Young Children’s Acquisition of Functional Categories: the Maturity-Continuity Debate

Regarding the young children’s acquisition of functional categories, scholars within the Universal Grammar（UG） framework hold divergent perspectives of “Maturation Theory” and “Continuity Theory”. This paper first systematically reviews and compares studies within each theoretical camp, identifying nuanced differences among researchers who ostensibly share the same stance. It then conducts a comparative analysis of the two theories, arguing that their fundamental divergence stems from their different cognition on the function of “UG as an innate mechanism” and “external linguistic input” in the process of young children’s syntactic development. Based on a comprehensive synthesis of domestic and international research on child language acquisition, this study posits that the scholars’ different opinions on the “initial state” of early language development are not the core source of their theoretical disagreement and should not be overemphasized. Finally, the paper advocates for a multifaceted exploration of children’s native language acquisition, integrating perspectives from cognitive science, neurobiology, sociolinguistics, etc. so as to advance research in this field.