ABSTRACT
Our focus falls on the manner in which children learn the intricacies of formal grammar and its implications for communication disorders. We begin, however, with a statement of broad principles that both seeks to justify this approach and to address the sometimes hidden philosophical queries that lie within many of the debates about the value of highly formal theories in the applied domain. These questions come from both practitioners and theoreticians, but our effort is to articulate them, as far as possible, from an applied point of view.
