topics: |  language-acquisition

It took conviction in the 1970s to say this, and it sounds prophetic today
in the 2010s:

   the last decade and more - has been characterized by what may, in time,
   come to seem a rather one-sided concentration on grammatical structure.
   Martin Braine (1971), in his comprehensive survey of work on "the
   acquisition of language", says: '... this review is concerned only with
   the acquisition of structure... the subject of lexical development will
   be reviewed only very sketchily.'  No mention is made of the development
   of the semantic system. p.1

the use of the term acquisition [may contain] a further implication that
structure, and therefore language itself, is a commodity of some kind tha
the child has to gain possession of in the course of maturation. 1

nativist view: innate capacity - child sets up hypothetical rules of grammar
	and matches them against what he hears
environmentalist view: emphasizes language in relation to other learning.
	need not be associationist, stimulus-response type.