言 語 研 究(Gengo Kenkyu)115(1999),141～158 141

【書 評】

Levy, Yonata (ed.), Other children, other languages: Issues in

the theory of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence

Erlbaum Associates, 1994. vii + 424pp. Hardcover. US$ 79.95.

Mihoko KUBOTA

(Tohoku Fukushi University)

Keywords: nativism, empiricism, language specificity, modularity,

pathology.

This volume developed from the discussions supported by the In-

stitute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in June of 1991.

The contributors to this book demonstrate cross-linguistic and cross-

population studies of language development for the following main pur-

poses. One is to revisit the long-debated issues of language-universal and language-specific features and investigate the relationships between

these features and cognitive development that may alter the paths of

language acquisition. Another purpose is to reanalyze Universal Gram-

mar (UG) in terms of domain-specificity and modularity of language in

atypical conditions of language acquisition, such as genetic language

disorder.

This book contains a preface by Yonata Levy, thirteen chapters with

a reference list each, and the indices of author, language, and subject at

the end. Chapters two to thirteen are grouped into three parts. Part I "General Theoretical Issues" covers the theory of principles and

parameters of UG and empiristic analyses against it. Part II "Cross-

142 書 評Mihoko KUBOTA

linguistic Perspectives" presents language-specific aspects affecting lear-

ning mechanisms. Part III "Pathology" illustrates similarities and

discrepancies between normal and pathological cases (e.g. autism,

William's syndrome, dysphasia).

In chapter one "Introduction," Yonata Levy first asks whether or

not a child going through congenital pathology has similar acquisition

paths and eventual outcome to those of a normal child. The author

points out the theoretical relevance between these children by introduc-

ing the core concept of plasticity, which means that "the immature, par-

tially differentiated brain has means of compensating for some critical

deficiencies" (p. 2). If plasticity is strong, both the developmental pro-

cess and the outcome should be identical in typical and atypical

language acquisition. On the other hand, plasticity gets weak if only the

outcome proves to be identical in both types of children. The latter

case may call into question theories assuming innate constraints of

mind, which should explain a universal process to the final state of gram-

mar. Yet as Levy states, it is still unclear which case of plasticity has

more empirical support because of a variety of possibilities.

Part I consists of the papers discussing the traditional nativist/em-

piricist debate in depth. Chapter two has Nina Hyams "Non-

discreteness and Variation in Child Language: Implications for Principle

and Parameter Models of Language Development." Hyams modifies

the principle-and-parameter (P & P) model (Chomsky 1981, 1986) so

that it can interact with other modularized linguistic domains (i.e.,

semantics, pragmatics, morphology, language processor). Her claim is

that although various parameters are involved in language-specific struc-

turing, the sequence is not universal: different sequences emerge across

languages and individuals because the linguistic domain matures uneven-

ly and yields partial and gradual processes. For example, lexical

development may rely on a stem parameter (Hyams 1986), whose value

is set for verb inflections (e.g., Italian) or bare verb forms (e.g.,

English). Modularity of the lexicon is also closely related to syntactic

書 評 143

development, such as the anaphor/pronoun distinction in long and short

distance bindings in English and Icelandic. Hyams insists that what

should be considered universal is the initial parameter settings, not the

process of resetting, and refutes the availability of all parametric values

at the initial stage and the trial of each (Valian 1990, Verrips 1994) from

both hypothesis-testing and computational views. Hyams' version of

the P & P model also limits the interactions of the related modules and

hypothesis space to prevent "wild grammars" (p. 34). These new in-

sights of Hyam's P & P model, however, seem to expand too much to ex-

plain cross-linguistic variations of what has been considered as the

periphery of a grammar. Parameters set in the word-internal level and

the structural level should not be confused. For example, the stem

parameter should clarify how syntactic development proceeds in mor-

phologically mixed languages that may lie between English- and Italian-type languages. Along with the question of what parametric values are

related to the maturation of each domain, we should reconsider the

range of parametric options and underlying concepts of each domain of

language.

