The Development of Language: Acquisition, Change, and Evolution by David Lightfoot (National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA)
A language develops over time, it develops in a child, and the capacity for language has evolved in the human species.
The Development of Language
The Development of Language
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Summary
How and why do languages change over time? Could the way an individual child develops affect aggregate language change? What do the mechanisms of change tell us about the evolution of language in our species? This book asserts that a child develops a grammar on exposure to some triggering experience.
The Development of Language Summary
The Development of Language Reviews
My favourite parts were those that gave detailed explanations for learning in the context of a changing language input: how children solve the problem of an emergent syntactic property, one that doesn't appear to cohere with the rest of the system, with the result that the grammar is reorganized in the next generation. Lila Gleitman
David Lightfoot is addressing the core questions of the study of language: what it is, how it comes to be that way, how the child acquires it. His account is richly textured, integrating many different approaches with lucidity and insight. His analyses and conclusions are challenging and provocative, both for specialists in the particular areas he brings together, and for those seeking a clear picture of current understanding and open problems. Noam Chomsky
'There can be little question that it will represent a major work, required reading for anyone with interests in this area.' Mark Hale, Concordia University
This book challenges conventional understanding of language learning by showing that language change is essentially contingent-unpredictable but explainable. The role of natural selection in facilitating the understanding of the evolution of the language faculty in the human species is contested. Psycholinguistics
About David Lightfoot (National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA)
David Lightfoot is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park where he is also Associate Director of the program in Neural and Cognitive Science. His books include The Language Lottery and How to Set Parameters.
Table of Contents
Foreword.
Part I: Introduction:.
1. Progress or Degeneration?.
2. The Records, our Witnesses.
3. Lack of Change and Historical Explanation.
4. Our Odyssey.
Part II: The Nineteenth: Century of History:.
5. Historical Relationships.
6. Sound Change.
7. Historical Explanations.
8. Determinist Views of History.
Part III: Grammars and Language Acquisition:.
9. We Know More than we Learn.
10. The Nature of Grammars.
11. The Acquisition Problem: The Poverty of the Stimulus.
12. The Analytical Triplet.
13. Real-Time Acquisition of Grammars.
Part IV: Gradualism and Catastrophes:.
14. Grammars and Change.
15. Social Grammars.
16. Gradualism, Imagined and Real.
17. Catastrophes.
18. Competing Grammars.
19. The Spread of New Grammars.
20. Parametric Change.
Part V: The Loss of Case and its Syntactic Effects:.
21. Case.
22. Middle English Split Genitives.
23. Inherent Case and Thematic Roles in Early English.
24. The Loss and Origin of Case Systems.
Part VI: Cue-Based Acquisition and Change in Grammars:.
25. Models of Learnability.
26. Cue-Based Acquisition and Loss of Verb-Second.
27. V-to-I Raising and its Cue.
28. Creolization and Signed Languages.
Part VII: Equilibrium and Small Punctuations:.
29. Equilibrium.
30. English Auxiliary Verbs in the Eighteenth Century.
31. French chez.
Part VIII: Historicism: The Use and Abuse of Clio:.
32. Principles of History.
33. Clio Working through Biology.
34. Diachronic Reanalyses.
35. Trajectories.
Part IX: The Evolution of the Language Faculty:.
36. Bumpiness.
37. Explaining Evolution.
38. A UG Condition on Movement Traces.
39. The Condition is Maladaptive.
40. Conclusion.
Part X: A Science of History:.
41. Classical and Chaotic Views of Science.
43. History as an Epiphenomenon.
References.
Index.
Additional information
GOR003469316
9780631210603
0631210601
The Development of Language: Acquisition, Change, and Evolution by David Lightfoot (National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA)
Used - Very Good
Paperback
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
1998-11-23
300
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us