ABSTRACT
To begin to learn the phonology and syntax of the parental language requires at minimum that young infants segment and internally represent the stream of speech at phonetic and lexical levels of processing. Moreover, it is undoubtedly necessary for the acquisition of syntax that representations of greater complexity, for example, phrases and clauses, also become a part of the repertoire of the internal representations of speech during the first two to five years of life (e.g., Morgan, 1986; Pinker, 1984; Wexler & Culicover, 1980). Although there is not agreement as to which representations must be available and which rules or parameter settings are acquired or selected during the earliest phases of language acquisition, there is general agreement that the speech signal must be segmented and represented at different levels of processing if linguistic competence is to be attained.
