Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition

by Michael Tomasello

In this groundbreaking book, Michael Tomasello presents a comprehensive usage-based theory of language acquisition. Drawing together a vast body of empirical research in cognitive science, linguistics, and developmental psychology, Tomasello demonstrates that we don’t need a self-contained “language instinct” to explain how children learn language. Their linguistic ability is interwoven with other cognitive abilities.

Tomasello argues that the essence of language is its symbolic dimension, which rests on the uniquely human ability to comprehend intention. Grammar emerges as the speakers of a language create linguistic constructions out of recurring sequences of symbols; children pick up these patterns in the buzz of words they hear around them.

All theories of language acquisition assume these fundamental skills of intention-reading and pattern-finding. Some formal linguistic theories posit a second set of acquisition processes to connect somehow with an innate universal grammar. But these extra processes, Tomasello argues, are completely unnecessary―important to save a theory but not to explain the phenomenon.

For all its empirical weaknesses, Chomskian generative grammar has ruled the linguistic world for forty years. Constructing a Language offers a compellingly argued, psychologically sound new vision for the study of language acquisition.

Genres: Linguistics, Language, Nonfiction, Science, Psychology

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Michael Tomasello is an American developmental and comparative psychologist. He is a co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Reviews

[Nina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Paul Lai · Rating 5 out of 5]

A persuasive account of how children learn language that is an alternative to the predominant Chomskian innatist approach that considers language learning a pure wonder of a genetic inheritance. Research-filled, well organized and articulated.

[Ross Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know quite what to say about Tomasello’s masterpiece, since it will be obvious to anyone who reads it how carefully and powerfully argued it is. Still, it may be worth noting that Constructing a Language is an easy and engrossing read (unlike the majority of academic titles in theoretical linguistics), and its status as a compelling alternative to Chomskyan nativist accounts of language acquisition makes it well worth reading at a time when nativism is not only still too popular but even making a comeback in public fora.

[Miray]

language learning as a social and embodied process