Bob, as I recall, the linguistic material in Weaver's book is
pre-Principles & Parameters, and the research going on now
in language acquisition seems to be devoted to affirming Chomsky's
notion of universal grammar. In my comment, I had in mind
her review of sentence combining research and research in teaching
grammar through drills, both of which refer to old sources
simply because no one does that kind of research anymore. So
I think it would be unfair to refer to her review of that material,
anyway, as being out-of-date.
 
Kolln's Rhetorical Grammar has its weaknesses, too. It obviously is
not designed as an introduction to a type of grammar one might want
to teach to high school kids. Weaver's book is specifically designed
for that purpose.
 
But to get back to Chomsky, I am only a casual reader of contemporary
grammar, so I may be wrong, but my impression is that UG theory
doesn't conflict with the understanding of language acquisition
that began with Roger Brown's study. Ideas like the "poverty of input"
were put forward in the early 1960's and still lie at the heart
of Chomskian research. Things like X-bar theory help answer
questions like that, but there still remains a great deal of "learning"
to account for. I don't see anything in contempory grammar that
contradicts that which Weaver emphasizes--that immersion, not direct
instruction, leads to language acquisition, both the selection of
parameters and the learning of all the surface detail of a langauge.
 
I'm interested to hear what you have to say on this subject. I have
never thought about the connection, or lack of it, between early
acquisition research and contempory theory. Apparently you have.
        --Bill Murdick