Chapter 11: Child Language Acquisition
This chapter looks at how children develop the various components of mental grammar: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. As we’ll see, children’s minds are equipped to acquire grammar very quickly as long as they have other language users to observe.
When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll be able to:
- Identify children’s typical language development milestones.
- Interpret data from various experimental methods to draw conclusions about children’s mental grammar.
- Explain how development in signed language parallels that of spoken language in an accessible language environment.
- Discuss some of the benefits of acquiring more than one language.
