Modality And Language Acquisition How Does The Channel Through Which Language Is Expressed Affect How Children And Adults Are Able To Learn

This book deals with the development of modality from a crosslinguistic perspective and is closely related to two earlier volumes on the development of verb and nominal inflection in first language acquisition (SOLA 21 and 30) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the form and function of expressions of deontic and dynamic agent-oriented modality or epistemic and evidential propositional modality in one of fourteen languages belonging to different morphological types and language families (seven Indo-European and seven non-Indo-European). The analyses are mainly based on longitudinal observations of children in their 2nd and 3rd years of life in conversational interaction with their caregivers, mostly the mothers. Main issues addressed are the development of directives and modulations of information in terms of certainty and evidentiality, also taking into account children’s developing social-pragmatic and cognitive skills. One of the main findings is that agent-oriented and propositional modality may develop in parallel depending on the typological characteristics of the language acquired. The decisive factor is whether notions of propositional modality are grammaticized and obligatorily expressed in the language. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Usage-based theories, Natural Morphology).

In this important volume, Lois Bloom brings together the theoretical and empirical work she has carried out on early lexical development. Its focus is on the expressive power children acquire as they begin to talk and, in particular, on contributions from cognitive development, affect expression, and the social context for making the transition from prelinguistic expression to the expression of contents of mind. The first half of the book reviews the developments in infancy that enable the emergence of language and presents the theoretical perspective required for an understanding of the longitudinal study described in the second half. The book's main thesis is that language is acquired for expressing contents of mind and that its usefulness as a 'tool' is of only secondary importance. The Transition from Infancy to Language makes a major contribution to our knowledge of early lexical development, providing a persuasive theoretical model for researchers and students.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

The Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy Through the Communicative and Visual Arts, a comprehensive overview of research on this topic, extends conceptualizations of literacy to include all of the communicative arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing) and the visual arts of drama, dance, film, art, video, and computer technology.

This volume provides a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the contribution of multiparty intergenerational talk in a variety of cultures to the development of children's communicative capacities. The book focuses on the complexity of the cultural and interactional contexts in which pragmatic learning occurs and re-examines certain assumptions implicit in research on language socialization to date, such as primacy of dyadic interactions in the early ages and the presupposition of a monolingual social matrix. One of the aims of the book is to demonstrate the degree of cultural diversity in paths of pragmatic development. Individual chapters present empirically grounded analyses of talk with children of all ages, in different participation structures and in a variety of cultures. In pursuing this theme the volume is meant to further enrich cross-cultural perspectives on language socialization by providing in each of its chapters an empirically grounded analysis of the development of one specific dimension of discursive skill. The nine invited chapters comprise new empirical work on the development of specific discourse dimensions. Authors have been asked also to adopt a reflexive stand on their line of research and to incorporate in the chapter a comprehensive and critical perspective on former work on the discursive dimension investigated. The discourse dimensions represented in the volume include narratives, explanations, the language of control in intergenerational and intragenerational talk, the language of humor and affect, and bilingual conversations. The volume offers a rich spectrum of cultural variety in pragmatic development, including studies of American, Greek, Japanese, Mayan, Norwegian, and Swedish children and families.

First published in 1986. The present volume is the outcome of a symposium on Gestures, Cultures and Communication, held in May 1982 at Victoria College, University of Toronto. This conference, one of a series of five colloquia which took place during the Third International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies, was organized by the Toronto Semiotic Circle. The purpose of the 1982 conference was to explore the biological basis of gestures by bringing together investigators working mainly in the fields of anthropology, neurophysiology, neuropsychology and psycholinguistics.