Chapterr three is "Syntax-Semantics Mappings as an Explanation for

Some Transitions in Language Development" by Paul Bloom.He

refutes distributional learning because it requires too large search space

for too specific form-meaning matches. Bloom's semantic competence

theory postulates that general cognitive constraints, which are innate, in-

teract with the linguistic system in word meaning interpretation

against semantic bootstrapping (Pinker 1984), which posits innate

unidirectional mapping from semantics to syntax. For example, the

semantic competence theory takes the count/mass noun distinction in

English as a result from a human's biased perspective shift from in-

dividuals to count nouns and from portions of entities to mass nouns,

and vice versa. Later this categorization is applied to abstract, non-

material entities. Admitting that basic syntactic structures help shape

the semantic category of a word, Bloom insists that the very initial mapp-

144 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

ing goes from semantics to syntax for three reasons. First, before syn-

tactic knowledge is acquired, basic comprehension and production of

first word meanings are observed by the first year of age. Second,

children discriminate basic word meanings, such as dog and cat, whisper

and shout, all of which cannot derive merely from syntactic properties

(e.g., NP, VP). Third, adults can also learn word meanings with no syn-

tactic support, such as novel names. After the basic semantic

knowledge is acquired, reversely children start to use syntactic

categories to search for word meanings. Bloom holds a unique

nativistic view taking concept-form mapping as innate, but contradic-

tory accounts are found in his theory. For instance, it is unclear why he

argues that "children possess syntactic categories from the very start"

(p. 53) against semantic assimilation (Schlesinger 1982, 1988), whose

tenet of semantics-based syntactic categorization is similar. Moreover,

the reasons for semantic primacy in mapping mentioned above deviate

too far from the issue of how children pick up semantic subtleties from

language input, such as those represented by thematic roles through

argument structures. Of course, these cognitive biases need to be

tested in other languages in which syntax-semantics mappings occur in

unique fashions.

Chapter four has "Two Approaches to the Acquisition of Grammar"

by Izchak M. Schlesinger. As a strong empiricist he holds two theories

against innateness of initial linguistic properties. One is semantic

assimilation (Schlesinger 1982, 1988), which states that on the basis of

agent-subject and action-verb mappings the child assimilates non-agen-

tive nouns and non-actional verbs into the subject-verb relation. The

other is a compartmental rule, which is "a rule applying to a much more

limited range of cases than provided for by generative grammar" (p. 93).

According to this rule, which presupposes no innate constraints, bin-

ding principle B is acquired later than A because the former may have an

extrasentential referent, one more choice in sentence processing than in

the latter. Along this empirical line Schlesinger takes alternative ac-

書 評 145

counts for the pro-drop parameter (chapter two, see Hyams 1986 also).

First, subject omission is due to processing difficulty in sentence produc-

tion. Second, words of no semantic prominence (e.g., expletives, con-

tracted corpulas) and conceptual complexity (e.g. modals) are easily

omitted. Third, uninformative subjects tend to be omitted for

discourse effects. Thus Schlesinger argues that a parameter setting

model cannot be the theoretical outline used to explain universal and

language-specific rules. However, Schlesinger's arguments pose the

following problems. First, the compartmental rule cannot show how

the knowledge of binding develops with more complex structures such

as binding principle C and backward reference (Crain 1993; Felix 1992;

Stevenson 1992). Second, processing difficulty and uninformativeness

in pro-drop and subject omission (Bloom 1990, Valian 1991) has gained

no theoretical or empirical support, mainly because children do produce

longer utterances as often as they drop subjects (for statistical confirma-

tion, see Hyams & Wexler 1993). Despite their drawbacks, Bloom's

and Schlesinger's chapters make us aware of the difficulty with which

semantics-based empiricism tries to explain the full range of syntactic

development by giving alternatives to the parameter setting theory,

especially those in terms of rule generalizations and economy of rule ap-

plications.

Part II begins with chapter five "The Acquisition of Functional

Structure" by Teun Hoekstra, who illustrates the emergence of func-

tional categories in Dutch. The Dutch child starts with the less or least

restrictive option (i.e., an adjunct). For example, a verbal negator niet "not" and an anaphoric negator nee "no" occur in complementary

distribution with regard to verb definiteness, pre/postverbal negation,

and modality. Around age two grammar restructuring begins for the

more restricted option (i.e., a functional head) as follows: 1. A func-

tional head position for the finite verb becomes obligatory and takes the

infinitival projection as its complement; 2. The nonverbal modal nee

disappears; and 3. The single stress is given to the lexical head.

