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Give syntax a chance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2004

DEREK BICKERTON
DEREK BICKERTON
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, HI 96822, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
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Extract

As an occasional visitor to the land of SLA, I found myself somewhat mystified by the approach of Truscott and Sharwood Smith (henceforth TSS). Unless I have totally misunderstood them, they are arguing against the separate existence of both a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and a Universal Grammar (UG). But who ever thought they were two? Occasionally linguists may write about one rather than the other, but I have always assumed them to be the same thing appearing in different guises (like Christ and the Holy Ghost in Christian theology). If you have UG, why would you need LAD? Processing with the aid of UG seems the only way to go – to the extent that UG is available to SLA, an issue TSS does not directly address.

Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 2004 , pp. 21 - 22
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2004

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