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Now in its fourth edition, this textbook provides a chronological account of first language acquisition, showing how young children acquire language in their conversational interactions with adult speakers. It draws on diary records and experimental studies from leaders in the field to document different stages and different aspects of what children master. Successive chapters detail infants' and young children's progression from attending to adult faces, gaze, and hand motions, to their first attempts at communicating with gaze and gesture, then adding words and constructions. It comprehensively covers the acquisition of the core areas of language – phonetics and phonology, lexicon, grammar and sentence structure, and meaning – as well as how children acquire discourse and conversational skills. This edition includes new sections on how children build 'common ground' with adults and other children, individual differences in children's language development, how they collaborate with adults in constructing utterances, and how they qualify beliefs.
Now in its fourth edition, this textbook provides a chronological account of first language acquisition, showing how young children acquire language in their conversational interactions with adult speakers. It draws on diary records and experimental studies from leaders in the field to document different stages and different aspects of what children master. Successive chapters detail infants' and young children's progression from attending to adult faces, gaze, and hand motions, to their first attempts at communicating with gaze and gesture, then adding words and constructions. It comprehensively covers the acquisition of the core areas of language – phonetics and phonology, lexicon, grammar and sentence structure, and meaning – as well as how children acquire discourse and conversational skills. This edition includes new sections on how children build 'common ground' with adults and other children, individual differences in children's language development, how they collaborate with adults in constructing utterances, and how they qualify beliefs.
Semantics and pragmatics – the study of meaning, and meaning in context, respectively – are two fundamental areas of linguistics, and as such are crucial to our understanding of how meaning is created. However, their theoretical ideas are often introduced without making clear connections between views, theories, and problems. This pioneering volume is both a textbook and a research guide, taking the reader on a journey through language and ultimately enabling them to think about meaning as linguists and philosophers would. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it introduces semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language, showing how all three fields can address the 'big questions' that run through the study of meaning. It covers key theories and approaches, while also enabling increasingly more sophisticated questions about the interconnected aspects of meaning, with the end goal of preparing the reader to make their own, original contributions to ideas about meaning.
Semantics and pragmatics – the study of meaning, and meaning in context, respectively – are two fundamental areas of linguistics, and as such are crucial to our understanding of how meaning is created. However, their theoretical ideas are often introduced without making clear connections between views, theories, and problems. This pioneering volume is both a textbook and a research guide, taking the reader on a journey through language and ultimately enabling them to think about meaning as linguists and philosophers would. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it introduces semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language, showing how all three fields can address the 'big questions' that run through the study of meaning. It covers key theories and approaches, while also enabling increasingly more sophisticated questions about the interconnected aspects of meaning, with the end goal of preparing the reader to make their own, original contributions to ideas about meaning.