Bong, H: A Minimalist Model of Language Acquisition

This monograph develops a ‘weak deterministic‘ model of language acquisition that can accommodate first language (L1) acquisition, language change, andsecond language (L2) acquisition: namely theEconomical Parameter-Setting model. This model isachieved by adopting the notion of economy employedin the theory of Universal Grammar (UG) developed inthe Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995) and bymodifying a pre-minimalist model of languagelearnability and language change developed by Clarkand Roberts (1993). The main claims are that the processes of L1acquisition and L2 acquisition are governed by thesame economy principles and that the differences lieneither in different governing properties of theacquisition processes nor in different degrees of UGavailability, but in factors that cause thedivergence of parameter-settings from the inputsetting. The proposed causal factors are twofold: (i)particular variabilities of the input caused by L2learning environments and (ii) the L1 lexicon. Thesefactors contribute to an increased obscurity andambiguity of the parameter settings embodied in theinput.