411pp., xiv. First published in 1989; First paperback printing in 1991; this copy, stated: "Fourth Printing, 1996". Glossy green wrappers with titlelettering in white across top front cover, above author name lettering in smaller white letters, above black and white illustration from Alice in Wonderland across bottom front cover. Unread. (No previous owner names; no remainder mark). Gift-giving quality.

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Bibliographic Details

Title: Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure (Series: Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change)
Publisher: A Bradford Book / MIT Press, Cambridge MA / London
Publication Date: 1991
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0262660733
ISBN 13: 9780262660730
Binding: Soft cover
Edition: 1st Edition
Printing: 4th Printing
Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

When children learn a language, they soon are able to make surprisingly subtle distinctions: "donate them a book" sounds odd, for example, even though "give them a book" is perfectly natural. How can this happen, given that children do not confine themselves to the sentence types they hear, and are usually not corrected when they speak ungrammatically? Steven Pinker resolves this paradox in a detailed theory of how children acquire argument structure.

In tackling a learning paradox that has challenged scholars for more than a decade, Pinker synthesizes a vast literature in linguistics and psycholinguistics and outlines explicit theories of the mental representation, learning, and development of verb meaning and verb syntax. The new theory that he describes has some surprising implications for the relation between language and thought.Pinker's solution provides insight into such key questions as, When do children generalize and when do they stick with what they hear? What is the rationale behind linguistic constraints? How is the syntax of predicates and arguments related to their semantics? What is a possible word meaning? Do languages force their speakers to construe the world in certain ways? Why does children's language seem different from that of adults?

Learnability and Cognition is included in the series Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change, edited by Lila Gleitman, Susan Carey, Elissa Newport, and Elizabeth Spelke.

A Bradford Book

About the Author

Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and The Better Angels of Our Nature have won numerous prizes.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

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Retired academic's reference library with specialization in philosophy, religion, science, and mathematics--all scholarly subject areas; Pre-Socratics to contemporary; biographies; some series collections. General stock also, including fiction, poetry, literary criticism, mysteries, some foreign language, children's, history, sociology, psychology, education. Some signed copies.

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