TY - JOUR
AU - Brown, Roger
AB - Discusses psycholinguistic research on the acquisition of sentence construction rules by children. Field work in 1st language development using tape recordings of preschool children speaking more than 30 different languages is noted. The systematic errors made by children tend to reflect either inconsistencies in morphology and syntax within the language or the complexity of the rules. The early methods used by transformational linguistic studies are criticized and the inadequacies of the various descriptive characterizations (e.g., telegraphic speech and pivot grammar) are discussed. Semantic development at the various stages is analyzed in detail. Similarities and differences between the learning of a 2nd language by an adult and 1st language acquisition in the child are considered. The implications of the proposal that automatic internal programs of structure extraction determine language development is noted. (26 ref.)
TI - Development of the first language in the human species
JF - American Psychologist
DO - 10.1037/h0034209
DA - 1973-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/american-psychological-association/development-of-the-first-language-in-the-human-species-W0Em4uAnhn
SP - 97
EP - 106
VL - 28
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -