Acquisition and language processing: an integrated approach from the minimalist perspective

The learnability problem of language acquisition is viewed as requiring a both linguistic and psycholinguistic treatment. Difficulties for an effective joint approach to this problem are identified. An integrated approach is proposed which reconciles the phonological bootstrapping hypothesis with a minimalist conception of language. The early distinction between closed and open lexical classes is considered to be fundamental to the initialization of a universal computational system. Linguistic development is characterized as the progressive specification of the formal features of the functional categories, as processing at the phonetic and semantic interfaces proceeds. Directions for future research on language acquisition in the light of this approach are suggested.