Language Acquisition Books - Page 3

How Children Learn the Meanings of Words (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)

Paul Bloom

List Price: $60.00 By: The MIT Press Amazon Marketplace: 11 new & used starting at $9.97

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Winner of the 2000 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division Annual Awards Competition in the category of Psychology, presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc. and Winner of the 2002 Eleanor Maccoby Book Award in Developmental Psychology presented by Division 7 (Developmental Psychology Division) of the American Psychological Association (APA). The award is given to the author of a book in the field of psychology that has had or promises to have a profound effect on one or more of the areas represented by Division 7 of the APA.

How do children learn that the word "dog" refers not to all four-legged animals, and not just to Ralph, but to all members of a particular species? How do they learn the meanings of verbs like "think," adjectives like "good," and words for abstract entities such as "mortgage" and "story"? The acquisition of word meaning is one of the fundamental issues in the study of mind.

According to Paul Bloom, children learn words through sophisticated cognitive abilities that exist for other purposes. These include the ability to infer others' intentions, the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic structure, and certain general learning and memory abilities. Although other researchers have associated word learning with some of these capacities, Bloom is the first to show how a complete explanation requires all of them. The acquisition of even simple nouns requires rich conceptual, social, and linguistic capacities interacting in complex ways.

This book requires no background in psychology or linguistics and is written in a clear, engaging style. Topics include the effects of language on spatial reasoning, the origin of essentialist beliefs, and the young child's understanding of representational art. The book should appeal to general readers interested in language and cognition as well as to researchers in the field.

Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar

Maria Teresa Guasti

Amazon Price: $60.00 List Price: $60.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The MIT Press Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $7.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Child Psychology -> Development
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General

Editorial Review:

This text provides a comprehensive introduction to current thinking on language acquisition. Following an introductory chapter that discusses the foundations of linguistic inquiry, the book covers the acquisition of specific aspects of language from birth to about age 6. Topics include the language abilities of newborns, the acquisition of phonological properties of language, the lexicon, syntax, pronoun and sentence interpretation, control structures, specific language impairments, and the relationship between language and other cognitive functions.

At the conclusion of each chapter are a summary of the material covered, a list of keywords, study questions, and exercises. The book, which adopts the perspective of Chomskyan Universal Generative Grammar throughout, assumes a familiarity with basic concepts of linguistic theory.

The Seeds of Speech: Language Origin and Evolution (Cambridge Approaches to Linguistics)

Jean Aitchison

Amazon Price: $54.95 List Price: $54.95 Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 7 new & used starting at $49.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Logic & Language
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Linguistics -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

these seeds bore fruit 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Aitchison has written another page turner. If this book doesn't keep you up until 3am desperate to finish, nothing will. It is divided into four sections: puzzles, origin, evolution, and diffusion. Puzzles deals with the theories as to how language began and developed. What was it originally for? and touches a little on the area of psycholinguistics. The second section deals with the issue of where it began on earth and how it spread out. The issues of the first chapter are expanded on and answers provided. The third section details the evolution of language based on what we currently know about language creation among the higher apes and among indigenous peoples who are exposed to foreign languages (pidgins, creoles). The last section deals with the diffusion we know today and with the idea of a universal grammar that would unite all human language under certain principles.

As always Aitchison has managed to present a lot of information succinctly and without clouding the issues. A good introduction to the subject.

Editorial Review:

Human language is a weird communication system: it has more in common with birdsong than the calls of other primates. In this clear and non-technical overview, Jean Aitchison explores why it evolved and how it developed. She likens the search to a vast prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, in which numerous fragments of evidence must be assembled, some external to language, such as evolution theory, animal communication; others internal, including child language, pidgins and creoles, and language change. She explains why language is so strange, outlines recent theories about its origin, and discusses possible paths of evolution. Jean Aitchison is the Rupert Murdoch Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford University. She gave the 1996 BBC Reith lectures The Language Web.

How Children Learn Language: A Guide for Professionals in Early Childhood or Special Education

James McLean, Lee Snyder-McLean

Amazon Price: $44.95 List Price: $44.95 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Singular Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $14.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Mental Health -> General AAS
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> Adolescent Psychology

Editorial Review:

Presents the most modern psychosocial model of early communication and language development. Describes the cognitive knowledge bases that children must have to acquire language. Designed specifically for childhood education students. Ideal for SLPA language development course. TEXTBOOK

Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)

Steven Pinker

List Price: $52.00 By: Bradford Book Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $136.38

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> General AAS

Editorial Review:

When children learn a language, they soon are able to make surprisingly subtle distinctions: "donate them a book" sounds odd, for example, even though "give them a book" is perfectly natural. How can this happen, given that children do not confine themselves to the sentence types they hear, and are usually not corrected when they speak ungrammatically? Steven Pinker resolves this paradox in a detailed theory of how children acquire argument structure.

In tackling a learning paradox that has challenged scholars for more than a decade, Pinker synthesizes a vast literature in linguistics and psycholinguistics and outlines explicit theories of the mental representation, learning, and development of verb meaning and verb syntax. The new theory that he describes has some surprising implications for the relation between language and thought.

