Hispanic Child Languages: Typical and impaired development(50 Language Acquisition and Language Disorders)

This book contains 12 papers contributed by leading scholars in the field of language development, studying variants of the languages which originated on the Iberian peninsula. The contributors examine language development in both typically-developing and language-impaired populations who are learning language in diverse learning conditions, including language contact, as well as monolingual and bilingual Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Euskera. This expansion and diversification of the database for studying language development is important because it creates new opportunities for testing theoretical claims. Our contributors reconsider theoretical claims relating to the purported adult-like nature of young children’s grammars. While some conclude, for example, that children in Mexico possess very adult-like semantic-pragmatic competence in the domain of the pragmatic implicatures associated with existential quantifiers, others conclude that, in particular sociolinguistic registers of Chilean Spanish, children are late to develop adult-like competence in plural marking. Taken together, the contents of the volume illustrate how the linguistic diversity found in the distinct learning conditions in which language develops offers a wealth of opportunities to further our understanding of linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive development.

Table of Contents:
1. List of contributors; 2. Introduction (by Grinstead, John); 3. Part I. Diverse learning conditions and input characteristics; 4. Syllable-final /s/ lenition and the acquisition of plural morphology in Spanish-speaking children (by Miller, Karen); 5. The article paradigm in Spanish-speaking children with SLI in language contact situations (by Anderson, Raquel T.); 6. Development in early Basque-Spanish language mixing (by Ezeizabarrena, Maria-Jose); 7. Part II. The developing syntax and semantics of determiner phrases; 8. Context and the Scalar Implicatures of Indefinites in Child Spanish (by Vargas-Tokuda, Marissa); 9. Early determination (by Perez-Leroux, Ana Teresa); 10. Part III. The developing syntax of the verb phrase; 11. Before grammar: Cut and paste in early complex sentences (by Rojas Nieto, Cecilia); 12. Subjects, verb classes and word order in child Catalan (by Gavarro, Anna); 13. Person and number asymmetries in child Catalan and Spanish (by Bel, Aurora); 14. Part IV. The development of inflectional morphology; 15. Relationships between linguistic and behavioral measures during development (by Perez-Pereira, Miguel); 16. Temporal interface delay and root nonfinite verbs in Spanish-Speaking children with specific language impairment: Evidence from the grammaticality choice task (by Grinstead, John); 17. Specific language impairment in Spanish & Catalan (by Torrens, Vicenc); 18. Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (by Morgan, Gareth); 19. Index

Review :
This edited volume is an outstanding and timely addition to the increasing literature on the acquisition and development of the Spanish language. The focus on methodological and theoretical links in both impaired and non-impaired development brings to life the true meaning and purpose of cross-disciplinary research. This book should be of interest to linguists, educators and speech pathologists. This volume is an innovative and very welcome addition to research in child language acquisition. It provides specialists in the field with an unusual richness of data, methodological approaches and varied contributions grounded in sound theoretical bases. It covers important aspects of Spanish monolingual and bilingual acquisition ranging from syntax and semantics to groundbreaking research on SLI language development in bilingual children. Definitely, this is an excellent contribution that focuses on child language acquisition in one of the most widely spoken languages of the world. This collection of original research articles will prove an invaluable compendium for linguists across diverse fields. Its central theme -the acquisition of nominal and verbal morpho-syntactic patterns in numerous languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Euskera) - benefits from the contributors' multiple disciplinary and methodological approaches. A significant strength of the compiled chapters is the authors' attention to typical and impaired language development among children exposed to monolingual and bilingual language forms in varied social contexts. As such, the book promises to engage the interests of students and scholars of language acquisition, language variation, and language contact working within current frameworks in theoretical linguistics, applied linguistics, and communication sciences. This volume is a welcome addition to the growing literature on cross-linguistic grammatical acquisition, relevant to grammatical theory as well as to language acquisition more generally. It spans a diversity of topics, from the acquisition of the syntax and semantics of determiners and number in nominal phrases, to tense and mood, verbal agreement and clitics, and to overt vs. covert subjects in the clausal domain. It reports on data from different populations: children with typical language development and children with Specific Language Impairment, children in monolingual and bilingual social settings, as well as other social-cultural diverse learning conditions. This collection of papers constitutes an important forward step in our understanding of language and cognition.