History of theories in language acquisition

Mon Dec 16 22:19:37 UTC 2013

There is a book, published in 1977 by Adele Abrahamsen and published by
University Park Press, *Child Language,* that contains a large list of of
studies of child language from different perspectives. I´m not sure if it
goes back to Leopold and Stern, but it an incredible resource.
I always use the chapter by Bohannon in the Berko text book, The
Development of Language.
Donna Jackson-Maldonado

2013/12/16 Brian MacWhinney <macw at cmu.edu>

> Dear Ben, Roberta, Isabelle, and others,
>
>      Some of the reviews of the history of child language research seem to
> ignore big chunks of relevant structuralist work.  During the period from
> about 1870 to 1950, talented linguists and psychologists such as the
> Sterns, Ament, Szuman, Preyer, Gvozdev, Leopold, Kenyeres, Ponori, and
> others created highly detailed baby biographies.  These biographies were
> stimulated by two major theoretical trends.  The first was Darwinian
> thinking about core issues in ontogeny, phylogeny, gesture, and
> communication, which later merged with Piagetian analyses.  The second was
> the growth of structural linguistic analysis from the Junggrammatiker
> movement on to Saussure and structuralism.  There was great attention to
> detection of similarities between child language, language change, and
> second language learning. Under the influence of Gestalt psychology as well
> as historical linguistics, there was a great emphasis on analogical
> processes and constructions.
>     It is true that the advent of generative grammar led to the
> introduction of new ideas and theories that shifted the focus away from
> analogy and constructions to rules and symbols.  But it would be a mistake
> to dismiss the insights from this earlier period.  Brown (1973) pays a lot
> of attention to Chomsky's formulations, but the actual work he conducted
> could have easily been framed within a structuralist framework.  The
> Bar-Adon and Leopold reader from 1971 presents snippets from this earlier
> work, but really one has to read the complete biographies and work through
> the linguistic detail of studies such as Leopold or Ponori to understand
> how much the structuralist position had already illuminated the process of
> language learning.
>     Beginning the history of child language with Chomsky also ignores
> serious descriptive attempts within the behaviorist framework to describe
> phoneme inventories (Winitz), vocabulary (McCarthy), evolution (Mowrer),
> and situated learning (Skinner).  Although few of these behaviorist
> descriptions have survived later examination, I would say that the bulk of
> the structuralist descriptions remain largely intact.
>     It would be nice to have a good review of this "missing century".
>
> -- Brian MacWhinney
>
>
> On Dec 14, 2013, at 11:37 PM, Isa Barriere <barriere.isa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Ben,
>
> 1. My very very dear friend Jeffrey Wollock reviews many theories both on
> typical and atypical development from Aristotle to the 17th century in "The
> Noblest Animate motion' published by Johns Benjamins and he has since
> written a couple of articles that are probably in press on the 18th
> century.  The book is based on his PhD that he did at Oxford and one of his
> examiners was John Marshall.
> There is another book by a female author Nancy???? on the 16th century but
> it is not as thorough as Jeffrey's.I have it on my shelf in my office:
> please let me know if you need the full reference.
>
>
> 2.  In *Barriere, I* & Lorch, M. P. (2004) Premature thoughts on writing
> disorders. *Neurocase*. Vol. 10 (2): 91-108, we discussed a little bit
> the relation between ontogeny, phylogeny, order of acquisition and
> dissociation in acquired disorders.
>
> 3.  Paula Hallal and Marjorie Lorch have authored a number of papers based
> on 19th century archives in London, including the 1st case of 'childhood
> aphasia', based on Paula's PhD dissertation devoted to that history: check
> the webpage of Marjorie Lorch/ Birkbeck College.
>
> 4.  You may also find a few references to language development in the
> thick book on 'the history of child neurologists': again please let me know
> if you need the exact reference.  Sorry can't remember the authors on top
> of my head.
>
> 5.  There has been a few detailed papers on Knox who was one of the first
> child neurologist in the US and who spent much time designing test
> including cross-cultural and cross-linguistic tests for children and grown
> ups in Staten Island (with Seguin who was a student of Bourneville who was
> a student of Charcot).  Again the author (john something) escapes me but he
> is a membebr of the International Society of the History of Neurosciences.
>
> I hope this helps,
>
> Yours,
>
> Isabelle
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 9:32 AM, Ewa Haman <meh at psych.uw.edu.pl> wrote:
>
>> Dear Ben,
>> maybe this will be of some interest for you, although I guess the books
>> are not going to be accessible since both are in Polish:
>> Bokus, B., & Shugar, G. W. (2004). *Psychologia języka dziecka.
>> Osignięcia, nowe perspektywy*. [Psychology of child language.
>> Achievements and new perspectives] Gdańsk: Gdańskie
>>  Shugar, G. W., & Smoczyńska, M. (1980). *Badania nad rozwojem języka
>> dziecka*. [Research on child language development]. Warszawa: PWN
>>
>> Both books are collections of seminal papers (translated into Polish),
>> but they also comprise extensive chapters on history of research on child
>> language by the editors.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Ewa Haman
>>
>>
>> W dniu czwartek, 12 grudnia 2013 15:43:01 UTC+1 użytkownik Ambridge, Ben
>> napisał:
>>
>>>  Dear all
>>>
>>>  Could anyone point me in the direction of any articles/books/chapters
>>> that give a historical overview of theories in child language acquisition -
>>> i.e., ones that focus on the rise and/or fall of particular *theories*(rather than - say - landmark studies). I'm primarily interested in typical
>>> first language acquisition, but it would be great to also have a couple of
>>> historical reviews of theories in atypical development, L2 acquisition and
>>> bilingualism. I'll send round a summary of suggestions.
>>>
>>>  Thanks
>>> Ben
>>>
>>
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-- 
Donna Jackson-Maldonado
Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios
Facultad de Lenguas y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro
Campus Aeropuerto, Circuito Fray Junípero Serra Km 8
Santiago de Querétaro, Qro., México 76140
web: http://www.donnajackson.weebly.com
e-mail: djacksonq <djackson at uaq.mx>ro at gmail.com
tel: 52 442 192 1200 ex. 61200 o 61140
home: 52 442 2180264

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