Pt. I. Linguistic knowledge --1. Introduction to language acquisition -- 2. Knowledge in the absence of experience -- 3. Stages of language acquisition -- 4. Why language does not have to be taught -- 5. Dispelling a common-sense account -- 6. Universal grammar and the logical problem of language acquisition -- 7. The modularity hypothesis -- Pt. II. Constituent structure -- 8. Phrase structure -- 9. Phrase structure rules and X'-theory -- 10. Setting the X'-parameters -- 11. Phrasal categories -- 12. Ambiguity and productivity -- 13. Children's knowledge of phrase structure -- 14. Constraints on reference -- 15. Children's knowledge of constraints : backwards anaphora -- Pt. III. Transformational syntax -- 16. A transformation generating yes/no questions -- 17. Children's adherence to structure dependence -- 18. WH-movement -- 19. Cross-linguistic aspects of WH-questions -- 20. The acquisition of WH-questions -- 21. Successive cyclic movement -- 22. Successful cyclic movement -- 23. A constraint on contraction -- 24. Acquisition of wanna contraction -- 25. Principle C in WH-questions -- 26. Children's knowledge of strong crossover -- Pt. IV. Universal grammar in the visual modality -- 27. The structure of American sign language -- 28. The acquisition of American sign language -- 29. The structure and acquisition of WH-questions in American sign language -- 30. Parameter setting -- 31. Modularity and modality -- Pt. V. Semantics and philosophy of language -- 32. Theories of meaning -- 33. Truth-conditional semantics -- 34. Compositionality I -- 35. Compositionality II -- 36. Intensional semantics -- 37. Learnability of syntax and semantics -- 38. Acquisition of NPs with modifiers -- 39. Relative clauses -- 40. Universal quantification
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 408-415) and index
