The new edition of a comprehensive introduction to a rapidly developing field, combining developmental data with theory. How do children begin to use language? How does knowledge of language emerge in early infancy, and how does it grow? This textbook offers a comprehensive introduction to knowledge acquisition, drawing on empirical evidence and linguistic theory. The theoretical framework used is the generative theory of Universal Grammar; students should have some familiarity with concepts in linguistic research. Aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, the book offers end-of-chapter summaries, key words, study questions, and exercises. This second edition has been thoroughly updated, with new content throughout. It has been reorganized according to the three main components of language acquisition. The computational components and the interfaces are covered in chapters on structure building in the verbal and nominal domains, movement-derived structure, and the relation between syntax and semantics and semantic and pragmatic. The sensory motor interface is treated in chapters on infants' perception of language and on the acquisition of words. The intentional-conceptual interface is discussed in chapters on the acquisition of words. This edition features additional cross-linguistic content, a new focus on brain imaging findings and the motor aspect of language, new material on Williams and Down Syndromes and dyslexia, and a new chapter on bilingualism, early second language acquisition, and bimodalism. Revisions reflect the burgeoning research in the field. New pedagogical features include chapter outlines, summaries of chapters, hypotheses, and linguistic milestones; methodological information; explanatory boxes; and suggestions for further reading.

This edited volume contains a representative sample of papers presented at the 7th meeting of the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America (GALANA-7) conference. The book features three streams of research (Variation in Input, First Language Acquisition, and Second Language Acquisition), each of which investigates the nature of language acquisition from the generative perspective. A unique feature of the GALANA-7 conference, and of this volume, is the bringing together of research on generative language acquisition and research on the role that cross-dialectal input variation plays in acquisition. This volume should be of interest to scholars and students of first language acquisition, second language acquisition, and input variation.

This is an open access book.The 4th International Conference on Literature, Art and Human Development (ICLAHD 2022) was successfully held on October 28th-30th, 2022 in Xi’an, China (virtual conference). ICLAHD 2022 brought together academics and experts in the field of Literature, Art and Human Development research to a common forum, promoting research and developmental activities in related fields as well as scientific information interchange between researchers, developers, and engineers working all around the world.We were honored to have Assoc. Prof. Chew Fong Peng from University of Malaya, Malaysia to serve as our Conference Chair. The conference covered keynote speeches, oral presentations, and online Q&A discussion, attracting over 300 individuals. Firstly, keynote speakers were each allocated 30-45 minutes to hold their speeches. Then in the oral presentations, the excellent papers selected were presented by their authors in sequence.

This edited collection contains 43 papers presented at the GALA (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition) conference 2009, held in Lisbon, Portugal. The volume contains a very wide and rich range of topics, reflecting the immense quality of the event: the acquisition of languages from different families is studied; comparisons between acquisition of L1, L2 and atypical language development are made; all areas of language development are explored (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, pragmatics and interactions between components). The proceedings of GALA are an invaluable reference for those interested in Language Acquisition, Language Development and Child Language.

The research presented in this volume covers first language acquisition, second language acquisition, language heritage and language impairment. Papers in this collection use a variety of experimental methods, such as eye-tracking, elicitation tasks, production tasks administered off-line and untimed, transcriptions of spontaneous speech, production elicitation, Truth Value Judgement tasks, standardized tests and multiple choice tasks. The studies included in this book try to cover most of the methods used in first and second language acquisition in typical and atypical populations. This book will be useful for linguists, speech therapists, and psycholinguists working on first, second and impaired language acquisition.

Thomas G. Bever's now iconic sentence, The horse raced past the barn fell, first appeared in his 1970 paper "The Cognitive Basis of Linguistic Structures". This 'garden path sentence', so-called because of the way it leads the reader or listener down the wrong parsing path, helped spawn the entire subfield of sentence processing. It has become the most often quoted element of a paper which spanned a wealth of research into the relationship between the grammatical system and language processing. Language Down the garden Path traces the lines of research that grew out of Bever's classic paper. Leading scientists review over 40 years of debates on the factors at play in language comprehension, production, and acquisition (the role of prediction, grammar, working memory, prosody, abstractness, syntax, and semantics mapping); the current status of universals and narrow syntax; and virtually every topic relevant in psycholinguistics since 1970. Written in an accessible and engaging style, the book will appeal to all those interested in understanding the questions that shaped, and are still shaping, this field and the ways in which linguists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and neuroscientists are seeking to answer them.