Properties of Parameters and Their Connection to Language Acquisition

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: This paper is mainly investigating the properties of parameters and their connection to language acquisition. One of the core questions will be, in how far Chomskys assumption of parameters being generally equipped with a default value can be validated. In order to obtain a more detailed account of parameters in language acquisition, a chronological analysis of relevant study areas will be made, moving from a broad perspective to more and more detailed descriptions. This analysis contains a brief overview of the Faculty of Language and the LAD as well as of Universal Grammar, simply because the parameters in question derive from these systems. Afterwards a detailed look will be taken on specific features of parameters, taking Meisels text Parameters in Acquisition as a basis. To become more specific in order to further question certain features of parameters that have occurred by then, further linguistic fields will be taken into account, namely bilingual studies, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics.