In this groundbreaking book, Michael Tomasello presents a
comprehensive usage-based theory of language acquisition. Drawing
together a vast body of empirical research in cognitive science,
linguistics, and developmental psychology, Tomasello demonstrates
that we don't need a self-contained "language instinct" to explain
how children learn language. Their linguistic ability is interwoven
with other cognitive abilities.
Tomasello argues that the essence of language is its symbolic
dimension, which rests on the uniquely human ability to comprehend
intention. Grammar emerges as the speakers of a language create
linguistic constructions out of recurring sequences of symbols;
children pick up these patterns in the buzz of words they hear
around them.
All theories of language acquisition assume these fundamental
skills of intention-reading and pattern-finding. Some formal
linguistic theories posit a second set of acquisition processes to
connect somehow with an innate universal grammar. But these extra
processes, Tomasello argues, are completely unnecessary--important
to save a theory but not to explain the phenomenon.
For all its empirical weaknesses, Chomskian generative grammar
has ruled the linguistic world for forty years. "Constructing a
Language" offers a compellingly argued, psychologically sound new
vision for the study of language acquisition.
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