Fragments Along the Way: Minimalism as an Account of Some Stages in First Language Acquisition

Helen Goodluck; Nina Kazanina

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00584

Fragments Along the Way: Minimalism as an Account of Some Stages in First Language Acquisition

Front Psychol. 2020 May 8:11:584. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00584. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Helen Goodluck¹, Nina Kazanina^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, York, United Kingdom.
² School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
³ Centre for Cognition and Decision Making, Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, HSE University, Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

We discuss two instances in which the minimalist model of syntax offers a potential account of children's linguistic behavior: the Merge analysis of phrase structure and the analysis of pronominal structures and other long distance dependencies. In each case, we need to understand the relationship between performance mechanisms (the mechanisms for language production and comprehension) and the syntax on which these mechanisms draw.

Keywords: first language acquisition; merge; minimalism; performance mechanisms; pronoun interpretation; questions.