Number of pages224
ISBN (Electronic)9780191584985
ISBN (Print)019929982X, 9780199299829
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Apr 2010

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Oxford University Press 2006. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Chomskian linguistics
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Cognitive sciences
  • Complexity theory
  • Computational linguistics
  • Language development
  • Linguistic theory
  • Syntactic development

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