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What blocks the way to a better understanding of language evolution, it is widely held, is above all a paucity of factual evidence. Not so, argues Unravelling the Evolution of Language . This book finds the main obstacle, instead, in a poverty of a specific kind of theory-restrictive theory. It shows, too, that this poverty of restrictive theory is one of the root causes of the paucity of factual evidence. "Unravelling".takes it that a theory of a thing T-for example, language-is restrictive if it gives us a basis for distinguishing T in a non-arbitrary way from all things that are in fact distinct from it, including those that happen to be related to it. The book then argues in detail that much of the recent work on language evolution proceeds from loose assumptions, rather than restrictive theories, about a number of crucial "things": The entities, prelinguistic or linguistic, that are believed to have undergone evolution; the processes by which these entities are believed to have evolved; the ways in which these (pre)linguistic entities link up with entities that are believed to be correlates of them; the sources of data that are believed to yield indirect evidence about the evolution of language; and the factors that add to or subtract from the scientific substance of accounts of language evolution. In support of its main argument, Unravelling the Evolution of Language puts forward detailed analyses of various recent accounts of language evolution, including co-optationist accounts by Noam Chomsky, Stephen Jay Gould, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and Lyle Jenkins preadaptationist accounts by Philip Lieberman, Wendy Wilkins, Jenny Wakefield, Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, William Calvin and Derek Bickerton adaptationist accounts by Steven Pinker, Paul Bloom and others. This means that Unravelling.as it builds its main argument, also offers an appraisal of some significant contributions to recent work on language evolution.

Historical Linguistics --- Language development --- Language origin

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The Onset of Language outlines an approach to the development of expressive and communicative behaviour from early infancy to the onset of single word utterances. Nobuo Masataka's research is rooted in ethology and dynamic action theory. He argues that expressive and communicative actions are organized as a complex and cooperative system with other elements of the infant's physiology, behaviour and the social environments. Overall, humans are provided with a finite set of specific behaviour patterns, each of which is phylogenetically inherited as a primate species. However, the patterns are uniquely organized during ontogeny and a coordinated structure emerges which eventually leads us to acquire language. This fascinating book offers exciting insights into the precursors of speech and will be of interest to researchers and students of psychology, linguistics and animal behaviour biology.

Language acquisition --- Acquisition of language --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language and languages --- Language development in children --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Acquisition --- Language acquisition. --- Health Sciences --- Psychiatry & Psychology

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The author presents a comprehensive usage-based theory of language acquisition, based on evidence that children possess a linguistic ability interwoven with other cognitive abilities, rather than a self-contained 'language instinct'.

Language acquisition. --- Cognition in children. --- Cognition (Child psychology) --- Thought and thinking in children --- Child psychology --- Acquisition of language --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language and languages --- Language development in children --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Acquisition

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This book provides a broad overview of parameter-setting theory in first and second language acquisition and refines the theory by revisiting and challenging the traditional assumptions that underlie it, based on cross-linguistic language data that cover a range of syntactic and phonological phenomena.From an historical perspective on parameter-setting theory to an introduction to its role in computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and language change, the reader will find a critique of the most commonly made arguments, as well as an index of all the syntactic, phonological, lexical, and

Language acquisition. --- Principles and parameters (Linguistics) --- Generative grammar --- Grammar, Comparative and general --- Acquisition of language --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language and languages --- Language development in children --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Acquisition

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The focus of this collection of essays is on the acquisition of so called vulnerable and invulnerable grammatical domains in multilingualism. Language acquisition is studied from a comparative perspective, mostly in the framework of generative grammar. Different types of multilingualism are compared, the existence of multiple grammars in L1 acquisition, simultaneous L2 acquisition (balanced and unbalanced bilingualism) and successive L2 acquisition (child and adult L2 acquisition). Evidence from the language pairs French-German, Italian-Swedish, Spanish-English, Spanish-German, Spanish-Basque, Portuguese-Japanese-English, Portuguese-German, English-German, Turkish-German is brought to bear on grammatical issues pertaining to the morphology and syntax of the noun phrase, pronoun use and the null-subject property, clause structure, verb position, non-finite clauses, agreement at the clause level, and on issues like code mixing and language dominance.

Sociolinguistics --- Bilingualism in children. --- Acquisition du langage --- Acquisition of language --- Bilingualism in children --- Bilinguisme -- Chez l'enfant --- Bilinguisme chez l'enfant --- Bilinguisme chez les enfants --- Enfants -- Bilinguisme --- Enfants bilingues --- Langage [Acquisition du ] --- Language acquisition --- Language development in children --- Taalverwerving --- Tweetaligheid bij kinderen --- Languages & Literatures --- Philology & Linguistics --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language and languages --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Children --- Acquisition --- Language acquisition.