The Development of Language
Acquisition, Change, and Evolution
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A language develops over time, it develops in a child, and the capacity for language has evolved in the human species.
About this Author
David Lightfoot is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park where he is also Associate Director of the program in Neural and Cognitive Science. His books include The Language Lottery and How to Set Parameters.
Reviews
"My favourite parts were those that gave detailed explanations for learning in the context of a changing language input: how children solve the problem of an emergent syntactic property, one that doesn't appear to cohere with the rest of the system, with the result that the grammar is reorganized in the next generation." Lila Gleitman
"David Lightfoot is addressing the core questions of the study of language: what it is, how it comes to be that way, how the child acquires it. His account is richly textured, integrating many different approaches with lucidity and insight. His analyses and conclusions are challenging and provocative, both for specialists in the particular areas he brings together, and for those seeking a clear picture of current understanding and open problems." Noam Chomsky
'There can be little question that it will represent a major work, required reading for anyone with interests in this area.' Mark Hale, Concordia University
"This book challenges conventional understanding of language learning by showing that language change is essentially contingent-unpredictable but explainable. The role of natural selection in facilitating the understanding of the evolution of the language faculty in the human species is contested." Psycholinguistics
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