Overview

This introductory guide to language acquisition research is presented within the framework of Universal Grammer, a theory of the human faculty for language. The authors focus on two experimental techniques for assessing children's linguistic competence: the Eliecited Production task, a production task, and the Truth Value Production task, a comprehension task. Their methodologies are designed to overcome the numerous obstacles to empirical investigation of children's language competence. In the first section of the book, the authors examine the fundamental assumptions that guide research in this area; they present both a theory of linguistic competence and a model of language processing. In the following two sections, they discuss in detail their two experimental techniques.

Full Product Details

Author:   Stephen Crain ,  Rosalind Thornton
Publisher:   MIT Press Ltd
Imprint:   MIT Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 2.90cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   0.930kg
ISBN:  

9780262032506

ISBN 10:   0262032503
Pages:   360
Publication Date:   22 May 1998
Recommended Age:   From 18
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   No Longer Our Product
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

"Part 1 The modularity matching model: constraints and universal grammar; the poverty of the stimulus; models of language development; continuity versus input matching; the competing factors model; competing tasks - reaction time studies; competing tasks - the act-out task; competing tasks - imitation; judgment tasks and competing factors; context and competing factors; language processing; extralinguistic knowledge; when principles and preferences collide; performance errors; methodological preliminaries. Part 2 The elicited production task: elicited production; eliciting relative clauses; asking questions- the ""ask/tell"" problem; structure-dependence; wanna contraction; long-distance questions and the medial-wh; why children make good subjects; summary of designs. Part 3 The truth value judgment task: truth value judgments; backward anaphora; fundamentals of design: principle C; what's wrong with this picture?; strong crossover; strongest crossover; principle B; following up on principle B; sets and circumstances; discourse binding; universal quantification; donkey sentences; a potential drawback of the task; resolving the dilemma - control sentences; resolving the dilemma -varying the context."

Reviews

One of the first surveys to start research into the connectionsbetween linguistic data in children and the rules of UniversalGrammar... Crain and Thornton have written an ambitious book. Itis an excellent introduction to investigations into childlanguage. Tuomo Jamsa, Journal of Consciousness Studies

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