Language Acquisition

Part 1 The onset of language development: human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals - an evolutionary perspective, A. Fernald; modularity and constraints in early lexical acquisition - evidence from children's early language and gesture, L.A. Pettito. Part 2 Word learning: infant contributions to the achievement of joint reference, D.A. Baldwin; constraints children place on word meanings, E. Markham; structural sources of verb meaning, L.R. Gleitman; early word meanings - the case of object names, J. Huttenlocher and P. Smiley. Part 3 Syntax and semantics: the notion of source in language acqusition, E. Clark and K. Carpenter; affectedness of direct objects - the role of lexical semantics in the acqusition of verb argument structure, J. Gropen, et al; learning a semantic system - what role do cognitive predispositions play?, M. Bowerman; language acquisition in the absence of experience, S. Crain. Part 4 Morphology: on learning the past tenses of English verbs, D.E. Rumelhart and J.L. McClelland; rules of language, S. Pinker; level-ordering in lexical development, P. Gordon. Part 5 Alternative perspectives: maturational constraints on language learning, E.L. Newport; beyond the input given - the child's role in the acquisition of language, S. Goldin-Meadow and C. Mylander; the instinct to learn, P. Marler; beyond modularity - innate constraints and developmental change, A. Karmiloff-Smith.