PSYCH 150 Study Guide - Code Talker, Principles And Parameters, Grammar
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An example of this would be in the typical subject, verb, object order of grammatical categories in english that can be moved in other languages. German for example, has a different pattern, which is subject, object verb. Movement rules allow for the verb to be moved from the end of an utterance to the beginning and still keep the same meaning. For example, german uses sov, but the verb in main clauses moves to the second position and some other phrase moves to the first position. A relatively small number of syntax parameters yields a large number of different languages" syntactic systems. Children do not require knowledge, they are born knowing the parameters of variation. Input from the native linguistic environment determines what values these parameters should have: if there are three language structure parameters with two values each there will be 8 languages represented. The preposition comes before the noun phrase and the possessed comes before the possessor.
