Efnisyfirlit

• Half-title
• Series-title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Small talk
• Sounds, words, and sentences
• Methods 101
• What’s next
• 2 The great word hunt
• 1. Where are the words?
• Two learning styles
• 2. How children find words
• Spotlights
• Making matches
• 3. Learning inflection
• The plural ending-s
• The past tense ending -ed
• Irregular verbs
• Irregular nouns
• How many times do you have to hear me say that?
• 4. Creating words
• Three ways to create words
• 1. Conversion
• 2. Derivation
• 3. Compounding
• I want to scissor it – learning conversion
• It’s crowdy in here – learning derivation
• Let’s go by sky-car – learning compounds
• Compounds and stress
• Compounds and plurals
• Summing up
• 3 What’s the meaning of this?
• 1. First meanings
• Why nouns?
• Noun-lovers and noun-leavers
• 2. Not enough and too much
• If it looks like a duck . . .
• Did you do that on purpose?
• 3. Fast mapping
• 4. Tools of the trade – how children learn nouns
• Using your head (cognitive constraints)
• Help from family and friends (social constraints)
• Lessons from language (linguistic constraints)
• Being exclusive (an organizational constraint)
• 5. Learning verbs
• Bootstrapping
• Some tough verbs
• 6. Learning adjectives
• Sizes
• Colors
• Numbers
• 7. Learning prepositions
• Errors of omission and commission
• 8. Learning pronouns: I and you
• Summing up
• 4 Words all in a row
• 1. Getting started
• Grammar in the cradle?
• Real words and real sentences
• Tracking the growth of sentences
• 2. Pivotal words
• 3. Getting things lined up
• Big rules and little rules
• 4. Missing big pieces
• Caught in the bottleneck
• 5. Missing small pieces
• One by one
• 6. Learning to say “not”
• Is it no or is it not?
• No light verbs
• A negative beginning
• 7. I, me, and my
• 8. Who? What? Where?
• What are you asking about?
• 9. Yes–no questions
• Long moves
• 10. Other constructions
• The arrival of relatives
• Summing up
• 5 What sentences mean
• 1. What a word can do
• How much can children understand in the one-word stage?
• 2. Two is better than one
• How much can children understand in the two-word stage?
• 3. Passive sentences
• Children’s early passives sentences
• Why passives are still hard to understand
• 4. Understanding things that aren’t there
• Keeping it short
• Making promises
• It’s easy to see
• 5. Understanding pronouns
• Reflexive responses
• 6. Pronouns and stories
• Strange stories
• 7. Can you quantify that?
• Summing up
• 6 Talking the talk
• 1. An ear for language
• Consonants in the cradle
• 2. Can you hear that?
• I said “fis,” not “fis”
• How do you spell that?
• 3. Babbling
• Babbling across languages
• 4. Early vowels and consonants
• Early vowels and consonants
• 5. Making adjustments
• Deletion
• Substitution
• Assimilation
• 6. Stress is good
• Summing up
• 7 How do they do it?
• 1. Why it’s not imitation
• 2. Why it’s not teaching
• Setting a good example
• How serious are parents about recasting?
• Do recasts help?
• A question of timing
• 3. So, what DO children need?
• Does motherese help?
• What really matters
• 4. It’s all in the head
• When things go wrong
• 5. The search for the acquisition device
• View #1: The acquisition device is just for language
• Clues to categories
• Blueprints for sentences
• View # 2: The acquisition device is not just for language
• Statistical learning
• So which view is correct?
• 6. Learning to learn
• Conservative estimates
• Getting out of trouble
• Doing goodly
• Recasts again
• 7. A final word
• Appendix 1 Keeping a diary and making tape recordings
• How to calculate MLU
• Appendix 2 The sounds of English
• Consonant sounds
• Vowel sounds
• Notes
• 1. Small talk
• 2. The great word hunt
• 3. What’s the meaning of this?
• 4. Words all in a row
• 5. What sentences mean
• 6. Talking the talk
• 7. How do they do it?
• Appendix 1
• References
• Index