文章导读 语言是由人类神经生物属性决定的一套认知计算系统，它使我们可以理解和产出无限的具有内在结构的语言单元（Berwick & Chomsky 2011，2016；Chomsky 2017；Friederici et al. 2017）。这套认知计算系统在婴儿出生后飞速发展，5岁左右的幼儿已经接近成人水平（Crain et al. 2017；Yang et al. 2017）。语言的发展和其他生物系统的发展一样受内在机制和外在环境的制约。过去50年，语言习得研究者对决定儿童语言发展的内在机制和外在因素进行了广泛而深入的研究，取得了一定的成果，但语言习得的内在机制究竟是什么，外在环境因素究竟如何起作用，对这两个问题的研究还存在较大的争议和分歧。我们首先通过比较儿童语言习得领域的两大主流理论——语言习得先天论和语言习得经验论——来讨论该领域的主要研究问题和争论焦点；然后阐释从跨学科视角对主要问题进行的探索，并对今后儿童语言习得研究的跨学科方向和路径进行展望（实现语言学、认知科学、发展心理学、神经科学和人工智能研究真正的交叉与融合）。
Abstract：Language is fundamentally a biologically determined computational cognitive system that enables us to produce and understand an infinite number of hierarchically structured expressions. Infants develop this system remarkably quickly within the first few years of life, and by age 5, they are effectively adult-like in their language competence. The development of language, like any biological system, is shaped both by internal constraints and by language experience from the external environment. This paper first gives an overview of major research questions and debates in the field of child language research in the past 50 years, and then reviews prior cross-disciplinary investigations that attempted to address these questions. On the basis of the prior research, the paper proposes a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of child language that integrates fields like linguistics, cognitive science, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and Artificial Intelligence. This cross-disciplinary approach requires a new generation of child language researchers who are well versed in the child language research tradition, well informed about cross-disciplinary approaches that integrate the relevant fields, as well as open-minded to explore new possibilities for cross-disciplinary collaborations when looking into the grand areas of language, mind and brain.
