HPSG and acquisition

[dmellow at sfu.ca]

Re: HPSG and acquisition

With respect to comments by Raúl Aranovich and Robert Borsley, on HPSG and
acquisition (attached below):

I have recently begun doing some second language acquisition research that
begins with two default assumptions: (1) that it is desirable to first
attempt to account for developmental patterns with general learning
mechanisms rather than with special nativist/innatist mechanisms; and (2)
that signs are effective units of analysis for interpreting and
understanding these developmental patterns.  Thus far, I have been looking
at past time expression, articles, and complement clauses.  Although
inspired by HPSG signs, the signs that I have been proposing thus far are
quite simple due to (i) my (current) limited knowledge of HPSG, and (ii) a
desire to not attribute the full complexity of native language use to
learners (often referred to as the comparative fallacy).

I would appreciate any references to acquisition studies (either L1 or L2)
that use HPSG analyses.  I will summarize those references for the list.

Thanks,

Dean Mellow
Department of Linguistics
Simon Fraser University
http://www.sfu.ca/~dmellow/


Raúl Aranovich (Tue, 1 May 2001: Re: The appeal of P&P):


But don't get me wrong: I don't mean to imply that we need an 'HPSG theory
of language innnateness', because it may be that the innateness hypothesis
is not true, or even that it is not a legitimate scientific hypothesis. But
starting to ask questions about HPSG and language acquisition could be a
start. I am sure there is some people doing this already, it will be
interesting to know who (even if you have to self-promote).


Borsley R D (Tue, 1 May 2001: Re: The appeal of P&P):

One thing that is very unfortunate here is the fact that there is hardly any
acquisition work drawing on HPSG. Criticisms of a body of work are always
more persuasive if there are alternatives available. It seems to me,
therefore, that we should either be looking at acquisition data ourselves or
bringing the virtues of HPSG to the attention of those who work on
acquisition.