From First Words to Grammar
Individual Differences and Dissociable Mechanisms

This book is a comprehensive study of how children pass from their first words to grammar.

Elizabeth Bates (Author), Inge Bretherton (Author), Lynn Sebestyen Snyder (Author)

9780521425001, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 September 1991

340 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.476 kg

'[The authors'] challenging and fruitful questioning and their innovation in methodologies will be much more valuable for the future of the field than most of the empty theoretical fabrications that are so common in developmental psycholinguistics.' Child Development Abstracts and Bibliography

This book is a 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. 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.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I. Background: 1. Introduction
2. Modules and mechanisms
3. Individual differences and the correlational method
4. Review of the individual differences literature
Part II. Individual Studies
Section 1. Overall Design of Longitudinal Study: 5. Study 1: comprehension and production at 10 and 13 months
6. Study 2: the meaning of mean length of utterance at 20 months
7. Study 3: lexical development and lexical style at 20 months
8. Study 4. single- and multiword comprehension at 20 months
9. Study 5: acquisition of a novel concept at 20 months
10. Study 6: the meaning of mean length of utterance at 28 months
11. Study 7. lexical development and lexical style at 28 months
12. Study 8: morphological productivity at 28 months
13. Study 9: lexical comprehension and the question of intelligence
14. Study 10: grammatical comprehension at 28 months
Part III. A Summary View: 15. Study 11: a factor analytic approach
16. Study 12: social contributions to individual differences
17. Conclusion
References
Index
Subject Index.

Subject Areas: Child & developmental psychology [JMC]