Abstract This paper examines very early child grammars from the minimalist perspective. It discusses the well-known erroneous strings very young children produce such as Root Infinitives in English and their Japanese counterparts, preverbal object sentences in English, and sentences without Case markers in Japanese. The main question to be addressed is whether those sentences children produce are labeled, and if so, how the labeling takes place. Assuming that ϕ-feature agreement and suffixal Case markers play crucial roles for labeling in English and Japanese respectively (Chomsky 2013; Saito 2016), I consider two possibilities. One is that children are equipped with those almost from the outset although they are not phonetically realized. This means that even the erroneous strings children produced are properly labeled. The other is that those strings are not labeled in the adult way and that children at the relevant stage are still in the process of figuring out how the {XP, YP} structure is labeled in their respective languages. I argue that the latter is a viable possibility, given the parameterization in the labeling mechanism, and receives support from the child data as well. This conclusion implies that a main part of the acquisition of syntax is for a child to discover how her/his target language labels the {XP, YP} structure.

中文翻译：

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标签中的参数化：来自儿童语言的证据

摘要本文从极简主义的角度研究了非常早期的儿童语法。它讨论了很小的孩子会产生的著名错误字符串，例如英语的根不定式及其日语对应物，英语的前宾宾语句子以及日语中没有大小写标记的句子。要解决的主要问题是，孩子们产生的那些句子是否带有标签，如果是，则如何进行标签。假设ϕ特征协议和后缀Case标记分别对英语和日语标记起着至关重要的作用（Chomsky，2013年； Saito，2016年），我考虑两种可能性。一个是，尽管他们并没有从语音上意识到，但他们几乎从一开始就具备了这些能力。这意味着即使产生的错误字符串也会正确标记。另一个是那些字符串没有以成人的方式标记，而相关阶段的孩子仍在弄清楚{XP，YP}结构如何以其各自的语言标记的过程。我认为，考虑到标签机制中的参数化，后者是可行的方法，并且也可以从子数据中获得支持。该结论表明，语法获取的主要部分是让孩子发现他/他的目标语言如何标记{XP，YP}结构。并从子数据中获得支持。该结论表明，语法获取的主要部分是让孩子发现他/他的目标语言如何标记{XP，YP}结构。并从子数据中获得支持。该结论表明，语法获取的主要部分是让孩子发现他/他的目标语言如何标记{XP，YP}结构。