Understanding how a child acquires his or her native tongue is one of the major unsolved mysteries of psychology. Categories and Processes in Language Acquisition, originally published in 1988, and as the title indicates is about the acquisition of linguistic categories, and about the child’s learning processes. The categories of concern are those that are manifest in structure, i.e., other than simply as word meanings. The book begins with a chapter on the earliest nonlexical categories for which there is evidence. Then there are several chapters on word classes and the acquisition of relational categories, followed by papers that discuss models of the child’s learning mechanism. Finally, there is an integrative concluding chapter by two of the editors. Today it can be read in its historical context.
Table of Contents:
Preface. Introduction Martin D. S. Braine 1. Language Acquisition Through Language Use: The Functional Sources of Children’s Early Utterances Anat Ninio and Catherine E. Snow 2. The Acquisition of Formal Word Classes Michael Maratsos 3. Word Class Distinctions in Developing Grammars Ruth A. Berman 4. The Nature of Early Language: Evidence from the Development of Hebrew Morphology Yonata Levy 5. On Formal Grammatical Categories in Early Child Language Anat Ninio 6. The Origin of Relational Categories Izchack M. Schlesinger 7. Learning Syntax and Meanings Through Optimization and Distributional Analysis J. Gerard Wolff 8. Modeling the Acquisition of Linguistic Structure Martin D. S. Braine Concluding Chapter. The Child’s Early Categories: Approaches to Language Acquisition Theory Yonata Levy and Izchack M. Schlesinger. Author Index. Subject Index.
About the Author :
Yonata Levy is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology (emerita) at the Psychology Department and Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School. She was a visiting scholar at Harvard School of Education, BU Medical School, the Cognitive Development Unit, MRC London and the Cognitive Development Unit at UCL. Between 2019-2023 she was Dean of the School for Behavioral Sciences at the Academic College, Tel-Aviv Jaffa.
Izchak Schlesinger was a professor of psycholinguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focused primarily on language acquisition and was presented in a series of books and studies that developed a semantic approach as an alternative to generative linguistics. He also examined the structure of argumentation through an interdisciplinary perspective that drew on Talmudic discourse and was among the first researchers of Israeli Sign Language. In later years, he was awarded the Israel Prize in Psychology for his contributions to the field.
Martin D. S. Braine was, at the time of original publication, based at New York University.
Review :
Review for the original edition:
“… The volume provides a focus on the basic issue of the development of grammatical categorization that is unmatched in the language acquisition literature. … There are no weak papers in the collection. However, the sixth chapter by Schlesinger and the eighth chapter by Braine stand out as particularly strong. In my opinion, every researcher with any interest in language learning must read these two chapters. …” – Brian MacWhinney, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
