Syntactic Development

by William O'Grady

University of Chicago Press, 1997
Cloth: 978-0-226-62075-6 | Paper: 978-0-226-62077-0 | Electronic: 978-0-226-62078-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226620787.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

REVIEWS

“<I>Syntactic development<I> provides a comprehensive overview of the study of primary syntax acquisition, which includes the classical, groundbreaking studies, as well as many of the most important studies from the recent past. . . . The presentation of empirical and theoretical issues is up-to-date, thorough, and well-organized. Thus, the book is a good resource for specialists. In addition, O’Grady’s writing is very clear, and many chapters are cleverly structured, from a didactic point of view. In short, this book come up to my expectations of an introductory course text in the most important respects–it is interesting and instructive, for students as well as teachers."

— Frank Wijnen, Journal of Child Language

“I was very excited to see William O’Grady’s new text Syntactic Development. There is no one in the field more knowledgeable and theoretically balanced than O’Grady. This is the most important book on syntactic acquisition since Pinker, and it will bring the serious reader to a highly advanced level of understanding of the research and issues in syntactic development.”

— David Ingram, University of British Columbia

“This is an excellent book in all regards. The level of scholarship is extremely high—the review of empirical and theoretical work is thorough, it is current, and it covers a wide range of different perspectives in the modern study of language development. O’Grady has the rare ability of providing an open-minded and informed introduction to theories other than his own.”

— Paul Bloom, University of Arizona

“What an incredible resource for students and researchers! There is simply nothing like it. The empirical thoroughness of O’Grady’s accountmakes this an indispensable addition to a library on language acquisition.”

— Jill de Villiers, Smith College

Acknowledgments

1 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