Abstract
Much of the recent discussion of language learnability has centered around the absence for the learner of negative evidence and the implications of that absence. The basic argument has been reiterated many times: If the child does not have access to negative evidence — the information that certain structures are not part of the language — then Universal Grammar presumably does not make available choices that can only be resolved by such evidence. (See Chomsky and Lasnik (1977) for early discussion.) In principle, the concern is exclusively with the situation schematized in (1).
I am indebted to Stephen Crain for extensive discussion of the issues in this paper.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baker, C. L.: 1979, ‘Syntactic theory and the projection problem’, Linguistic Inquiry 10, 533–581.
Baker, C. L. and McCarthy, J. J. (eds.): 1981, The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Bouchard, D.: 1982, On the Content of Empty Categories, Unpublished M.I.T. Ph.D. dissertation.
Bersnan, J.: 1971, ‘Contraction and the transformational cycle’, Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Chomsky, N.: 1981, Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Holland.
Chomsky, N. and Lasnik, H.; 1977, ‘Filters and control’, Linguistic Inquiry 8, 425–504.
Davis, L.: 1983, ‘Remarks on optional phonological rules and learnability’. University of Connecticut (unpublished).
Dell, F.: 1981, ‘On the learnability of optional phonological rules’, Linguistic Inquiry 12, 31–37.
Epstein, S.: 1982, ‘Clitic-rules and learnability’, University of Connecticut (unpublished).
Grimshaw, J.: 1979, ‘Complement selection and the lexicon’, Linguistic Inquiry 10, 279–326.
Grimshaw, J.: 1981, ‘Form, function, and the language acquisition device’, in C. L. Baker and J. J. McCarthy (eds.).
Lasnik, H.: 1981, ‘Learnability, restrictiveness, and the evaluation metric’, in C. L. Baker and J. J. McCarthy (eds.).
Mazurkewich, I. and White, L.: 1984, ‘The acquisition of the dative alternation: Unlearning overgeneralizations,’ Cognition 16, 261–283.
Perlmutter, D.: 1971, Deep and Surface Constraints in Syntax, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.
Pesetsky, J.: 1982, Paths and Categories,Unpublished MIT Ph.D. dissertation.
Pinker, S.: 1982, ‘A theory of the acquisition of lexical-interpretive grammars’, in J. Bresnan (ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Postal, P. and Pullum, G.: 1982, ‘The contraction debate’, Linguistic Inquiry 13, 122–138.
Stowell, T.: 1981, Origins of Phrase Structure, Unpublished. M.I.T. Ph.D. dissertation.
Wexler, K.: 1981, ‘Some problems in the theory of language growth’, U.C. Irvine, unpublished.
Wexler, K. and Culicover, P.: 1980, Formal Principles of Language Acquisition, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Williams, E.: 1981, ‘Language acquisition, markedness, and phrase structure’, in S. Tavakolian (ed.), Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory, MIT Press, Cambridge.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1989 Kluwer Academic Publishers
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lasnik, H. (1989). On Certain Substitutes for Negative Data. In: Matthews, R.J., Demopoulos, W. (eds) Learnability and Linguistic Theory. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0955-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0955-7_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-0-7923-0558-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-0955-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive