<p>Language cannot be learned without linguistic input. Hence, the environment plays an important role in childrens’ language development. In this paper it is examined how important the environment’s role is. Two views are described: Universal Grammar and Emergentism. They are in this paper considered to represent two basic stances; the innate stance and the “non-innate” stance. The overall aim is to present evidence in favour of either Emergentism or Universal Grammar. It is achieved by a theoretical discussion and the findings from an observation. In the observational study the aim is to see if and, if so, how adults provide clues for children to develop their syntax. This is achieved by looking at target-words and how the adults use context and prosody to supply children with them. The findings show that the adults extensively use context when talking to children. The theoretical discussion together with the findings, are here found to support Emergentism, the non-innate view.</p>

Language cannot be learned without linguistic input. Hence, the environment plays an important role in childrens’ language development. In this paper it is examined how important the environment’s role is. Two views are described: Universal Grammar and Emergentism. They are in this paper considered to represent two basic stances; the innate stance and the “non-innate” stance. The overall aim is to present evidence in favour of either Emergentism or Universal Grammar. It is achieved by a theoretical discussion and the findings from an observation. In the observational study the aim is to see if and, if so, how adults provide clues for children to develop their syntax. This is achieved by looking at target-words and how the adults use context and prosody to supply children with them. The findings show that the adults extensively use context when talking to children. The theoretical discussion together with the findings, are here found to support Emergentism, the non-innate view.

This dissertation concerns oral language tests from a grammatical perspective. Tests today are usually assessed based on a communicative approach to language, so it is interesting to see how great a significance the level of grammatical development of test takers has for their communicative competence in general. The data in the investigation consist of recorded test conversations from a Swedish national language proficiency test, Tisus (test in Swedish for university and university college studies). The general aim of the study is to investigate whether there is a difference between the test takers who passed and those who failed in terms of their level of grammatical development. This is investigated in one main study and two smaller follow-up studies. The theoretical basis for this work is comprised of theories on second language learning and theories on language testing. For the grammatical analysis, Pienemann’s processability theory (PT) is applied. This theory posits that learners acquire certain morpho-syntactic structures in a particular order, something that produces a hierarchy consisting of five levels. In the main study, a quantitative analysis is made of the test takers’ level of grammatical development relative to their TISUS results. The results show a clear correlation between grammatical level and test results. There also seems to be a kind of watershed at level 4, given that most of the test takers who passed have command of this level in the PT hierarchy, whereas those who failed, as a rule, only make it to level 3. The first follow-up study is more qualitative in nature and is focused on the test takers who deviate from the general pattern of results in the main study: those who failed despite their high grammatical level and those who passed despite their low grammatical level. One result of this follow-up study is that, in these cases, it appears communicative competence was critical. Being able to orient oneself to the special conversational situation represented by the test conversation is considered to be particularly important. In a second follow-up study, the problems of applying PT to morphology and syntax are examined. The results of the dissertation suggest that there is a correlation between grammatical competence and communicative competence in general. This means that the grammatical levels in the PT hierarchy may constitute a useful basis of analysis in oral assessments, as a complement to other assessment tools.