The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

Download or read book The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition written by C. L. Baker and published by . This book was released on 2003-02-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of articles and associated discussion papers focuses on a problem that has attracted increasing attention from linguists and psychologists throughout the world during the past several years. Reduced to essentials, the problem is that of discovering the character of the mental capacities that make it possible for human beings to attain knowledge of their language on the basis of fragmentary and haphazard early linguistic experience. A fundamental assumption running through all of these contributions is that people possess strong innate predispositions that are critical for success in this task.