Multi-competence and syntax

As the present volume suggests, multi-competence is not restricted to the knowledge of syntax in the mind of multilinguals; nevertheless, the growth of syntactic knowledge in acquisition plays an undoubtedly leading role in language development. The role of syntax in language development is precisely what we try to explore here in this chapter. In doing so we present some essential research findings to claim for a cumulative enhancement of linguistic knowledge to facilitate language acquisition, as proposed by Flynn et al. (2004), and dwell upon the syntactic implications such a proposition has on the Faculty of Language and related processes. The chapter intends to show that the proficient use of multiple languages enhances learners to develop "syntactic fluency" which, we argue, is to be understood as a certain syntactic sensitivity to detect target-specific feature setups for functional categories and combinatorial ease in integrating and mapping them into the new grammar.