146 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

Moreover, adjunct NPs split partly due to the topicalization of the first

NP (e.g., *mij ... ogee "me ... eyes" i.e., "my eyes") later rejoin to be

part of the functional head of a DP as either the genitive marker or the

determiner is inserted into the head position. Likewise, an IP-to-CP

shift proceeds as embedded wh-phrases adjoined to IPs are reanalyzed

to be in SPEC of CP by means of complementizers, and as the case

feature of embedded pronominal subjects changes from accusative to

nominative. In support of fairly weak continuity, Hoekstra refutes the

maturational theory (Borer & Wexler 1987) that all members of a func-

tional category are absent initially but mature as determined by UG,

mainly because some members are present early: "[I]t is not so much

maturation of a category, but rather maturation or development of a cer-

tain requirement, which has the obligatory presence of a category as a

consequence" (p. 132). As the author questions, it remains to be seen

why not all members of the functional category emerge in adjunctional

structures, whether the emergence order differs across languages, and

how many functional categories can be scheduled in UG in terms of

parametric variations which came into focus in the continuity-matura-

tion arguments.

Chapter six is "The Acquisition of Italian Verb Morphology in a

Cross-linguistic Perspective" by Elena Pizzuto and Maria Cristina

Caselli, based on Pizzuto and Caselli (1992). Italian verbs never occur

in their bare stem forms and must be learned through conjugations and

morpheme replacements. The production data from three one-year-

olds show that "the distribution of inflection types over distinct verb

roots was uneven for both mood, tense, aspect, and person, number in-

flections" (p. 163). There were very few errors overall (only 3 or 4%),

but only a few inflection patterns were found even in the two-word

stages. These results contradict Hyams' stem parameter (chapter two;

Hyams 1992) because Italian inflections were not acquired earlier than

English inflections, contrary to her claim that with the discrete

parameter setting "Italian children do not have the option of omitting in-

書 評 147

flectional elements" (Hyams p. 23), which leads to rapid lexical develop-

ment. P & C assert that the acquisition of Italian inflections is gradual

and seems to involve "a variety of concurring formal, distributional,

phonological, pragmatic, and semantic factors" (p. 181). Hyams had

commented on P & C's work elsewhere (1992) and claimed that P & C

misunderstood her theory. It is a pity then that no theoretical improve-

ment is found in this chapter. For one thing, P & C do not reply to

Hyams' comment that, if properly reanalyzed, their data confirm her

prediction that Italian inflections are acquired earlier than English inflec-

tions. P & C seem to confuse lexical learning with universal properties

of inflectional patterns. It is unclear on what ground P & C's concept of

the development of Italian inflections differs from Hyams' account of

gradual processes of specific conditions on word formation to be

parametrized. As in Hyams' chapter, in order to test parametric varia-tions at such a morphosyntactic level, a wider range of longitudinal

research with a larger population must be put into practice.

In chapter seven "Developmental Perspectives on Transitivity: A

Confluence of Cues," Ruth A. Berman explains gradual processes in

which multiple morphemes and rhetorical biases are combined to repre-

sent transitivity, a universal constraint. Hebrew children learn basic

structural cues of transitive constructions in the following order:

canonic SVO word order, object case marking, and subject-verb number

and gender agreement. Together with such cues, children acquire verb

inflection patterns which contain or do not contain both transitive and in-

transitive verbs. By two and a half years of age children learn verb uses

in the following procedure. First, they rote-learn morphemes in some

familiar verbs and use them for verb form alternations to change tran-

sitivity. Second, children start to generalize the whole inflection

system on the basis of lexical productivity and frequency, innovate and

overgeneralize verb forms as in "neutralization" (pp. 219-220; Berman

1980, 1982), by which intransitive verbs are misused (neutralized) in

transitive contexts. Third, irregular verb forms and rhetorical uses are

148 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

mastered along with correct verb form alternations. Such developmen-

tal shift from bottom-up (data-driven) to top-down (rule-governed) lear-

ning reflects children's growing sensitivity to typological representa-

tions of universal concepts. As Italian and, English, Berman argues,

Hebrew reflects weak continuity of universal constraints, for its initial

stage follows the constraints but violates language-specific representa-

tions of them.

