ABSTRACT
Children learn language so efficiently and so fast because they know in outline how languages behave. So far, it has not been very difficult to show that children have some inkling of what languages are like. They seem to realise that language is rule-governed – that a finite number of principles govern the enormous number of utterances they hear going on around them. They also have an instinctive awareness that languages are hierarchically structured – the knowledge that several words can go in the same structural slot as one. A child might say:
Furthermore, children realize that language makes use of operations which are structure-dependent, so that each ‘slot’ in a sentence functions as a unit which can be moved around, as in:
However, an inbuilt knowledge that language is rule-governed, that
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language ability so efficiently. We would also like to find out why many English children follow similar paths in the development of their language. These are mysteries which cannot just be swept aside with vague assumptions of ‘innate programming’. We must investigate the matter more fully.
