Talks & Events

Event Details

Input, innateness and the development of inflection

  • Event Date: December 6, 2007
  • Event Start Time: 12:00 PM
  • Event End Time: 7:00 PM
  • Event Location: Rutgers University, Newark, Department of Classical & Modern Language and Literatures
  • Event Semester: Fall 2007
  • Event Contact: Dr. Jennifer Austin
  • Event Extra info: <a href="http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~cmll/faculty%20pages/austin.htm">Dr. Jennifer Austin</a>

A number of recent generativist studies on the development of syntax
in young children consider input frequency to be an important factor
which influences the course of acquisition of certain elements of
grammar (Roeper 1999, Yang 2002, Kupisch 2007). This is a departure
from the assumption shared by many generativists that statistical
learning plays little or no role in the acquisition of syntax. In this
talk I discuss the acquisition of verbal morphology in monolingual and
bilingual children acquiring Basque and Spanish, and I claim that a
model of inflectional development that combines associative learning
with innate constraints can best explain these data.