A functional category analysis of the German acquisition data: a reply to Clahsen's Parameter Constraints

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Clahsen's proposals regarding syntactic development violate Universal Grammar (UG), and that an analysis based on Guilfoyle and Noonan 's (1992) Structure Building Hypothesis more satisfactorily accounts for the German acquisition data. I show that evidence from Stage I of German child language, which Clahsen ignores, suggests that early child grammars are lexical and therefore lack both an FP and an AGRP.