From First Words to Grammar: Individual Differences and Dissociable Mechanisms

ISBN-13: 9780521425001 / Angielski / Miękka / 1991 / 340 str.

Elizabeth Bates; Inge Bretherton

Opis

This book is the first comprehensive study of the passage from first words to grammar in a sample of children large enough to permit systematic analysis of individual differences in style and rate of development. The authors provide a large body of information about first words and early grammatical development in qualitative and quantitative patterns that are useful not only for researchers in the field, but for speech/language pathologists and early childhood educators interested in the assessment of early language. They also address one of the most controversial theoretical issues in modern linguistics and psycholinguistics: the problem of modularity, with individual differences suggesting that components of language can come apart in early stages, developing at different rates in different children. But these differences appear to cut across the supposed boundaries between grammatical and lexical development, suggesting that the same mechanisms are responsible for both. The results support a unified functionalist approach to language development, and have implications for the way we think about the structure and breakdown of language under normal and abnormal conditions.

Recenzje

'[The authors'] challenging and fruitful questioning and their innovation in methodologies will be much more valuable for the future of the field than most of the empty theoretical fabrications that are so common in developmental psycholinguistics.' Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography

Spis treści

Preface; Acknowledgements; Part I. Background: 1. Introduction; 2. Modules and mechanisms; 3. Individual differences and the correlational method; 4. Review of the individual differences literature; Part II. Individual Studies; Section 1. Overall Design of Longitudinal Study: 5. Study 1: comprehension and production at 10 and 13 months; 6. Study 2: the meaning of mean length of utterance at 20 months; 7. Study 3: lexical development and lexical style at 20 months; 8. Study 4. single- and multiword comprehension at 20 months; 9. Study 5: acquisition of a novel concept at 20 months; 10. Study 6: the meaning of mean length of utterance at 28 months; 11. Study 7. lexical development and lexical style at 28 months; 12. Study 8: morphological productivity at 28 months; 13. Study 9: lexical comprehension and the question of intelligence; 14. Study 10: grammatical comprehension at 28 months; Part III. A Summary View: 15. Study 11: a factor analytic approach; 16. Study 12: social contributions to individual differences; 17. Conclusion; References; Index; Subject Index.