Mechanisms of Language Acquisition

Brian MacWhinney

PREFACE, PART I. THE PROBLEM OF OVERGENERALIZATION, 1. THE PRINCIPLE OF CONTRAST: A CONSTRAINT ON LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, 2. SIMPLICITY AND GENERALITY OF RULES IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, 3. WHAT IS LEARNED IN ACQUIRING WORD CLASSES - A STEP TOWARD AN ACQUISITION THEORY, 4. A STUDY IN NOVEL WORD LEARNING: THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CAUSATIVE, 5. LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND MACHINE LEARNING, PART II. COMPETITION, 6. COMPETITION, VARIATION, AND LANGUAGE LEARNING, 7. LEARNING THE PAST TENSES OF ENGLISH VERBS: IMPLICIT RULES OR PARALLEL DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING, 8. THE COMPETITION MODEL, PART III. CONSTRAINTS ON THE FORM OF GRAMMAR, 9. THE ACQUISITION OF IMPLICIT ARGUMENTS AND THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEORY, PROCESS, AND MECHANISM, 10. PARSABILITY AND LEARNABILITY, 11. REPRESENTATION, RULES AND OVERGENERALIZATION IN PHONOLOGY, 12. THE BOOTSTRAPPING PROBLEM IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, COMMENTARY, AUTHOR INDEX, SUBJECT INDEX