The Child S Path To Spoken Language

How and why do children go from babbling to words? Locke's answer constitutes a journey through language development, taking in neurological, perceptual, social and linguistic aspects. He describes infant behaviour, as it elicits and structures the stimulation needed for learning meaningful speech.

Compared with other subdisciplines in Chinese linguistics, children’s language acquisition is a significant field with relatively limited achievements. Based on data from a dynamic and developmental corpus, this book is a comprehensive exploration of the early development of Chinese-speaking children’s language acquisition. Anchoring the discussions regarding phonetics, semantics and aspects of syntax in a cognitive and functional framework, the author conducts an in-depth analysis of many acquisition characteristics, such as the inevitable and incidental errors of their learning of initials; their ability to obtain the concept of time at a young age and the utilization of Le in the expression of the past tense; their understanding of subjectivity at a young age and the ability to express it; their learning of the degree of modality following the order of from probability to necessity; and children’s acquisition of syntactic structures being impacted by genetics and also affected by the steps involved in syntactic processing. Although genetics, cognition and experience all play a role in children’s language acquisition, this book focuses on the role of cognitive functions. By successfully explaining the acquisition rules based on some cutting-edge linguistic theories, the book will certainly be beneficial to scholars studying linguistics, psychology, cognitive science and early childhood educators.

This book presents a unique, multi-faceted investigation of the language abilities of three older adopted Romanian orphans who experienced extreme deprivation in their early years. Serena, Gabrielle and Ingrid were aged 7 years, 6 years and nearly 4 years, respectively, when rescued by UK families from the orphanages where they were placed at or around their birth. In these institutions, an absence of social and psychological stimulation, nutritious food and physical exercise had left them completely dependent on care staff for their most basic needs, and effectively without language. The book presents the findings of a two year research study of the competencies in language, nonverbal cognition and social and communicative behaviour which the girls acquired over several years in their new homes, and discusses the implications of their linguistic progress for the Critical Period Hypothesis and modularity. Detailed qualitative analysis of the girls’ language in everyday conversation is combined with quantitative analysis of developmental progress and structural complexity and with the results of standardized tests. The authors argue that the girls’ progress in language defies the predictions of current Critical Period models and offers no evidence of modular dissociations between language and other cognitive domains. These findings are considered in relation to other research on language development in internationally adopted children.

This volume presents chapters that all speak to issues of children's lang. acquisition from a distinctly interactionist perspective that reflects the complexity of the task & the sophistication of methods used to study it. For graduate

This work aims to support the understanding of those who work with children by providing detailed information about some of the central themes in early development, such as: brain growth and function, the role of the senses, emotion, and aspects of how children learn.

This book presents a general overview of our current knowledge of language development in children. All the principal strands of language development are covered, including phonological, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic development; bilingualism; precursors to language development in infancy; and the language development of children with developmental disabilities, including children with specific language impairment. Written by leading international authorities, each chapter summarises clearly and lucidly our current state of knowledge, and carefully explains and evaluates the theories which have been proposed to account for children's development in that area.

This edited book is a collection of studies on protolanguage phonology, referring to the development of children’s autonomous linguistic systems from their first meaningful forms to complete cognitive and articulatory acquisition of language. The volume comprises chapters on child bilingual phonological development, understood as the acquisition or use of more than one linguistic code, whether actual languages, dialects, or communication modes, in an array of contexts. Such contexts include endogenous and exogenous bilingualism, heritage language, bilectalism, trilingualism, and typical and atypical use. The contributed works here will be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students investigating language acquisition in bi-/multilingual settings, as well as those working on child phonological development across a variety of languages.

An immensely fascinating look at the origins and evolutionary purpose of human pleasure From our enjoyment of music to our cravings for chocolate, from our love for children and family to our attraction to things of beauty, this book embarks on an intriguing and accessible exploration of the purpose of pleasure in our lives and in human history. How did pleasure evolve and why? How does it develop in children? How does the pursuit of pleasure play a critical role in brain development? The Pleasure Instinct explores everything we need to know about our urge to feel good.