Clifton Pye also examines how argument structure alternations are

acquired through lexical features, in chapter eight "A Cross-linguistic

Approach to the Causative Alternation." Children (ages 4-13) acquiring

K'iche' (a Mayan agglutinating language) show a large number of

overgeneralizations in causative derivations, in which a verb meaning

changes from "to V" to "cause/make X (to) V." As in the Hebrew case,

most of the overgeneralizations result from item-by-item learning from

familiar verbs and productive application of various derivational rules.

One interesting thing is that the acquisition of K'iche' causative deriva-

tions starts late (by age 2; 10) and does not complete even at age thir-

teen. Another thing to note is that unlike Hebrew and English counter-

parts, K'iche' children do not misuse intransitive verb forms directly in

transitive contexts, as "*I fall this" in English, apparently due to their

previous mastery of distinctive morphological and syllabic features of

the intransitive forms. Pye argues that such cross-linguistic differences

of overgeneralized verbs cannot. be explained by a small number of

universal semantic elements posited by Pinker (1989). Rather, Pye

assumes that overgeneralizations reflect a failure in the lexical retrieval

process, which accounts for both individual and language-specific errors

and disappears as input frequency increases.

In chapter nine "Structural Dependency and the Acquisition of

Grammatical Relations," Matthew Rispoli shows a cross-linguistic

analysis of the development of the case and agreement systems by

means of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). Universal concepts in

RRG are basic components, such as logical structures (e.g., thematic

書 評 149

roles, predicate classes, telic/atelic aspects) , macroroles (e.g., actor,

undergoer), case systems, and pragmatic distinctions. Cross-linguistic

differences arise in various degrees and types of the structuring of ex-

ponents (i.e., morphemes and structures) according to the basic com-

ponents. For example, acquisition proceeds easily when the exponents

(especially morphemes) are in complementary distribution in transitivi-

ty (in Turkish) and macroroles are neutralized in intransitives (i.e., no

undergoer involved). On the other hand, it is difficult to acquire

different neutralization patterns encoded by multiple morphosyntactic

features (in Georgian and Kaluli) and the global case-marking system,

in which a single morpheme has two macroroles (in Hungarian and

Kaluli). These data show that contrary to Pinker's (1987) rule net-

work, there is no prototypical or natural grammatical relations common

to all these languages. While both RRG and the competition model

(Bates & MacWhinney 1987, 1989) have common pragmatic and seman-

tic distinctions as a reliable source for syntactic analyses, the latter rests

too much on lexical contrasts and sentence processing itself, not gram-

matical structures of predicates. What is considered universal by RRG

is not traditional UG elements (e.g., subject, object) but semantic and

pragmatic 'distinctions.

These chapters in Part II shed light on children's sensitivity in

finding rule-learning and input-processing strategies which are gradual-

ly shaped to fit into the way each language requires. Moreover, this

language-specificty of cognitive mechanisms is clearly illustrated in its

interaction with highly modularized linguistic components. It seems,

however, that the initial question of the universal core to language has

blurred out, since the main attention is paid to language-specific struc-

tural intricacies and associated learning patterns in the morphological

and individual word levels.

Part III shows three papers on pathological language acquisition.

Chapter ten has Thomas Roeper and Harry N. Seymour's "The Place of

Linguistic Theory in the Theory of Language Acquisition and Language

150 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

Development. " It is illustrated in the generative grammar approach

that language-impaired children have highly sophisticated syntactic

knowledge but present a sharp contrast with normal children in inter-

preting syntactic subtleties. Similarly to normal children aged three

and a half, an impaired child aged four and a half has adultlike command

of the barrier effect (Chomsky 1986), showing sensitivity to the

argument/adjunct distinction in wh-words together with short and

distance extractions (e.g., How did you say what to make = > how-say, *how-make; p . 318 (25)). However, one striking problem is that he

omitted a relative clause in the double wh-clauses and failed to answer

the question (e.g., How did the man talk who changed the baby?; p. 322

(30)). R & S propose that this is because long distance questions and

relative clauses were interpreted differently in this child's grammar.

Since the relative clause is generated inside an N' as an embedded

clause before the higher sentence (i.e., the matrix clause) is finished, it

is considered harder to acquire than a double wh-question. However,

this conclusion may not be supported for lack of the structural com-

parisons of the impaired and normal children's responses and the ex-

amination of "not how the child learns which sentences are syntactically

grammatical, but which interpretations are excluded" (p. 308). Since

R & S found similar the response patterns of all these children (the nor-

mal also omit relative clauses), there is a possibility that not only the im-

paired child but also the normal children rely heavily on pragmatic fac-

tors and search for contextual clues to find who does what to whom.

