If the verb comes before the object, as in Eat your spinach!, the child concludes that the language is head-first; if it comes after, as in Your spinach eat!, the child concludes that the language is head-last. Huge chunks of grammar are then available to the child, all at once, as if the child were merely flipping a switch to one of two possible positions. If this theory of language learning is true, it would help solve the mystery of how children’s grammar explodes into adultlike complexity in so short a time. They are not acquiring dozens or hundreds of rules; they are just setting a few
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