ABSTRACT
In this Chapter I will provide a new analysis of the null-subject phenomenon in early child language that departs in crucial respects from previous analyses, in particular, that of Hyams (1983, 1986). We adopt the principles and parameters framework (Chomsky, 1981) and show that this formulation of Universal Grammar (UG) provides an explanatory framework within which to address both the logical and developmental problems of language acquisition. We take the logical problem of language acquisition to be the problem of explaining how the child can in principle arrive at an adult grammatical system, given the various boundary conditions under which acquisition takes place, for example, the lack of negative evidence and the inaccessibility of certain crucial data in the input. The developmental problem of language acquisition, on the other hand, involves elucidating the mechanisms by which the child passes through the intermediate stages of language development and arrives ultimately at a steady state grammar.