Syntactic and lexical properties of each question type should be in-

vestigated in order to see whether both types of children share any

aspects of universal grammar and whether they appear in the same

fashion (s).

In chapter eleven "Theoretical Implications of Inherited

Dysphasia," Myrna L. Gopnik describes the theoretical importance of

linguistic theory in the case of a particular gene which causes familial

language disorder but not serious cognitive impairment. One serious

書 評 151

methodological problem Gopnik mentions is that the diagnoses of

dysphasia and the relevant linguistic studies have been based merely on

item-by-item comparisons of surface forms and identification of formal

correctness, without inferring abstract rules in a grammar. Gopnik in-

sists that it is in the second factor of the grammar that cognitive explana-

tions, such as auditory processing, spatial reasoning, and hierarchical

relations, must demonstrate any definite causal relationships between

linguistic and nonlinguistic disorders. An example is that English and

German dysphasics do know basic concepts for linguistic markers (e.g.,

tense, number, aspect) but fail to mark them as abstract linguistic re-

quirements in their grammar. Such a disorder can be ascribed to an

autosomally dominant gene, which appears to "control for the develop-

ment of neurological asymmetries ... in the perisylvian region" (p. 353)

and lead to unique acquisition processes and strategies in particular

areas of grammar, not affecting cognitive faculties. In this point, the ex-

istence of this dysphasia-related gene is expected to support nativists'

claim of the innate language faculty and its modularity. To make the

conclusion truly irrefutable, there should be a wider range of

longitudinal research. Most of Gopnik's discussion is based on her

cross-sectional performance data from a single family's generations.

Her claim for the innateness of the language faculty would have gained 'a

strong support had she illustrated what linguistic aspects and principles

of dysphasia are inherited multigenerationally and how they differ from

other inherited cognitive capacities.

Chapter twelve is "The Relationship between Language and Social

Cognition: Lessons from Autism" by Helen Tager-Flusberg. Following

specificity hypothesis (Gopnik & Melzoff 1987), the author scrutinizes

specific relationships between autistic children's language use and their

deficits in mental and social cognition termed as "a theory of mind"

(Premack & Woodruff 1978). These cognitive deficits affect lexical

and pragmatic domains of language significantly. For example, autistic

children aged from three to six are far more impoverished in their uses

152 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

of words meaning epistemic states (e.g.., believe, dream, think, forget)

and attention (e.g., Look!) than their Down syndrome (DS) counter

parts, while the results were quite opposite in the use of words of desire

emotion, and perception (e.g. wish, laugh, worry, taste,). In mother

child dyads the autistic children's utterances tend to be unrelated to the

topic even though they get longer with age, while the DS children pro.

duce far more contingent utterances and add new information to them

In particular, young autistic children tend to make pronoun reversal er.

rors, according to which they call themselves you and the listener I, par.

ticularly when they introduce new information about themselves anc

their mothers, and when their mothers ask about themselves, as in Dc

I...? For these errors, Tager-Flusberg assumes that what confuse:

children is pragmatically complex contexts requiring close speaker

hearer negotiations and frequent perspective and role changes. But shE

expounds that the main cause should be their underdevelopec

metarepresentational aspects of cognition, which involve "an impairec

ability to reflect on their own and other people's minds" (p. 369) and nc

self-awareness as information providers and receivers. These finding,c

support cognitive domain-specificity and its influence on the related parl

of language, but, as the author admits, such pronoun errors are often

observed among normal children for the same pragmatic reasons and in

both cases these errors disappear in a few years.

Finally, Yonata Levy comes in chapter thirteen "Concluding

Chapter: Modularity Reconsidered." It begins with the editor':

reanalysis of modularity of the language faculty discussed earlier

Along with the progress of syntactic studies the concepts of modularity

were refined to clarify subcomponents and principles of grammar in

Chomsky's GB theory. (1981). Levy states that the chapters or

pathology in this book explore the internal organization of language a:

the GB theory, emphasizing another sense of modularity. This is whal

he calls Modularity, which signifies "the autonomy of the language facul.

ty within the\human mind" (p. 384). As Fodor (1983, 1985) puts it,

書 評 153

Modularity separates perception from cognition and represents a

language-processing model made operative with the relevant input.

