Emergence of Language

• Contents: Preface. J.L. Elman, The Emergence of Language: A Conspiracy Theory. E. Bates, J.C. Goodman, On the Emergence of Grammar From the Lexicon. T. Givón, Generativity and Variation: The Notion 'Rule of Grammar' Revisited. J. Allen, M.S. Seidenberg, The Emergence of Grammaticality in Connectionist Networks. R. Miikkulainen, M.R. Mayberry, III, Disambiguation and Grammar as Emergent Soft Constraints. M.C. MacDonald, Distributional Information in Language Comprehension, Production, and Acquisition: Three Puzzles and a Moral. A.E. Goldberg, The Emergence of the Semantics of Argument Structure Constructions. B. MacWhinney, The Emergence of Language From Embodiment. C.E. Snow, Social Perspectives on the Emergence of Language. L.B. Smith, Children's Noun Learning: How General Learning Processes Make Specialized Learning Mechanisms. R.M. Golinkoff, K. Hirsh-Pasek, G. Hollich, Emergent Cues for Early Word Learning. W.E. Merriman, Competition, Attention, and Young Children's Lexical Processing. R.N. Aslin, J.R. Saffran, E.L. Newport, Statistical Learning in Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Domains. D.C. Plaut, C.T. Kello, The Emergence of Phonology From the Interplay of Speech Comprehension and Production: A Distributed Connectionist Approach. J.P. Stemberger, B.H. Bernhardt, The Emergence of Faithfulness. P. Gupta, G.S. Dell, The Emergence of Language From Serial Order and Procedural Memory.

"The diverse fields of expertise represented here by notable theorists make it impossible for me to cover all of their contributions adequately. Suffice it to say that connectionist theories are well represented and appear to have moved well beyond the past tense phase that has played such a major role in most accounts of their attack on generative grammar."—Contemporary Psychology"Second language researchers who work within an emergentist framework will find this volume on emergentist first language acquisition research of interest. Second language researchers who work within other frameworks, including a generative one, and are interested in seeing a different view of acquisition may also find such a volume useful to consult."—Studies in Second Language Acquasition"The book is a highly readable resource, which is of use to researchers and students from all of these backgrounds, and anyone interested in language and development."—International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders