Grammar

Brandt, Silke (2020) Grammar. In: The Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development. Wiley. ISBN 9781119161899

Abstract

This entry provides an overview of different theoretical approaches to children's acquisition of syntactic categories and rules. Whereas the generative–nativist approach suggests that syntactic categories and rules are innate and only require minimal input, the usage‐based approach argues that children gradually derive them from their input. These two predictions are tested by looking at children's acquisition of the past tense, word‐order rules for simple sentences, and their acquisition of complex sentences.