Table Of ContentLANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
FOURTH EDITION
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±± Erika Hoff
Florida Atlantic University
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LanguageDevelopment, FourthEdition ©2009,2005Wadsworth,CengageLearning
ErikaHoff
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To Brett
About the Author
Erika Hoff is Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University. She has also
taught courses on language development at the University of Wisconsin–Parkside
and, as guest instructor, at the University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. She
has held visiting scholar positions at Marquette University (Milwaukee), McGill
University, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Dr. Hoff holds an M.S. in psychology from Rutgers–The State University of New
Jersey (1976) and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan (1981).
She conducts research on the process of language development in typically
developing monolingual and bilingual children. She has received funding for
this research from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of
Health, and the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Hoff’s research has been published in
Child Development, Developmental Psychology, First Language, The International
Journal of Behavioral Development, The Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics,
TheJournalofChildLanguage, and the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. She is Associate
Editor of the Journal of Child Language and co-editor of the Blackwell Handbook
of Language Development (2007) and of Childhood Bilingualism: Research on
Infancy through School Age (2006).
iv
Brief Contents
chapter 1 Introduction to the Study of Language Development 3
chapter 2 Biological Bases of Language Development 39
chapter 3 Communicative Development: Foundations and Functions
of Language 89
chapter 4 Phonological Development: Learning the Sounds of Language 135
chapter 5 Lexical Development: Learning Words 183
chapter 6 The Development of Syntax and Morphology: Learning
the Structure of Language 221
chapter 7 Language, Culture, and Cognition in Development 271
chapter 8 Childhood Bilingualism 297
chapter 9 Language in the School Years 329
chapter 10 Language Development in Special Populations 373
v
Contents
chapter 1 Introduction to the Study of Language Development 3
Language and the Scientific Study of Language Development 4
A Definition of Language 4
A Chronological Overview of Language Development 6
Reasons for the Scientific Study of Language Development 8
Language Development as a Basic Research Topic 8
Language Development as an Applied Research Topic 8
The History of the Study of Language Development 9
Big Questions and Studies of Special Cases 10
The Language in the Brain 10
“Wild Children” and the Nature of Humankind 10
Baby Biographies 11
Normative Studies 12
The Chomskyan Revolution 12
The Current Study of Language Development 13
Current Topics 13
Current Approaches 14
Major Issues in the Field of Language Development 17
Is It Nature or Nurture? 18
The Nativist View 18
The Interactionist View 18
What Is the Nature of Nature? 19
A Language-Specific Module 20
Alternatives to Language-Specific Innateness 20
vi
contents vii
What Kind of Learning Mechanisms Does the Child Have? 21
Babies as Statistical Learners 21
Babies as Rule Learners 22
What Kind of Knowledge Does the Child Acquire? 23
Is There Continuity or Discontinuity in Development? 24
What Is the Relation between Communication and Language? 25
Formalist Views 25
Functionalist Views 25
Theories of Language Development 26
Methods of Research in Language Development 28
Cross-Cultural and Cross-Linguistic Research 28
Research Designs 28
Assessment of Productive Language from Speech Samples 29
Speech Sample Collection 29
Speech Sample Transcription 30
Transcript Coding and Analysis 30
CHILDES—A Data Archive 31
Standardized Tests and Measures of Language Development 32
Computational Modeling 32
Sources for Research on Language Development 33
Journals 33
Indexes 33
chapter 2 Biological Bases of Language Development 39
Language as a Human Universal 40
Language Creation 40
Pidgins 40
Creoles 41
The Development of Nicaraguan Sign Language 42
The Common Basis of Language Creation and Acquisition 43
The Human Vocal Tract and Language 43
The Human Brain and Language 45
Some Basic Neuroanatomy 45
Methods of Neurolinguistic Investigation 47
Language as a Left-Hemisphere Function 49
Evidence from Brain Injury and Aphasia 49
Evidence from Split-Brain Patients 50
Evidence from Studies of Undamaged Adults 50
Language as Not Exclusively a Left-Hemisphere Function 52
Right-Hemisphere Contributions to Language 52
Individual and Sex-Related Differences 53
Other Neurological Divisions of Labor 53
Brain Development and Language Development 55
The Development of the Left-Hemisphere Specialization for Language 56
The Hypotheses 56
viii CONTENTS
Evidence from Processing Studies with Children 56
Evidence from Childhood Aphasia 57
Evidence from Brain Injury Prior to Language 58
Basic Processes in Neurological Development 59
Neural Plasticity in Childhood 59
Where Does Plasticity Come From? 59
Changes in Functional Asymmetry 60
The Critical Period Hypothesis 61
“Wild” Children 61
The Case of Genie 62
Late Acquisition of American Sign Language 64
The Evidence from Second Language Acquisition 64
Age Effects on Second Language Acquisition 65
Continuity or Discontinuity in Age-of-Arrival Effects 66
Nonbiological Influences on Second Language Acquisition 67
The Genetic Basis of Language Development 69
The Genetic Basis of Language Universals 69
The Heritability of Individual Differences 70
The Genetics of Language Impairment 71
Language and Other Species 72
The Natural Communication Systems of Other Species 72
What Constitutes a Language? 72
Communication among Primates 72
The Birds and the Bees 73
The Acquisition of Human Language by Other Species 74
Efforts to Teach Chimpanzees to Speak 74
Signing Apes 75
Artificial Language Projects 79
Language in a Bonobo 79
Why Can’t Chimpanzees Acquire Language? 80
The Origin of the Human Capacity for Language 83
Language as an Evolved Capacity 83
Language as a Module and an Adaptation 84
Language as the Modification of Other Cognitive Capacities 84
Language as a By-Product of Evolution 85
chapter 3 Communicative Development: Foundations and Functions
of Language 89
Early Communicative Behavior 90
The Development of Intentionality 90
The Development of Joint Attention 92
The Use of Gesture 93
The Role of Communicative Experience in Language Development 95
Communication as the Motive for Language Development 95
contents ix
Communicative Interaction as a Contributor to the Process of Language
Development 96
The Role of Maternal Responsivity 97
The Role of Joint Attention 97
The Relation between Language Function and Language Form 99
Communicative Function as the Gateway to Language Form 99
Communicative Function as the Basis of Language Form 100
Communicative Function as Independent of Language Form 100
Children’s Development of the Communicative Functions
of Language 101
First Communicative Intentions Expressed in Language 101
Expansion of the Communicative Functions of Language 102
Children’s Development of Discourse Skill 104
Discourse Competence 104
The Nature of Young Children’s Discourse 106
Piaget’s Description of the Egocentric Child 106
Private Speech 107
Solitary Monologues 107
Vygotsky’s Theory of the Function of Private Speech 108
The Development of Conversational Skill 108
Conversations with Prelinguistic Infants 109
Responding to Speech 109
Differential Responding to Different Utterance Types 110
Initiating Topics 110
Repairing Miscommunication 111
Sustaining Dialogue and Contingent Responding 112
The Role of the Adult 114
Young Children’s Peer Conversations 115
The Development of Narrative Skill 117
The Conversational Origin of Narratives 117
Adults’ Scaffolding of Children’s Narratives 117
Developmental Changes in Children’s Narratives 118
Sociolinguistic Development 120
Learning to Produce Situationally Appropriate Language 120
The Egocentric Child 120
Children’s Use of Request Forms 120
Politeness 121
Children’s Child-Directed Speech 122
Children’s Understanding of Register 124
Early Gender-Typed Language Use 126
Explaining Communicative Development 127
Influences on Pragmatic Development 127
Influences on the Development of Discourse Skill 129
Influences on Sociolinguistic Development 130
