Description
Book SynopsisFlexibility and productivity are hallmarks of human language use. Competent speakers have the capacity to use the words they know to serve a variety of communicative functions, to refer to new and varied exemplars of the categories to which words refer, and in new and varied combinations with other words. When and how children achieve this flexibilityand when they are truly productive language usersare central issues among accounts of language acquisition. The current study tests competing hypotheses of the achievement of flexibility and some kinds of productivity against data on children's first uses of their first-acquired verbs.
Eight mothers recorded their children''s first 10 uses of 34 early-acquired verbs, if those verbs were produced within the window of the study. The children were between 16 and 20 months when the study began (depending on when the children started to produce verbs), were followed for between 3 and 12 months, and produced between 13 and 31 of the ta
Table of Contents
Abstract.
I. Introduction.
Ii. Presenting the diary method.
Iii. A general description of early verb growth and use.
Iv. Pragmatic and semantic flexibility in early verb use.
V. Productivity and grammatical flexibility in early verb use.
Vi. Differences in early verb growth and use as a function of Developmental period, child, and verb.
Vii. General discussion.
References.
Acknowledgments.
Commentary.
Flexibility in the semantics and syntax of children’s early verb use (Michael Tomasello and Silke Brandt).
Learning from infants’ first verbs (Sandra R. Waxman).
Early verb learners: creative or not? (Jane B. Childers).
Contributors.
Statement of editorial policy.
