Pathways to Language

A timely, clear, and valuable book, which offers a masterful overview of the many passionately held positions on the origins and development of language. -- Dan Slobin, University of California, Berkeley Karmiloff-Smith is widely recognized as one of the most important theorists now working in early cognitive development, for her emphasis on the way that many factors move development forward. With its graceful, lucid style, Pathways To Language takes the reader on a journey, vividly conveying the excitement of all the new discoveries of recent years that have so deeply changed our understanding of what it means to "learn language." -- Roberta Golinkoff, University of Delaware

A remarkable mother-daughter collaboration balances the respected views of a well-known scholar with the fresh perspective of a younger colleague in a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of language acquisition.

Our journey to language begins before birth, as babies in the womb hear clearly enough to distinguish their mother's voice. Canvassing a broad span of experimental and theoretical approaches, this book introduces new ways of looking at language development.

A remarkable mother-daughter collaboration, Pathways to Language balances the respected views of a well-known scholar with the fresh perspective of a younger colleague prepared to challenge current popular positions in these debates. The result is an unusually subtle, even-handed, and comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of language acquisition, from fetal speech processing to the development of child grammar to the sophisticated linguistic accomplishments of adolescence, such as engaging in conversation and telling a story.

With examples from the real world as well as from the psychology laboratory, Kyra Karmiloff and Annette Karmiloff-Smith look in detail at the way language users appropriate words and grammar. They present in-depth evaluations of different theories of language acquisition. They show how adolescent usage has changed the meaning of certain phrases, and how modern living has led to alterations in the lexicon. They also consider the phenomenon of atypical language development, as well as theoretical issues of nativism and empiricism and the specificity of human language. Their nuanced and open-minded approach allows readers to survey the complexity and breadth of the fascinating pathways to language acquisition.