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News, somewhat exaggerated: Commentary on Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Ana T. Pérez-Leroux and
Arsalan Kahnemuyipour
Ana T. Pérez-Leroux*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Arsalan Kahnemuyipour*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
Pérez-Leroux Victoria College 73 Queen's Park Crescent Toronto, ON M5S 1K7, Canada [at.perez.leroux@utoronto.ca]
[a.kahnemuyipour@utoronto.ca]
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Abstract

Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven (AP&L) claim that the knowledge attributed to children by the proponents of UG does not account for language acquisition, bringing evidence from several domains. In this response, we take issue with their claims with respect to two domains. In the case of categories, where distributional learning plays an important role, we argue that AP&L fail to recognize recent analyses showing that abstract representations yield better quantitative models for early child data. In the case of subjacency, we provide several empirical arguments against their claim that it can be reduced to some general discourse-pragmatic principles.

Keywords

language acquisitiongrammar-based approachescategoriesfocusisland constraints

Information

Type
Perspectives
Information
Language , Volume 90 , Issue 3 , September 2014, pp. e115 - e125
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Linguistic Society of America

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