ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I address the following guiding questions: What is known about the course of normal language acquisition? How important is linguistic experience for determining its course? If experience is required, does the child proceed by induction or deduction? Those theorists who believe language learning is highly dependent on amassed evidence from particular experiences, guided only by very general categorizing and memory mechanisms, are among the inductivists like Aristotle, Bacon, and Hume before them: The general principles and rules of language emerge from the painstaking compilation of raw data. In contrast, are the rationalist heirs to Plato, Descartes, and Kant: The child comes equipped with the principles of universal grammar and uses data only to confirm or deny deductions about which alternative manifestation of universal grammar surrounds the child. In this way, the induction/deduction dimension is related in significant ways to the ideas of empiricism/rationalism and to input-dependent versus input-independent development.
