This volume presents research in the field of first language acquisition discussed at the 1993 meeting of the Child Language Research Forum. The contributors are Maria A. Alegre, Ursula Bellugi, Jeffrey G. Bettger, Paul Bloom, Melissa Bowerman, Ursula Brinkmann, Penelope Brown, Nancy Budwig, Joan Bybee, Alice Shuk-yee Cheung, Soonja Choi, Patricia Clancy, Stephen Crain, William Croft, Cynthia Crosser, Peter Culicover, Eve Danziger, Sonja Eisenbeiss, Karen Emmorey, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Claire Foley, Dicky G. Gilbers, Adele E. Goldberg, Alison Gopnik, Peter Gordon, Susan A. Graham, Jiansheng Guo, D. Geoffrey Hall, Alison Henry, James H. Hoeffner, Qian Hu, Tara Jackson, Catalina Johnson, Shyam Kapur, Bonita P. Klein, Edward S. Klima, Amy Kyratzis, Marie Labelle, Barbara Landau, Thomas Hun-tak Lee, Barbara Lust, Rachel I. Mayberry, James L. McClelland, Zelmira Nez del Prado, Dominique Nouveau, Diane Poulin-Dubois, Lisa Riche, Nancy Soja, Susan Toth-Sadjadi, Andrew Chung-yee Tse, and Klarien J. van der Linde. Eve V. Clark is Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, author of The Lexicon in Acquisition, and co-author of Psychology and Language (with Herbert H. Clark).

Originally published in 1995, this collection of papers introduced a new dimension to the understanding of reading by focusing on the relation between spoken and written language processing. New perspectives on speech and reading are introduced by highlighting aspects of the two linguistic skills that had received little attention in the past. The comparative perspective adopted in this collection presents an innovative focus on speech and the acquisition of alphabetic reading skill. Major new sources of evidence are discussed, like reading in nonconventional input modalities, braille reading, and speech processing in lip-reading. Contributors also discuss the reading process in non-alphabetic orthographies and the specifics of the reading acquisition problem in logographic or mixed writing systems (like Chinese and Japanese) and their relations to underlying speech representations. A central concern of all chapters is the role of phonological processes in different modalities and writings systems, and at different stages in the reading acquisition process. Drawing on expertise of the contributors, the book presents a novel and varied view of the achievements, the promises and the challenges facing the researcher once the intimate link between speech and reading comes to the foreground.

The remarkable way in which young children acquire language has long fascinated linguists and developmental psychologists alike. Language is a skill that we have essentially mastered by the age of three, and with incredible ease and speed, despite the complexity of the task. This accessible textbook introduces the field of child language acquisition, exploring language development from birth. Setting out the key theoretical debates, it considers questions such as what characteristics of the human mind make it possible to acquire language; how far acquisition is biologically programmed and how far it is influenced by our environment; what makes second language learning (in adulthood) different from first language acquisition; and whether the specific stages in language development are universal across languages. Clear and comprehensive, it is set to become a key text for all courses in child language acquisition, within linguistics, developmental psychology and cognitive science.

This book compiles original studies investigating crosslinguistic child phonological development in typical and atypical settings, that is, protolanguage phonology. The chapters address topics and issues not widely or exhaustively reported in the literature, such as research on under-represented languages and foci of interest, as well as information that has remained little-known to the field. It documents recent developments on typically developing populations, and atypical developmental speech in children with autism, developmental language disorder affecting speech, childhood apraxia of speech, phonological assessment and intervention, phonological awareness in (a)typical contexts affecting literacy, and motor speech analysis in speech sound disorders. The book will be of interest to linguists and academic researchers, as well as postgraduate students who are investigating child language acquisition in monolingual settings.

Humans instinctively form words by weaving patterns of meaningless speech elements. Moreover, we do so in specific, regular ways. We contrast dogs and gods, favour blogs to lbogs. We begin forming sound-patterns at birth and, like songbirds, we do so spontaneously, even in the absence of an adult model. We even impose these phonological patterns on invented cultural technologies such as reading and writing. But why are humans compelled to generate phonological patterns? And why do different phonological systems - signed and spoken - share aspects of their design? Drawing on findings from a broad range of disciplines including linguistics, experimental psychology, neuroscience and comparative animal studies, Iris Berent explores these questions and proposes a new hypothesis about the architecture of the phonological mind.