ABSTRACT
The normal child’s acquisition of language is recognized as one of the most impressive feats of childhood. It is more remarkable still when we consider not only the complex grammar a typical child acquires in his first decade, but also the social rules for appropriate language use that require mastery. What factors allow the child to accomplish so much in such a short time is a question that has received much attention from both psychologists and linguists. More often than not, the context for investigating the question has been one of controversy, pitting environmentalists against nativists, or mother against mind, as it were. Now, after more than a decade of empirical research and theoretical discussion, it is clear that any adequate and specific answer to that question must be complex, involving descriptions of the information available in the environment, the nature of the child’s processing procedures for accessing that information, and the nature of the cognitive and/or linguistic constraints that assure the efficient development of a functional human communication system.
