The Subset Principle in phonology: why the <i>tabula</i> can't be <i>rasa</i>

Abstract

We demonstrate the logical necessity of assuming innate knowledge for language acquisition using toy grammars. The implications are applied to reconceptualizing the Subset Principle in terms of features, rather than, say, segments. Both syntactic and phonological issues are discussed, but the focus is on the acquisition of phonological inventories. We point out that our logical arguments converge with recent empirical results.