Children’s Acquisition of Morphosyntactic Variation

This article presents a developmental pathway for the acquisition of morphosyntactic variation. Although there is abundant evidence that variation pervasive among adults, much less known about how children acquire such The literature thus far indicates development involves first producing only one variable forms (Step 1), both but in mutually-exclusive contexts 2), then some overlapping linguistic 3), and finally more 4). research reviewed input patterns are influential each step way, playing an important role determining children’s use as well which produced. In addition to considering effects, we also draw on various tendencies evince face explain development, including regularization assigning different meanings forms. includes suggestions testing hypotheses generated by proposed illustrate drawing Spanish subject pronoun expression.