First Verbs A Case Study of Early Grammatical Development [Hardcover]

First Verbs is a useful book for developmental psychologists, linguists, language development researchers and speech pathologists.During the second year of his daughter's life, Michael Tomasello kept a detailed diary of her language, creating a rich database. He made a careful study of how she acquired her first verbs and analysed the role that verbs played in her early grammatical development.During the second year of his daughter's life, Michael Tomasello kept a detailed diary of her language, creating a rich database. He made a careful study of how she acquired her first verbs and analysed the role that verbs played in her early grammatical development.First Verbs is a detailed diary study of one child's earliest language development during her second year of life. Using a Cognitive Linguistics framework, the author focuses on how his daughter acquired her first verbs, and the role verbs played in her early grammatical development. The author argues that many of a child's first grammatical structures are tied to individual verbs, and that earliest language is based on general cognitive and social-cognitive processes, especially event structures and cultural learning.Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; 2. In the beginning was the verb; 3. Methods and an introduction to T's language; 4. Change of state verbs and sentences; 5. Activity verbs and sentences; 6. Other grammatical structures; 7. The development of T's verb lexicon; 8. The development of T's grammar; 9. Language acquisition as cultural learning; References; Appendix; Index. ...many readers will undoubtedly find the volume illuminating... Lynn Eubank, Studies in Second Language Acquisitions ...a useful book for those interested in understanding the sometimes controversial claims that Tomasello proposes....[A]n excellent reference material even for those researchers who are unsympathetic to the cognitive linguistic approach. Jacqueline S. Johnson, Contemporary Psychology ...a valuable contributilÓ,