A Functional Approach to Child Language

When A Functional Approach to Child Language first appeared in hardback in 1979, it was quickly recognized as a research report of the first rank and a timely, critical exposition of Piaget’s views on language and thought. Whilst accepting the fundamental importance of Piaget’s epistemology, the author argues that language acquisition will only be adequately explained if such an epistemology is explicitly focused on children’s constructive interaction with their linguistic environment. In her own experimental work on referential expressions, Dr Karmiloff-Smith is concerned with the problem of ad-hoc experiment-generated behaviour and the analysis of children’s normal language procedures. The results are carefully analysed and have significant theoretical implications. The volume as a whole makes a substantial contribution to child language studies and will be of interest to students of linguistics and of developmental and experimental psychology, and to those following advanced courses in language acquisition and child development.

1. The place of language in child development; 2. Determiners and reference; 3. Introduction to the data; 4. Production experiments: deictic, exophoric and quantifier functions of determiners; 5. Production experiments: anaphoric function; 6. Production experiments: gender-indicating function of determiners; 7. Comprehension experiments: deictic, exophoric and quantifier functions of determiners; 8. Comprehension experiments: anaphoric function of determiners; 9. Synthesis of the child’s acquisition of the plurifunctionality of determiners; 10. General implications for language acquisition and child development; Bibliography; Index.

‘ … a thought provoking book which raises several critical issues about the methodology and findings of research into linguistic and cognitive development … I am sure many will wish to study this book which should be essential reading for those researching into linguistic development.’ British Journal of Psychology