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The (il)Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

Abstract

The fact that children often appear to learn little from corrective feedback has led theorists to construct the "logical problem of language acquisition" (LPLA). The idea is that, without further formal constraints, language can be formally proven to be unlearnable. This paper argues that the LPLA is based on a restricted view of the nature of language, the nature of the learner, and the nature of the learning environment. When we examine the full set of forces channeling language learning, including competition, recasts, conservatism, and indirect negative evidence, w e see that language is in fact highly learnable and the LPLA is not well motivated. In its place, we hope that language theory can focus on the analysis of overgeneralizations as ways of diagnosing the shape of underlying analogic pressures.

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