For undergraduate courses in Language Development for preservice/early childhood majors or child development majors. This text efficiently combines theory, research, and practice to provide a solid foundation for understanding language development from birth to age eight. Language Development in Early Childhood focuses on supplying readers with a basic understanding of the phonetics, semantic, syntactic, morphemic, and pragmatic aspects of language knowledge acquired by young children. In addition, the ways in which this acquisition process can be enhanced in early childhood settings are included. In this revision, new material is included on the role of the brain in language development, along with key illustrations. Also new to the second edition are vignettes of young children's language development which open each chapter.