Language Development in the Pre-School Years

In this book Gordon Wells presents a detailed account of the language development of children aged one to five years.

Gordon Wells (Author)

9780521319058, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 21 March 1985

492 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.8 cm, 0.62 kg

After more than a decade of research the Bristol Study of Language Development has assembled a corpus of data on the language development of children aged one to five years that is representative both in terms of the sample of children studied and of the situations in which their spontaneous speech was recorded. In this book Gordon Wells, who directed the project, presents a detailed account of the common sequence of development that was observed, specifying the ages at which linguistic categories emerged and the frequencies with which they were used at successive ages. The data have been rigorously analysed and the book also advances possible explanations for the developmental sequence identified. Variations within the overall pattern did of course occur and some of the more salient aspects are also discussed. The latter part of the book discusses the influence of environmental factors and in particular the role of adults in facilitating language development.

Introduction
1. Setting up the research
2. Describing child speech in its conversational context
3. Some general characteristics of the data from the naturalisitic observations
4. The sequence of emergence of certain semantic and pragmatic systems
5. The sequence of emergence: syntax and its relationship with other levels of analysis
6. The pattern of development over time
7. The children and their families
8. Variation in language development
9. the role of the input in language development
10. Learning through interaction
Appendices
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Linguistics [CF]