THE CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. VOL. 5:EXPANDING THE CONTEXTS.Dan Isaac Slobin (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum, 1997. Pp. xiii + 339. $89.95 cloth.

Abstract

This is the fifth volume in a renowned series edited by Dan Slobin, focusing on cross-linguistic studies of children acquiring their first language. The series is seminal for its focus on languages other than English and for addressing the astonishing diversity and complexity of the language acquisition task. Slobin notes that, in contrast to Chomskyan models that consider core grammar to be the main topic of interest, the series was conceived with the notion of showing “how much fruit there is beyond the core” (p. 14). The goal of Volume 5 is to explore themes that were relatively backgrounded in the others. Specifically, these themes include: typological analysis, semantic systems, phonology and prosody, individual differences, and diachronic processes.