The Development of Language (Studies in Developmental Psychology) - Hardcover

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 text presents a general overview of knowledge of language development in children. All the principle 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 impairments. Each chapter summarizes the state of knowledge and explains and evaluates the theories which have been proposed to account for children's development in that area. Two main themes running through the chapters are nativism versus empiricism and domain-specificity versus domain generality.