Syntactic development / William O'Grady.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Grady, William.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Acquisition.

English language.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Language acquisition.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (422 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago, 1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Syntactic Development presents a broad critical survey of the research literature on child language development. Giving balanced coverage to both theoretical and empirical issues, William O'Grady constructs an up-to-date picture of how children acquire the syntax of English. Part 1 offers an overview of the developmental data pertaining to a range of syntactic phenomena, including word order, subject drop, embedded clauses, wh-questions, inversion, relative clauses, passives, and anaphora. Part 2 considers the various theories that have been advanced to explain the facts of development as well as the learnability problem, reporting on work in the mainstream formalist framework but also considering the results of alternative approaches. Covering a wide range of perspectives in the modern study of syntactic development, this book is an invaluable reference for specialists in the field of language acquisition and provides an excellent introduction to the acquisition of syntax for students and researchers in psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

I The Study of Language Acquisition

PART I The Developmental Facts

2 One-Word Utterances

3 Early Multiword Utterances

4 Word Order and Case

5 Subject Drop

6 Embedded Clauses

7 Wh Questions

8 Inversion

9 Relative Clauses and Clefts

10 Passives

11 Constraints on Coreference

PART II: THEORIES OF LEARNABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT

12 The Learnability Problem

13 UG-Based Theories of the Acquisition Device

14 Alternatives to UG

15 Theories of Development

16 Concluding Remarks

Notes

Glossary

References

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 377-402) and index.

ISBN:

9786611223892

9781281223890

1281223891

9780226620787

0226620786

OCLC:

567949881