A Principles-and-Parameters Approach to the Study of Child Language.

In order to solve the language acquisition puzzle there are two basic problems one needs to address . The first is the so-called "logical problem of language acquisition" and the second is what I will refer to as the "developmental problem of language acquisition." The logical problem of language acquisition is the question, no doubt familiar to you all, of how we account for the richness, complexity and specificity of our shared linguistic knowledge given the limitations of the available data. For e xample, how do we all know that in the sentence in (la) !11£Q.§..§..l and !!.§. may refer to the same individual, but in (lb) they may not?