Language Acquisition and Development

About this book

"This textbook provides an introduction to the study of first language acquisition in children from a formal/generative theoretical standpoint. It covers the main areas of linguistic theory: phonetics and phonology (covered in terms of children's speech perception and production), the lexicon and morphology (covered in terms of children's acquisition of word meaning and word structure), and syntax (covering several aspects of children's acquisition of sentence structure). In addition, there is one chapter devoted to different theoretical approaches to the study of language acquisition, non-typical language acquisition (late language acquisition, language acquisition in blind and deaf children and with language or cognitive disorders), and bilingual language development. This textbook is unique in that the scope encompasses all of the core areas of linguistics (including phonology), at a level that is accessible to students with little background in linguistics, but takes a generative theoretical perspective. The intent of the book is to provide students with the tools of analyzing children's grammar so that they can go on to study children's language acquisition in more depth in a more advanced course, on their own, or in other languages"--