Principles and Parameters Theory and Language Acquisition

The basic idea in PRINCIPLES AND PARAMETERS THEORY is to distinguish the invariants of human language (the principles) from the major points of crosslinguistic variation (the parameters). Both principles and parameters are taken to reflect innately determined, biological characteristics of the human brain (see UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR). In the course of normal child development, however, the two diverge: The principles come to operate in much the same way in every child, with minimal sensitivity to the child’s environment, while the parameters take on distinct values as a function of the child’s linguistic input.