ABSTRACT
In recent years a number of proposals have been made to account for the distribution of null and overt arguments across a variety of spoken languages. As Hyams and Weissenborn both suggest, these proposals have implications for the analysis of child language development, under the hypothesis that a parameterized theory of language is also a theory of language acquisition. Hence, an accurate theory of why children's early speech seems consistently to allow for null subjects is dependent on an accurate theory of why some adult languages allow null subjects while others do not. In their interesting and informative contributions, Hyams and Weissenborn provide data that will aid in the understanding of both the adult grammars and the explanation of the child's course of development.
