Text: Lightfoot 2006 How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge University Press.
1. The development of language in children
Arguments from the poverty of stimulus and the limitation of relevant experience (i.e. Primary Linguistic Data - PLD) that triggers the development of a mature grammar in language acquisition by young children.
2. The development of a language over generations
How small changes in external language (PLD) sometimes trigger new grammars (I-languages) that generate significantly different structures and account for the punctuated equilibrium of language change, where there are major structural shifts or “catastrophes” in the history of languages, many phenomena changing in parallel. We will discuss some well-understood case studies and some areas where solutions are not yet clear.
3. The development of the language faculty in the species
How thinking about language acquisition and change provides a way of thinking about the evolution of the language faculty in the species and how it might be explained in part by elements of natural selection and in part by other, internal factors, where natural selection alone is unlikely to provide solutions.