The Development of Language: (Studies in Developmental Psychology)

This text presents a general overview of knowledge of language development in children. All the principle strands of language development are covered, including: phonological, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic development; bilingualism; precursors to language development in infancy; and the language development of children with developmental disabilities, including children with specific language impairments. Each chapter summarizes the state of knowledge and explains and evaluates the theories which have been proposed to account for children's development in that area. Two main themes running through the chapters are nativism versus empiricism and domain-specificity versus domain generality.

Table of Contents:

1: A Introduction to the Nature of Language and to the Central Themes and Issues in the Study of Language M. Barrett 2: Prelinguistic Communication V. Reddy 3: Early Speech Perception and Word Learning K. Plunkett, G G. Schafer 4:Phonological Acquisition D. Ingam 5:Early Lexical Development E. Dromi 6:The World of Words: Thoughts on the Development of a Lexicon S.A Kuczaj 7:Early Syntactic Development:A Construction Grammar Approach M. Tomasello, P.J Brooks 8:Some Aspects of Innateness and Complexity in Grammatical Acquisition M. Maratos 9:The Development of Conversational and Discourse Skills B.A Pan, C.E. Snow 10:Bilingual Language Development S.Romaine 11:Sign Language Development J.D Bonvillian 12:Language Development in Atypical Children H. Tager- Flusberg 13:Specific Language Impairment P. Fletcher 14:Towards a Biological Science of Language Development J. Locke.

`This edited volume is a stimulating collection of theoretically-oriented review papers which includes contributions from some of the leading researchers in the field. As such, it will make a useful book of readings for an intermediate or advanced level course on language development. Moreover, since some of the papers are eminently citeable in their own right, it is also likely to be widely read by other Researchers in the field.' - Julian Pine, University of Nottingham

`This is an up-to-date, important and exciting book that deserves a prominent position on the bookshelves of all researchers who are interested in child language ... The contributors to this book not only report and evaluate many of the exciting findings of the field, but also ask themselves searching questions that no doubt will stimulate research over the next few years.' - Professor Gina Conti-Ramsden, University of Manchester

'Martyn Barrett has done an excellent job of bringing together a series of chapters, which offer a coherent coverage of the area. The chapters cover a broad range of topics, including important areas conventionally not covered in such texts, e.g. sign language, and atypical devlopment. The clearly written introduction serves both to introduce the book in a useful fashion and will, no doubt, serve as a framework to the area for many lecturers.' - Dr Julie Dockrell, South Bank University

`Provides a welcome helping hand for anyone trying to unite theoretical approaches across the many facets of language development presented in this detailed and illuminating collection of papers.' - Josie Briscoe, Child Psychology and Psychiatry

'This book is impressive for its up-to-date coverage of a broad range of topics in language development. It certainly sent me running to update my students' reading lists to include several of its chapters.' - Ann Dowker, University of Oxford, International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders

'This book is a welcome retrospective of some key findings in psycholinguistics in the 20th century.' - Julia Gillen, Manchester Metropolitan University, in Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

'This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the field of language acquisition.' - Rita Brdar-Szabo, Pragmatics: Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association

' a rich introduction to the domain of child language development [ ] Barrett does a very good job in addressing every single issue crucial to understanding the debate about how children learn their mother tongue, and along with his authors he should be commended on presenting a balanced and therefore rich overview of the main questions, models, processes and achievements in researching child language acquisition.' - Dorit Ravid, Tel Aviv University, Journal of Child Language