Each child is spoken to by genetic heritage and by the rich current set of interactional environments -- familial, local community, and broader cultural voices. Using past structures and paradigms of scholarship, scholars seek to understand what the child achieves in language and how. The tools available for this research are not static but evolve jointly through the sharing of information, and with each "brief moment in time" in efforts to look at children's languages "just as they are."

Containing a wide range of contributions from developmental approaches to phonological ability, the...

Focusing on topics and issues of modern-day child language research, this volume brings together the work of 32 scholars from 13 countries, investigating children learning 15 different languages.

These volumes present coherent sets of papers developed along two of the thematic lines that underscored the program of the meeting of the International Association for the Study of Child Language in Istanbul in the summer of 1996. Thoroughly reviewed and updated to reflect the state of child language research and theory--particularly in the domains of discourse and interaction--they convey not only the flavor of that meeting but some of the most exciting trends in the field today.
Each contribution in Volume 10, Developing Narrative and Discourse Competence, focuses on the...