ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a model of language acquisition that has attempted to deal with the first type of variation. It considers the treatment of data on cross linguistic variation in language learning provided by the Competition Model. The chapter also considers evidence for individual variation in the acquisition of English. This chapter suggests some modifications that could be added to the competition model or any other connectionist/lexicalist theory to account for these patterns of variation. It examines the problem of accounting for the details of the differences in the course of language acquisition between- children learning different languages. The chapter provides a sketch of the Competition Model, with emphasis on the principle of cue validity and the predictions that it makes for cross-linguistic differences in language learning. The competition model continues to assist us in studying variation in the acquisition process across natural languages by both accounting for old data and stimulating.
