Early Syntactic Development: A Cross-Linguistic Study with Special Reference to Finnish

by Melissa Bowerman

Overview

First published in 1973, this important work was the first systematic attempt to apply theoretical and methodological tools developed in America to the acquisition of a language other than English. Dr Bowerman presents and analyses data from a longitudinal investigation of the early syntactic development of two Finnish children, and compares their speech at two stages of development with that of American, Samoan and Luo children. The four language families (Finno-Ugric, Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian and Nilotic respectively) with very different structures, and this is the first systematic comparison of the acquisition of several types of native language within a common analysis. Similarities in the linguistic behaviour of children learning these four different languages are used to evaluate hypotheses about universals of language, and to generate new proposals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521097970
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/27/1973
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Linguistics , #11
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Data collection; 3. The pivot grammar approach; 4. Early stage 1 speech; 5. Late stage 1 speech; 6. problems with the transformational grammar approach; 7. The case grammar approach; 8. Summary and conclusions; Appendices.