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Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Dedication; Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; Accompanying Website of Video Clips; Introduction; Part I: The Problem of Language-Learning; 1. Out of the Mouths of Babes; Discovering the Units of Sound; Starting With the Word; Learning That Words Are Made of Parts; Combining Words Into Sentences; Elaborating Sentences; In Sum; 2. How Do Children Learn Language?; Theoretical Accounts of Language-Learning; Behaviorist Accounts; Nativist Accounts; Social/Cognitive Accounts; Connectionist Accounts |
Studying Language-Learning by Manipulating EnvironmentsThe Resilient and Fragile Properties of Language; 3. Language-Learning Across the Globe; Children Learn the Particulars of Their Language; When Children Change the Input They Receive; Privileged Meanings; Privileged Forms; Taking Cross-Linguistic Universals to Another Level; 4. Language-Learning by Hand; First Signs; The Parts of Signs; Morphology of Stems; Inflectional Morphology; Combining Signs Into Sentences; Relating Signs to the World or to Other Signs; 5. Does More or Less Input Matter? |
Children Receive Special Input in All CulturesThe Natural Variation in Language Input That Children Receive Within a Culture; Enriching the Input to Children; Degrading the Input to Children; Where Are We?; Part II: Language Development without a Language Model; 6. Background on Deafness and Language-Learning; Learning Spoken Language; Learning Sign Language; The Deaf Children We Studied; Hearing Abilities and Oral Language Skills; Manual Language Skills; Our Procedures; 7. How Do We Begin?; Identifying a Gesture; Segmenting Strings of Gestures; Assigning Meaning to Gestures; 8. Words |
Pointing GesturesThe Objects Points Refer To; The Roles Points Assume in Gesture Sentences; The Capacity Points Have to Refer to the Non-Present; Iconic Gestures; Modulating Gestures; Summary: Gestures That Function as Words in a Linguistic System; 9. The Parts of Words; A Limited Number of Forms; Each Form Has a Consistent Meaning; Form-Meaning Pairings Combine Freely With Each Other; The Parts Grow Out of Wholes; Summary: A Simple Morphology; 10. Combining Words Into Simple Sentences; The Meanings Simple Sentences Convey; Underlying Predicate Frames Organize the Sentence |
Marking Semantic Roles in the SentenceMarking Roles by Producing Them at a Particular Rate in a Sentence: Syntax; Marking Roles by Placing Them in a Particular Position in a Sentence: Syntax; Marking Roles by Inflecting the Verb in a Sentence: Inflectional Morphology; Summary: A Simple Syntax; 11. Making Complex Sentences out of Simple Ones: Recursion; The Meanings Complex Sentences Convey; Combining Underlying Predicate Frames; Marking Redundant or Shared Elements in the Surface of a Sentence; Summary of Recursion; 12. Building a System; An Utterance Grows in Size and Scope |
The Utterance Grows Not Only in Size but Also in Organization: Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives |