Recent research on language acquisition has fueled a debate between the Generative Approach and the Constructivist Approach. These approaches differ in the quantity and kind of innate linguistic knowledge attributed to language learners. The Generative Approach contends that children have considerable innate linguistic knowledge, whereas the Constructivist Approach denies this. Let us start with a brief summary of the two approaches. The Generative Approach assumes that an innately specified language faculty guides the process of language acquisition (e.g., Pinker, 1987; Chomsky, 1995). Consequently, children are expected to project beyond their linguistic experience, often in ways that the input does not suggest. Crucially, innate linguistic properties, at some level, tie together apparently diverse linguistic phenomena, which children are expected to acquire simultaneously. By contrast, the Constructivist Approach claims that language acquisition is usage-based, and depends primarily on the specific input children are exposed to. According to this approach, the process of language learning is based on strictly local relations among words. In addition, children are hypothesized to be conservative learners, at least initially. In particular, the earliest stage of language acquisition is devoted to learning basic constructions based on the...