Levy adds that Modularity is also a processing option with which the

mind can analyze perceptual input. It is in this second sense that

Modularity "may be task specific or-it may be modality specific or it may

depend on the circumstances in which the task is performed" (p. 386).

However, Levy considers it extremely difficult to study the domain-

specificty of Modularity because, except for a few cases such as

William's syndrome, most of the pathological cases that he introduces

appear to support the inseparability of linguistic abilities from general

cognitive abilities. This lessens the possibility of "double dissociation"

(pp. 395-397), which means in this case that even if the language facul-

ty is impaired, other domains of the brain remain intact, and vice versa.

In this concluding chapter Levy does not revisit the problems in chapter

one, such as the plasticity of the human brain and the nativism-em-

piricism debate, although his analysis of the data suggests extremely

weak plasticity with an empiristic slant. In order for the Modularity of

language to be more deeply investigated, one should demand not only

observable facts in language output, but also neurological or anatomical

research of the human brain and the localization of each cognitive abili-

ty.

These mutifactorial and somewhat puzzling cases of language im-

pairments may force us to redefine the term of domain-specificty and

subsequent theories. Actually, a number of studies have appeared with

far more diversified results since this book came out in 1994. For exam-

ple, Bates and Goodman (1997) argue that the syntactic development of

both normal children and language impaired adults and children relies

heavily on lexical development, thereby refuting double dissociation bet-

ween lexical and syntactic modules. By contrast, William's Syndrome

children's morphosyntactic knowledge is by no means considered intact,

which implies morphology-syntax dissociations and little or no plasticity

(Karmilof Smith, Grant, Berthoud, Davies, Howlin, & Udwin, 1997).

154 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

Such studies mayu be a challenge to the concepts of modularity and

Modularity as effective theoretical frameworks in relation to nativism

and empiricism.

In sum, although there are a few limitations in each chapter, this

volume can be evaluated for it stresses that a dominantly utilized part of

cognitive abilities differs from language to language, and from case to

case in language disorders. The more diversities are observed, the

harder it is to assume and explore the universal core of language, as no

decisive answer is found in this volume. Nevertheless, this volume il-

lustrates various approaches to language acquisition, of which we would

remain ignorant if we focused exclusively on normal English-speaking

children.

書 評 155

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In: J. Weissenborn, H. Goodluck, and T. Roeper (eds.), Theoretical

issues in language acquisition: Continuity and change in development,

77-92. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Valian, Virginia 1990 Null subjects: A problem for parameter-setting

models of acquisition. Cognition, 35, 105-122.

1991 Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American

and Italian children. Cognition, 40, 21-81.

Verrips, Maaike 1994 Learnability meets development: the case of

pro-drop. In: R. Tracey and E. Lattey (eds.), How tolerant is

Universal Grammar? Essays on language learnability and language

variation. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tuebingen.

158 書 評 Mihoko KUBOTA

ヨナタ・レヴィ著

「さまざまな子供達とさまざまな言語:言 語獲得理論の諸問題」

窪 田 美穂子

(東北福祉大学)

本書は,英 語を含む様 々な言語 や病理例 か らの幼児 の言語デ ータを もとに,言

語獲得 の普遍的概念 と認知能力の発達 との関連性 を検討 してい る.第 一部 では従

来統語論中心だ った普遍文法理論 を,形 態 や意味 の観点か ら言語生得説 または経

験説 の立場 で扱 ってい る.第 二部 では個別言語 に特有 または言語間で共通の概念

構造 とその学習 プロセスを論 じている.第 三部 では言語障害 と認知 障害の関係を

考察 し,認 知か ら独立 したモジ ュラー としての言語理論を再考察 してい る.本 書

では各言語 の特異性や認知 発達の点で多様 な理論や結果が掲載 されてお り,言 語

獲得 の普遍的特徴 に関 して共通 した見解 は見 られ ないが,80年 代の普遍文法理

論や言語産 出モデルを発展 させ,言 語 内の各部門 のモジュール性 と部門間の相互

作用が認知構造の細分化 と関係づけて研究 され ている点で評価で きる.

(受理 日1998年3月30日)