Ten lectures on language, cognition, and language acquisition / Melissa Bowerman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bowerman, Melissa.

Series:

Distinguished Lectures in Cognitive Linguistics 10.

Distinguished lectures in cognitive linguistics, 2468-4872 ; 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language acquisition.

Semantics.

Cognition in children.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 235 pages).

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2018]

Summary:

In her Beijing lectures, Melissa Bowerman presents a lucid introduction and account of her research on a range of topics: how children acquire the semantics of spatial terms, how they construct categories and acquire the semantics of nouns, and how they master the semantics of verbs in early language acquisition. Bowerman also covers the learning of argument structure and expressions of end-state, with special attention to the adult speech that guides children, and hence also the role of typology in acquisition; how cross-linguistic variation affects, for example, how speakers represent ‘cutting’ and ‘breaking’ in different languages, and the relation of the Whorfian Hypothesis to cross-linguistic variations in the semantics of languages. Bowerman’s over-riding concern throughout is with how children come to master the first language being spoken to them by their parents and caregivers.

Contents:

Front Matter

Copyright page

Note on Supplementary Material

Foreword* / Eve V. Clark and Dan I. Slobin

Preface / Thomas Fuyin Li and Yan Ding

Introduction and Overview

Spatial Semantics in Languages and Language Learners

Mechanisms of Semantic Category Construction in First Language Acquisition

The Crosslinguistic Categorization of Everyday Events: The Case of “Cutting and Breaking”

Special Meanings for Grammatical Morphemes?

Noun Semantics and “Natural Ontology” in Language Acquisition

Verb Learning and Argument Structure

Language Typology and “Thinking for Speaking”

Learning about End-State Entailment in German versus Mandarin Chinese

Crosslinguistic Semantic Variation and Whorfian Hypothesis

Websites for Cognitive Linguistics and CIFCL Speakers

Back Matter

About the Series Editor.

Notes:

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789004362826

9004362827

OCLC:

1045655349

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004362826 DOI