A Note on the Default Values of Parameters*
Modern linguistic theory attempts to explain why language acquisition is possible despite
the fact that relevant experience available to children is severely limited (“Plato’s problem”). The
proposed answer postulates that a human child is genetically equipped with Universal Grammar(UG), the initial state of the language faculty that narrowly constrains the space of hypotheses toentertain. Under the Principles-and-Parameters approach, UG consists of (i) a number ofprinciples that specify the properties to be satisfied by any language, and (ii) a finite collection ofparameters that sharply restricts the range of possible cross-linguistic variation. Chomsky(1995:6) argues that within this framework, the task for a child in acquiring her native language
is to identify the correct settings of parameters for the community’s language, as stated in (1).
(1) [Within the P&P approach (KS)], language acquisition is interpreted as the process offixing the parameters of the initial state in one of the permissible ways.
Chomsky’s statement in (1) can be construed as claiming that parameter-setting is the mostsignificant factor in explaining the observable changes in the course of acquisition.
Chomsky (2001:1) makes an additional assumption about parameters. He suggests that allparameters of UG have a default setting, and are specified for certain settings prior to any
linguistic experience.
(2) At S0 [initial state, KS], all parameters are set with unmarked values.
Given these two fundamental assumptions proposed by Chomsky, the following question
can be raised: Is (2) compatible with (1)? I suggest that the answer is negative.
If every parameter has a default setting, then there should be a particular grammar that
corresponds exactly to the initial state (UG): There should be a language (among the possibilities
permitted by UG) whose parameter-settings are completely the same as the default settings. Then,
when a child acquires this language, no change of parametric values would take place, for thevery reason that the default values are exactly the target values. Since the correct settings are
there from the start, the acquisition of lexical items (and probably, maturation of some UG
properties) would be the only developmental factor that induces observable consequences in its
acquisition.
Note that even in the acquisition of this language, a child has to figure out whether each ofthese default values is in fact the correct one for the target language. Yet, this process itself
would not yield any observable change in this case: There is acquisitional evidence suggestingthat the effects of default settings (as well as those of the target settings) are reflected in the*I would like to thank Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, Yukio Otsu, and William Snyder forvaluable discussion. The usual disclaimers apply.

child’s utterances. Null subjects and ‘wh-copying’ constructions in child English illustrated in (3)are well-known phenomena that have been explained in terms of default settings of parameters.
(3) a.
want more apples. (Hyams 1986)
b. What do you think what Cookie Monster eats?
(Thornton 1990, McDaniel, Chiu & Maxfield 1995)
The default values relevant to (3) are incorrect for adult English, and hence the shift from thedefault to the target setting yields observable effects in the acquisition of English. In contrast,
since these default specifications are correct for adult Spanish (in the case of null subjects) andfor adult Romani (in the case of ‘wh-copying’ constructions), the shift from the default to thetarget setting would not yield any observable change in the acquisition of these languages.
The above discussion leads to the conclusion that if all the parameters are specified for adefault, there can be a language in which parameter-setting plays no role in explaining theobservable changes in the course of acquisition. If the proposal (1) should be interpreted as theclaim that parameter-setting is the most significant factor in explaining the observable changes in
the course of acquisition, the assumption in (2) is not compatible with this claim, because thehypothesis in (2) permits a language in which parameter-setting induces no observableconsequence in its acquisition. In order to maintain the fundamental idea in (1), we should
abandon (2) and instead adopt a weaker assumption: There are parameters without any default
specification, and with respect to these parameters, none of their values are employed until thechild determines the correct settings for her target grammar. The evidence from the acquisition ofpreposition-stranding (P-stranding) and pied-piping reported in Sugisaki & Snyder (2003) in factsuggests that this weaker hypothesis is on the right track.
Cross-linguistically, the possibility of P-stranding in wh-questions is among the more exotic
properties of English: While P-stranding is possible in English and in Scandinavian languages,
pied-piping of prepositions is obligatory in most other languages (see the examples from Spanishin (5)). Given this cross-linguistic variation, a number of syntactic analyses (including Hornstein& Weinberg (1981), Kayne (1981), Law (1998), and Stowell (1981)) have proposed a parameterwith two values, one leading to the availability of P-stranding, and the other leading to obligatorypied-piping.
(4) What did they talk about t ?
(5) a. * Cuál
asunto hablaban
sobret ?
which subject were-they-talking
aboutb. Sobre cuál
asunto hablabant ?
about which subject were-they-talking
If the parameter of P-stranding consists of two values, and if every parameter is specified fora default setting, then one of the following two predictions should hold with respect to theacquisition of P-stranding:(6) a. Prediction A:
If the P-stranding value is the default, then children learning either English or
Spanish should use P-stranding when they first begin to apply wh-movement toprepositional objects.
b. Prediction B:
If the pied-piping value is the default, then children learning English should passthrough a pied-piping stage before they begin to use P-stranding.
Sugisaki & Snyder (2003) evaluated these two predictions, by analyzing the spontaneous
speech data of ten English-learning children and four Spanish-learning children, selected fromthe CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2000). The results falsified both of these predictions. Asfor English, six children acquired direct-object wh-questions significantly earlier thanP-stranding. In the utterances of these six children, no example of pied-piping appeared before
the acquisition of P-stranding. As for Spanish, no example of P-stranding was observed inchildren’s utterances. These results indicate that Spanish-learning children do not pass through aP-stranding stage before they acquire pied-piping, much as English-learning children do not passthrough a pied-piping stage before they acquire P-stranding. Thus, children’s acquisition of
P-stranding in English and of pied-piping in Spanish provides clear evidence that not every
parameter has a default specification: Neither pied-piping nor P-stranding is employed until thechild determines the correct setting for her target grammar.
In sum, the hypothesis in (2) faces both conceptual and empirical problems. As far as I cansee, there seems no reason to assume that UG corresponds to a particular grammar.
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