Adele Goldberg (Princeton) and Charles Yang (UPenn), two outstanding linguists and experts on how children acquire grammar, graciously agreed to come to the University of Manchester's Linguistics and English Language (ELL) Research Seminar on 22 March 2022. They discussed issues surrounding the nature of linguistic generalisations, how patterns can become productive, and how they can accommodate exceptions. A lightly edited version of their conversation can be found here or you may watch the video directly below:



I would like to express my gratitude to Adele and Charles. They did a phenomenal job expressing their views and outlining differences in perspective in a professional, quick-witted and informative manner. It is my hope that we could all learn something from each other.