The Language of Children: Evolution and Development of Secondary Consciousness and Language

This book provides a very readable introduction for students of psychology, language, and education to how children acquire and use language. Focusing on research evidence and everyday examples, it covers a broad range of topics and assumes no prior knowledge of developmental psychology or linguistics. The emphasis of The Language of Children is on explaining psychological (cognitive, biological and social) variables in language. The development of human language use is first related to the development of signaling in other species and to the early interaction between the infant and his or her mother (or other caregiver). It goes on to relate the child′s development of language to broader cognitive development, and considers the influence of schooling and social experience.

1. Introduction. 2. The Signal Systems of Animals in the Wild. 3. Animals in Contact with People. 4. From Signals and Signalling to Syntactic Language and Communication. 5. The Prelinguistic Infant. 6. The One–Word Period. 7. The Linguistic System and Early Language Development. 8. The Communication Skills of Young Children. 9. Semantic Development. 10. Reading. 11. Bilingualism and Second Language Learning. 12. Sociolinguistics. Glossary. References. Index.

Mathilda Holzman is Professor in the Eliot–Pearson Department of Child Study of Tufts University. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington and has written widely on the subject of child development.

"This thoroughly revised and updated edition of The Language of Children, first published in 1984, is a reader friendly, well written introductory text on language acquisition. What makes this work different from most texts about language acquisition is its interdisciplinary nature. I consider The Language of Children a valuable book, which makes an accessible, interesting text for students who are non–native speakers of English." Peter Ecke, University of America– Puebla "We...believe that this book could be used successfully in a lower level undergraduate class, particularly if a comparative perspective is desired." Stan A Kuczaj II and Heather M. Hill, University of Southern Mississippi