The Process of Language Acquisition

The volume contains a broad spectrum of papers dealing with current issues in first and second language acquisition. The assumption shared by all authors is that for the process of language acquisition to take place properly, the learner has to have custom tools and procedures that allow her to gain specific knowledge about the language(s) that surround her. Just what these tools and procedures are and how they work on the stimuli the learner receives, is what had driven the work behind this collection of papers. The book is a demonstration that generative approaches to language acquisition are taken in almost all corners of the globe and across many of the subdisciplines of language acquisition. The volume also attests to the fact that the data base which generative linguists draw from has been expanded quite dramatically over the past decades.

Autorentext

The Editor: Ingeborg Lasser is a graduate of the City University of New York (Graduate Center) and teaches language acquisition and language processing at the University of Potsdam, Germany.

Inhalt
Contents: Stephen Crain: On Continuity Thomas Roeper/William Snyder/Kazuko Hiramatsu: Language Acquisition in a Minimalist Framework: Root Compounds, Merger, and the Syntax-Morphology Interface David Le Blanc: 'Parameter Setting' in the Minimalist Program Theordore Marinis: Acquiring the Possessive Construction in Modern Greek Spyridoula Varlakosta: Asymmetries in the Acquisition of Pronominal Reference in Normal and SLI Children Linda Escobar/Anna Gavarró: The Acquisition of Catalan Clitics and its Implications for Complex Verb Structure Marlies van der Velde/Celia Jakubowicz/Catherine Rigaut: The Acquisition of Determiners and Pronominal Clitics by Three French-Speaking Children Carla Soares: The Acquisition of D, T and C: Additional Evidence Celia Jakubowicz: Functional Categories in (Ab)normal Language Acquisition Vaijayanthi M. Sarma: Case and Agreement: The Issue of Non-Finite Sentences in Acquisition Petra Gretsch: Are wh-Elements Really Optional in Early Question Acquisition? The Case of wh-Drop Against Focal Ellipsis Wenda Bergsma: Children's Interpretation of Dutch Sentences with the Focus Particle alleen Adriana Alvarez: The Acquisition of Spanish Causative Constructions Cathy Fragman: Pied-piping, Wh-Fronting and the Acquisition of Relative Clauses in French Janet Grijzenhout/Sandra Joppen: The Lack of Onsets in German Child Phonology Elizabeth K. Johnson/Peter W. Jusczyk: Finding the Words in Fluent Speech: How Infants Cope With Different Types of Word Segmentation Cues Sharon Peperkamp/Emmanuel Dupoux: Coping with Phonological Variation in Early Lexical Acquisition Julia Herschensohn: The Accidental Infinitive Mamiko Akita: The Effect of «Positive Evidence With a Positive Effect» on Japanese English Learners' Interlanguage Phonology.