In the preceding chapter we introduced the syntax crystal model, demonstrating how it worked and how it could be used to generate and parse natural language strings. We showed how the model could handle many of the linguistic structures that have been used to illustrate the power of transformational grammars. We argued that the local rules of the syntax crystal were more accessible to explanation at the cognitive level. And especially important, the syntactic rules of the model use a minimum of essential features and thus are easy to map onto the conceptual structure underlying language strings.

In this chapter we are going to show how the syntax crystal model makes it easier to explain the acquisition of syntax. With very few assumptions, the model demonstrates how the information used to construct the complex hierarchical structures of syntax can be gradually acquired using a simple mediated learning principle. In advocating a model to account for syntax acquisition by learning theory principles, we are moving counter to the nativism allied with transformational theories. Therefore, we are going to divide this chapter into two parts. The first part opens the territory for a learning account of syntax acquisition by examining and challenging the view held by Chomsky and others that there are innate, specifically linguistic mechanisms for syntax. The second part discusses the acquisition of syntax using the syntax crystal model.