About the Book
Research on child language is an interdisciplinary enterprise, uniting the efforts of psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, educators, neuroscientists and communication scientists. In selecting representative readings from this broad and fast-moving field, the editors of this collection have emphasized recent papers that illustrate the contribution of child language research to developmental cognitive science. Although the authors of these papers represent a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives, there is a deliberate bias in favor of an interactive, rather than nativist, approach. Essential works on the major milestones of language development are provided, followed by tutorials that stress the neural substrates of language development, pieces on computational models of language learning, and on genetic contributions to developmental language disorders. Some papers have been updated or specially commissioned for this collection. The volume avoids jargon and is designed to be accessible to upper level students across a range of disciplines.
Table of Contents:
Part I: Introduction to Speech Perception:1. Peter W. Jusczyk: Finding and Remembering Words: Some Beginnings by English-Learning Infants from Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1997, Volume 6, 170-174. 2. Janet F. Werker and Renee N: Desjardins. Listening to Speech in the 1st Year of Life: Experiential Influences on Phoneme Perception from Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1995, Volume 4, 76-81. 3. Franck Ramus, Marc D. Hauser, Cory Miller, Dylan Morris, Jacques Mehler: Language Discrimination by Human Newborns and by Coton-Top Tamarin Monkeys from Science, 2000, Volume 288, 349-351. 4. R. L. Gomez and L. A. Gerken: Infant artificial language learning and language acquisition from Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2000, 4, 178. 186. 5. Anne Fernald, John P. Pinto, Daniel Swingley, Amy Weinberg, and Gerald W. McRoberts: Rapid Gains in Speed of Verbal Processing by Infants in the 2nd Year from Psychological Science, 1998, Volume 9, 228-231. Part II: Introduction to Word learning:6. Helen I. Shwe and Ellen M. Markman: Young Children's Appreciation of the Mental Impact of Their Communicative Signals from Developmental Psychology, 1997, Volume 33, 630-636. 7. Maria Cristina Caselli et al: Lexical Development in English and Italian from Cognitive Development, 1995. 8. Michael Tomasello: Perceiving Intentions an Learning Words in the Second Year of Life in: M. Bowerman and S. Levinson (Eds. ), Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development, 2000, Cambridge University Press. 9. Lori Markson and Paul Bloom: Evidence Against a Dedicated System for Word Learning in Children from Nature, 1997, Volume 385, 813-815. 10. Elizabeth Bates, Judith C. Goodman: On the Inseparability of Grammar and the Lexicon: Evidence from Acquisition, Aphasia and Real-Time Processing from Language and Cognitive Processes, 1997, 507-584. Part III: Introduction to Grammatical Development:11. Michael Tomasello: The Item-Based Nature of Children's Early Syntactic Development from Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2000, Volume 4, 156-163. 12. Nameera Akhtar: Acquiring Basic Word Order: Evidence for Data-Driven Learning of Syntactic Structure from Journal of Child Language, 1999, Volume 26, 339-356. 13. Klaus-Michael Koepcke: The Acquisition of Plural Marking in English and German Revisited: Schemata Versus Rules from Journal of Child Language, 1998, Volume 25, 293-319. 14. Nancy Budwig: An Exploration Into Children's Use of Passives from Linguistics, 1990, Volume 28, 1221-1252. 15. Lois Bloom, Matthew Rispoli, Barbara Gartner, and Jeremie Hafitz: Acquisition of Complementation from Journal of Child Language, 1989, Volume 16, 101-120. 16. Dan I. Slobin: Form/Function Relations: How Do Children Find Out What They Are? in: M. Bowerman and S. Levinson (Eds. ), Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development, 2000, Cambridge University Press. Part IV: Brain, Genes, & Computation in Language Development:17. Jeffrey. L. Elman: Connectionism and Language Acquisition. 18. Barbara Clancy and Barbara Finlay: Neural Correlelates of Early Language Learning Excerpted from E. Bates, D. Thal, B. L. Finlay, and B. Clancy: Early Language Development and its Neural Correlates (in press) Early Language Development and its Neural Correlates to Appear in I. Rapin and S. Segalowitz (Eds. ), Handbook of Neuropsychology, Volume 6, Child Neurology (2nd edition). Amsterdam: Elsevier. 19. Annette Karniloff-Smith: Development Itself Is the Key to Understanding Developmental Disorders from Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1998, Volume 2, 389-398.
About the Author :
Elizabeth Bates is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, San Diego, where she also directs the Center for Research in Language and the Project in Cognitive and Neural Development. She is a visiting scholar on a regular basis at the National Research Council Institute of Psychology in Rome. She has authored or co-authored more than 150 papers and nine books, including most recently, Rethinking Innateness (1996). Michael Tomasello is Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. His previous publications include Primate Cognition (1997), The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional Approaches to Language Structure (1998) and The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999).
