Child Language Acquisition: Contrasting Theoretical Approaches

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts are closely and even-handedly evaluated against the empirical data. The result is an evidence-based review of the central issues in language acquisition research that will constitute a valuable resource for students, teachers, course-builders and researchers alike.

Ben Ambridge is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Liverpool. He has published numerous articles on child language acquisition with a particular focus on the acquisition of syntax and morphology and the retreat from overgeneralization error.

Elena Lieven is a Professor and Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig and the Director of the Max Planck Child Study Centre, University of Manchester. She is best known for her work on naturalistic corpus data, and is a former editor of the Journal of Child Language.