First Language Acquisition: The Essential Readings

Part I: Theory of Language Acquisition:.

1. Selections from Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin, and Use: Noam Chomsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

2. A Review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior: Noam Chomsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

3. Selections from The Psychology of the Child: Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder.

4. Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky: Massimo Piattelii-Palmarini (editor).

5. Selections from Comparative Linguistics and Language Acquisition: Hermine Sinclair (late of University of Geneva).

Part II: The Nature-Nurture Controversies:.

Nature: Biology.

6. Selections from The Biological Foundations of Language: Eric H. Lenneberg (late of Harvard University).

7. Language and the Brain: Norman Geschwind.

8. Selections from The Bisected Brain: Michael S. Gazzaniga (Dartmouth College).

9. The Linguistic Development of Genie: Susan Curtiss (UCLA), Victoria Fromkin (late of UCLA), Stephen Krashen (USC), David Rigler, & Marilyn Rigler.

Nurture: Role of the Input.

10. Derivational Theory and Order of Acquisition in Child Speech: Roger Brown (late of Harvard University) and Camille Hanlon (Connecticut College).

11. Talking to Children: A Search for Universals: Charles A. Ferguson (late of Stanford University).

12. Learning by Instinct: James L. Gould (Princeton University) & Peter Marler (University of California, Davis).

Mechanisms of Development.

13. Selections from Language and Experience: Evidence from the Blind Child: Barbara Landau (Johns Hopkins University) & Lila R. Gleitman (University of Pennsylvania).

14. Selections from Language Learnability and Language Development: Steven Pinker (Harvard University).

15. Selections from Learnability and Cognition: Steven Pinker (Harvard University).

16. Selection from Language Acquisition and Cognitive Development: H. Sinclair-deZwart (late of University of Geneva).

17. Selections from Cognitive Prerequisites for the Development of Grammar: Dan I. Slobin (University of California, Berkeley).

Part III: Areas of Language Knowledge:.

Morphology.

18. The Child’s Learning of English Morphology: Jean Berko (Gleason) (Boston University).

19. Selections from A First Language: Roger Brown (late of Harvard University).

Phonology.

Speech Perception.

20. Speech Perception in Infants: Peter D. Eimas (Brown University), Einar R. Siqueland (Brown University), Peter Jusczyk (late of Johns Hopkins University), and James Vigorito.

Speech Production.

21. The sound laws of child language and their place in general phonology: Roman Jakobson (late of MIT).

22. Universal Tendencies in the Child’s Acquisition of Phonology: N.V. Smith (University College London).

23. The acquisition of phonemic representation: David Stampe (University of Hawai'i, Manoa).

Syntax.

24. Selections from The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior: K.S. Lashley (late of Harvard University).

25. The Study of Adam, Eve, and Sarah: Roger Brown (late of Harvard University).

26. Syntactic Regularities in the Speech of Children: E.S. Klima (University of California, San Diego) and Ursula Bellugi (Salk Institute for Biological Studies).

27. The Reduction Transformation and Constraints on Sentence Length: Lois Bloom (Columbia University).

Semantics and Pragmatics.

28. The young word maker: A case study of innovation in the child’s lexicon: Eve V. Clark (Stanford University).

29. Strategies for Communicating: Eve V. Clark (Stanford University).

Index