From First Words to Grammar: Individual Differences and Dissociable Mechanisms

by Elizabeth Bates , Inge Bretherton , Lynn Sebestyen Snyder

• ISBN13: 9780521425001
• ISBN10: 052142500X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-09-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Background

Introduction

Modules and mechanisms

Individual differences and the correlational method

Review of the individual differences literature

Individual Studies

Overall Design of Longitudinal Study

Study 1: comprehension and production at 10 and 13 months

Study 2: the meaning of mean length of utterance at 20 months

Study 3: lexical development and lexical style at 20 months

Study 4. single- and multiword comprehension at 20 months

Study 5: acquisition of a novel concept at 20 months

Study 6: the meaning of mean length of utterance at 28 months

Study 7. lexical development and lexical style at 28 months

Study 8: morphological productivity at 28 months

Study 9: lexical comprehension and the question of intelligence

Study 10: grammatical comprehension at 28 months

A Summary View

Study 11: a factor analytic approach

Study 12: social contributions to individual differences

Conclusion

References

Index

Subject Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.