PARAMETERS, UG AND TRANSFER IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A REFLECTION ON LEARNABILITY

This article investigates the role played by parameters and transfer in multilingual knowledge in the perspective of a mentalist model of language. Transfer and parameters traditionally are seen as the link between UG, however understood, and the mastery of a second or additional language in a multilingual mind/brain. This is the case both in the acquisition process and the quasi-stable condition of a multilingual speaker. Parameters have been subject to thorough theoretical revision over the years. Since the research program proposed in Chomsky (1995), the design of the capacity of language has definitively reformulated the idea of UG and moved parameters from the specialized properties of language. This suggests the need to rethink the process of acquisition and, consequently, the status of notions of parameter and transfer in language learning and teaching.