  It is unclear how to settle such arguments. While some may disagree (especially some Chomskyans), it seems that much work still needs to be done to understand how children learn language — and not just in the sense of working out the details of which parameters get set when, but in the sense of reconceiving both what linguistic competence consists in, and how it is acquired. In psychology, a new, non-nativist paradigm for thinking about language and learning has begun to emerge over the last 10 or so years, thanks to the work of researchers like Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey Elman, Patricia Kuhl, Michael Tomasello and others. The reader is referred to Elman et al. 1996, Tomasello 2003 and §3 below for an entrée into this way of thinking.