Knowledge and Learning in Natural Language (Oxford Linguistics) - Hardcover

Yang, Charles D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199254141 ISBN 13: 9780199254149

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2003

Synopsis

This work presents a new theory of how children acquire language and discusses its implications for a wide range of topics. It explores the roles of innateness and experience in language acquisition, provides further evidence for the theory of Universal Grammar, and shows how linguistic development in children is a driving force behind language shifts and changes Charles Yang surveys a wide range of errors in children's language and identifies overlooked patterns. He combines these with work in biological evolution in order to develop a model of language acquisition by which to understand the interaction between children's internal linguistic knowledge and their external linguistic experience. He then presents evidence from his own and others' research in the acquisition of syntax and morphology and data from historical language change to test its validity The model is makes quantitative and cross-linguistic predictions about child language. It may also be deployed as a predictive model of language change which, when the evidence is available, could explain why grammars change in a particular direction at a particular time.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Yang has been teaching computational linguistics and language acquisition at Yale since receiving his Ph.D. in computer science at MIT.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199254141
• ISBN 13: 9780199254149
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 188