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Language acquisition research is challenging—the intricate behavioral and cognitive foundations of speech are difficult to measure objectively. The audible components of speech, however, are quantifiable and thus provide crucial data. This practical guide synthesizes the authors’ decades of experience into a comprehensive set of tools that will allow students and early career researchers in the field to design and conduct rigorous studies that produce reliable and valid speech data and interpretations. The authors thoroughly review specific techniques for obtaining qualitative and quantitative speech data, including how to tailor the testing environments for optimal results. They explore observational tasks for collecting natural speech and experimental tasks for eliciting specific types of speech. Language comprehension tasks are also reviewed so researchers can study participants’ interpretations of speech and conceptualizations of grammar. Most tasks are oriented towards children, but special considerations for infants are also reviewed, as well as multilingual children. Chapters also provide strategies for transcribing and coding raw speech data into reliable data sets that can be scientifically analyzed. Furthermore, they investigate the intricacies of interpretation so that researchers can make empirically sound inferences from their data and avoid common pitfalls that can lead to unscientific conclusions.

Language acquisition --- Language and languages --- Children --- Speech acts (Linguistics) --- Psycholinguistics. --- Language, Psychology of --- Psychology of language --- Speech --- Linguistics --- Psychology --- Thought and thinking --- Illocutionary acts (Linguistics) --- Speech act theory (Linguistics) --- Speech events (Linguistics) --- Childhood --- Kids (Children) --- Pedology (Child study) --- Youngsters --- Age groups --- Families --- Life cycle, Human --- Sociolinguistics --- Acquisition of language --- Developmental linguistics --- Developmental psycholinguistics --- Language development in children --- Psycholinguistics, Developmental --- Interpersonal communication in children --- Psycholinguistics --- Research --- Methodology. --- Data processing. --- Psychological aspects --- Research. --- Age differences. --- Language --- Psychological aspects. --- Philosophy --- Acquisition --- Cognitive Linguistics. --- Language Acquisition. --- Language Comprehension.

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This book is the product of an international workshop dedicated to addressing data accessibility in the linguistics field. It is therefore vital to the book’s mission that its content be open access. Linguistics as a field remains behind many others as far as data management and accessibility strategies. The problem is particularly acute in the subfield of language acquisition, where international linguistic sound files are needed for reference. Linguists' concerns are very much tied to amount of information accumulated by individual researchers over the years that remains fragmented and inaccessible to the larger community. These concerns are shared by other fields, but linguistics to date has seen few efforts at addressing them. This collection, undertaken by a range of leading experts in the field, represents a big step forward. Its international scope and interdisciplinary combination of scholars/librarians/data consultants will provide an important contribution to the field.