Linguistic Nativism and the Poverty of the Stimulus

This unique contribution to the ongoing discussion of languageacquisition considers the Argument from the Poverty of the Stimulusin language learning in the context of the wider debate overcognitive, computational, and linguistic issues. * Critically examines the Argument from the Poverty of theStimulus - the theory that the linguistic input which childrenreceive is insufficient to explain the rich and rapid developmentof their knowledge of their first language(s) through generallearning mechanisms * Focuses on formal learnability properties of the class ofnatural languages, considered from the perspective of severallearning theoretic models * The only current book length study of arguments for the povertyof the stimulus which focuses on the computational learningtheoretic aspects of the problem