ABSTRACT
Much contemporary research on child language is guided by the poverty of the stimulus argument. This argument is for the most part based on two observations. First, young children possess a rich linguistic competence. Second, the input to which young children are exposed undermines their linguistic competence in many respects. To reconcile the mismatch between the rich linguistic competence shown by children and the impoverished input to which they are exposed, it is inferred that innate linguistic knowledge assists the child in the process of language acquisition. The role of innate linguistic principles is to restrict the child’s hypothesis space, so that the child can make the most. out of the impoverished input (see Chomsky, 1980a).