Pinker's solution provides insight into such key questions as, When do children generalize and when do they stick with what they hear? What is the rationale behind linguistic constraints? How is the syntax of predicates and arguments related to their semantics? What is a possible word meaning? Do languages force their speakers to construe the world in certain ways? Why does children's language seem different from that of adults?

Steven Pinker is Associate Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. Learnability and Cognition is included in the series Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change, edited by Lila Gleitman, Susan Carey, Elissa Newport, and Elizabeth Spelke. A Bradford Book

Look Who's Talking

Laura Dyer

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $12.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Meadowbrook Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $0.01

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Wonderful resource for parents 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Look Who's Talking is a wonderful resource for parents who have questions about their child's speech. Laura Dyer, a speech-language therapist with a master's degree in communications disorders, has written a book that is well researched, easy to use and full of practical advice.

Look Who's Talking begins with an overview of speech and language development, including influences, potential problems and causes. Complicating issues such as auditory processing, hearing, language delays, and developmental delays are discussed. One of the key features of this book is the very detailed descriptions provided for each age and developmental stage; parents of babies and older children will find this a helpful resource.

Editorial Review:

Based on the latest academic research, Laura Dyer has written the most comprehensive and practical book on the market to help parents enhance their child's language development. It covers pre-verbal signs and gestures and provides more information than any other book on:

- How to nurture pre-literary skills

- How to enhance speech and language skills from birth to age 7

- How reading to your child can enhance language development and literacy

- How to use music to enhance language development

- How to recognize warning signs of the most common language problems and what to do if you find them

- What the effect of bilingualism is on language development and how to deal with

the most common problems that arise

Language Learning Practices With Deaf Children

Patricia McAnnally, Susan Rose, Stephen P. Quigley

List Price: $46.25 By: Pro-Ed Amazon Marketplace: 1 new & used starting at $174.65

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> Special Education -> Physically Disabled

Editorial Review:

...describes the variety of language-development theories and practices used with children who are deaf without advocating andy particular one

Teacher Cognition and Language Education: Research and Practice

Simon Borg

Amazon Price: $35.96 List Price: $49.95 Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks By: Continuum Amazon Marketplace: 3 new & used starting at $35.96

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Education -> Specific Skills -> Language Arts
Subjects -> Reference -> Foreign Languages -> General

Editorial Review:

Now available in paperback, this comprehensive and accessible volume is a timely discussion of the current research being carried out in language teacher cognition.The study of teacher cognition - what teachers think, know and believe - and of its relationship to teachers' classroom practices has become a key theme in the field of language teaching and teacher education. This new in paperback volume provides a timely discussion of the research which now exists on language teacher cognition.The first part of the book considers what is known about the cognitions of pre-service and practicing teachers, and focuses specifically on teachers' cognitions in teaching grammar, reader and writing. The second part of the book evaluates a range of research methods which have been used in the study of language teacher cognition and provides a framework for continuing research in this fascinating field. This comprehensive yet accessible account will be relevant to researchers, teacher educators and curriculum managers working in language education contexts.

Family Literacy: Young Children Learning to Read and Write

Denny Taylor

List Price: $15.95 By: Heinemann Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 16 new & used starting at $0.45

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> Reading
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Education -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Classic Primer for Those Interested in Family Literacy 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is a primer for teachers and researchers interested in the topic of family literacy. Taylor's ethnographic study, a three-year research project, follows the literacy activity of six middle-class families- each with at least one child, provides insight into the ways in which children learn to read and write within the context of everyday family experiences. The definition of family literacy will take on a whole new meaning. Author Denny Taylor is an advocate of the family and family literacy.

Editorial Review:

Family Literacy presents the stories of six families, each having a child considered by the parents to be a successful reader and writer.

Adam's Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans

Derek Bickerton

Amazon Price: $18.15 List Price: $27.50 Not yet published By: Hill and Wang

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Language Acquisition
Subjects -> Reference -> Words & Language -> Linguistics
Subjects -> Science -> Evolution -> General

Editorial Review:

How did humans get to be human? Why are we so different from all other creatures? We have language and they don’t—could the answer possibly be that simple? Yes, says Derek Bickerton, one of the world’s leading researchers into the evolution of language. In Adam’s Tongue, he tells for the first time the full story of how it all happened. How a little-known episode in human evolution brought us to the top of the food chain. How “power scavenging” forced us to break the mold of animal communication systems that kept all other species locked in the prison of the here and now. How the acquisition of words changed the structure of our brains and gave us the limitless creativity that made the world we know today. Adam’s Tongue draws on a broad range of disciplines—from ecology to neurobiology, from linguistics to paleoanthropology. It introduces a revolutionary new approach to biological evolution called niche construction theory, which shows how species can guide their own evolution, and uses it for the first time to explain how humans evolved. Yet the book, written in Bickerton’s trademark style—clear, direct, brimming with enthusiasm—makes all of these topics fully accessible to anyone who has ever wondered how humans came to acquire language and how it changed our nature.