Lexical Bootstrapping: The Role of Lexis and Semantics in Child Language Development

✍ Scribed by Dagmar Bittner (editor); Nadja Ruhlig (editor)

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 276
• Series: Cognitive Linguistics Research [CLR]; 50
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The internal bootstrapps for establishing the grammatical system of a human language build an essential topic in language acquisition research. The discussion of the last 20 years came up with the Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis which assigns lexical development the role of the central bootstrapping process. The volume presents work from different theoretical perspectives evaluating the strength and weaknesses of this hypothesis.

✦ Table of Contents

Introduction: Emergence and applications of the Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis
Pre-language cognition, motion event semantics, and the transition from single words to first sentences
Bootstrapping and the acquisition of MandarinChinese: A natural semantic metalanguage Perspective
Lexical Bootstrapping Hypothesis and conventionality: a crosslinguistic study on verb acquisition by Chinese Mandarin- and Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children
Lexical acquisition through acquisition order
Lexicon-grammar continuity in Turkish children’s language growth
The interrelation between lexical and grammatical abilities in early language acquisition
Continuity of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and phonological development in German late talkers – A longitudinal study
Function words and the bootstrapping of grammar in normally developing and impaired L1 -acquisition of German
The role of the lexicon in the development of the language processor
Grammar from the lexicon: Evidence from neural network simulations of language acquisition
List of contributors
Index