How Language Comes to Children: From Birth to Two Years

by Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies

A comprehensive and entertaining account of how children acquire language. That children learn to speak so skillfully at a young age has long fascinated adults. Most children virtually master their native tongue even before learning to tie their shoelaces. The ability to acquire language has historically been regarded as a "gift"—a view given scientific foundation only in the present century by Noam Chomsky's theory of "universal grammar," which posits an innate knowledge of the principles that structure all languages. In this delightful, accessible book, psycholinguist Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies presents a broad picture of language development, from fetal development to the toddler years, and examines a wide range of puzzling How do newborns recognize elements of speech? How do they distinguish them from nonspeech sounds? How do they organize and analyze them? How do they ultimately come to understand and reproduce these sounds? Finally, how does the ability to communicate through language emerge in children? Boysson-Bardies also addresses questions of particular interest to parents, such as whether one should speak to children in a special way to facilitate language learning and whether there is cause to worry when a twenty-month-old child does not yet speak. Although the author provides a clear summary of the current state of language acquisition theory, the special appeal of the book lies in her research and "dialogue" with her many young subjects.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, Parenting

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Benedicte de Boysson-Bardies is a Director of Research in the Experimental Psychology Laboratory at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.

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Psycholinguiste, spécialiste de l'acquisition du langage chez les jeunes enfants. - Directrice de recherche au laboratoire de psychologie expérimentale du CNRS (en 1999)

Reviews

[Cassidy Brinn]

An inviting read, the relatively casual presentation helped me quickly digest the whole. I could hardly put it down. It works well as a partial introduction to the field of experimental linguistics, without proceeding too slowly.

Occasionally, though, the facts are obscured by the chatty tone. For example - non-nutritive sucking is a fascinating method and I admire the ingenuity of Siqueland and DeLucia for thinking it up. It unmistakably demonstrates powers of discrimination among infants. However, in discussing various cases, Boysson-Bardies allows herself to draw conclusions regarding preference as well. When she introduces the method, she explains that "monotony is the mother to boredom": the infants suck more when they recognize a change, such as from rat to cat, because new things excite them. However, babies also prefer to listen to their own name more than to others' - does this not contradict the monotony hypothesis?

One entertainment highlight is the bias against American research and American mothers, whom Boysson-Bardies portrays as simple-minded in their excessive competitiveness. She makes a good case. It is irrelevant how many nouns a kid can produce, whereas speaking freely to children cultivates the charms of conversation, and I imagine protects the parents' sanity. (You can only repeat the word DOG so many times, God help me).

The cross-cultural comparisons altogether were the most fascinating part of the book, though some of the studies struck me as too small to be reliable.

[Gregor Erbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent overview of child language acquisition

[Wafae]

NOTING AT THAT TIME