CHAPTER 15: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION FURTHER READING

Chapter 15:  Language Acquisition FURTHER READING Ambridge and Lieven’s Child Language Acquisition (2011) is an accessible and up-­to-date assessment of two major types of theory against relevant data. Clark’s First Language Acquisition (2003) is a wide-­ranging and readable book. Pinker’s (1994) The Language Instinct is a lively account of language acquisition from an innatist perspective. The linguist Noam Chomsky provided great impetus to first and second language acquisition studies. His (1986) Knowledge of Language is a reasonably accessible statement of his ideas. Bloom (2002) How Children Learn the Meanings of Words is a comprehensive treatment of its topic. Johnson’s contribution to a book called Methods for Studying Language Production (edited by Menn and Ratner 2000) is an interesting discussion of issues in the transcription of child language data. A selection of research articles is reprinted with guidance for newcomers in The Child Language Reader (Trott et al. 2004). The companion website includes a short discussion of Theories of First Language Acquisition which addresses Chomsky’s innatist theory and alternative positions. Lightbown and Spada’s (2012) award-­winning textbook How Languages are Learned is very accessible introduction to SLA. Ortega’s Understanding Second Language Acquisition provides more comprehensive coverage. VanPatten and Benati (2010) is a useful compilation of key terms and issues in SLA, and Mitchell and Myles (2004) provide an excellent review of main theoretical approaches. Related to both of the topic areas in this chapter is Achiba’s (2003) case study of child SLA. Bilingual first language acquisition is the focus of de Houwer’s (2009) textbook. Selections from Language in Use: A Reader deal with issues of direct relevance to first language acquisition (➔ R4.3, R4.5, R4.6) and SLA (➔ R3.2).