Editing Minimalist program (section)

=== First language (L1) acquisition ===
As discussed by Helen Goodluck and Nina Kazanin in their 2020 paper, certain aspects of the minimalist program provide insightful accounts for first language (L1) acquisition by children.<ref name="goodluck2020">{{cite journal|last1=Goodluck|first1=Helen|last2=Kazanina|first2=Nina|date=2020|title=Fragments Along the Way: Minimalism as an Account of Some Stages in First Language Acquisition|journal=Frontiers in Psychology|volume=11|page=584|doi=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00584|pmc=7225273|pmid=32457672|doi-access=free}}</ref>

* '''Two-word stage''': Merge is the operation where two syntactic elements are brought together and combined to form a constituent. The head of the pair determines the constituent's label, but the element that becomes the head depends on the language. English is a left-headed language, such that the element on the left is the head; Japanese is a right-headed language, such that the element on the right is the head. Merge (a critical operation in MP) can account for the patterns of word-combination, and more specifically word-order, observed in children's first [[language acquisition]]. In first language acquisition, it has been observed that young children combine two words in ways that are consistent with either the head-initial or head-final pattern of the language they are learning. Children learning English produce "pivot" words (e.g. see) before "open" words (e.g. shoe), which is consistent with the head-initial pattern of English, whereas children learning Japanese produce "open" words before "pivot" words.
* '''Emergence of headed combinations''': Within the minimalist program, bare phrase structure, described in detail above, accounts for children's first language acquisition better than earlier theories of phrase structure building, such as X-bar theory. This is because, under bare phrase structure, children do not need to account for the intermediate layers of structure that appear in X-bar theory. The account of first language acquisition provided under bare phrase structure is simpler than that provided under X-bar theory. In particular, children typically progress from (unordered) conjunctions to headed combinations. This trajectory can be modelled as a progression from symmetric Merge (where the output label output of the derived syntactic object is indeterminate) to asymmetric Merge (where the output label of the derived syntactic object is determinate; i.e. endocentric/headed).