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

Tomasello's first-language acquisition model is brilliant, soundly reasoned, well-supported, and makes infinitely more sense than the obsolete Chomsky-Pinker innate language organ model._Constructing a Language_ can be challenging for a non-specialist. The book is a long academic paper, dense with reports of research study after research study. Tomasello painstakingly reports all the results, and there are a lot of them, to build the case for his theory. This book is an academic tome most suitable for those in the communication fields.Tomasello's _Origins of Human Communication (Jean Nicod Lectures)_ is a record of spoken lectures, is less pervaded with data, and covers similar ground from a slightly different angle in a more readable narrative form for a more general audience.

very interesting book, sometimes it can be quite a tough read but I learned a lot of new things

good

This is the best and most relevant book on linguistics I’ve read, because it’s based on real data rather than theoretical rationalisation.One of the crucial distinctions that has emerged since Chomsky is how we are different from chimpanzees. Tomasello is one of the few scientists who has closely studied both apes and children as they attempt to acquire language. This book charts in some detail children’s progress from eighteen months to four years in the acquisition of language and demonstrates the trial and error process by which they converge on their communities’ norms for language.He starts from the perspective that language depends on the subject understanding the intentions of her listener and using this to construct a common framework of discourse. This only develops in children between the ages of 1 and 2 (or later) and crucially doesn’t happens in other primates. Early exchanges are limited to simple requests and responses and these are progressively extended. Parents do not generally spend much time in correcting their children but may reiterate the “proper” way of saying something to counter than their child’s attempts. In this way the child is guided into the mainstream. Autistics do not share this “theory of mind”.But how then do “abstract syntactic constructions” emerge? In the same piecemeal fashion. The neat divisions between syntax and semantics that linguistics inherited from Saussure and were canonised by Chomsky don’t work, but we’ve known that for some time. Different languages do it in different ways and it will be interesting to see this approach followed up in an inflection-based language.This approach arises from cognitive functional linguistics but he calls it “usage-based linguistics” with commendable modesty. Tomasello has received numerous awards though he doesn’t yet appear to have the popular recognition that he deserves. But he has my vote.Linguistics still seems to be in thrall to Chomsky, and Pinker who is his modern apologist. But Tomasello points out that there isn’t one human language but 6,000 different ones, each with their own rules and peculiarities. Chomsky’s attempt to extend his analysis from English to a broad variety of languages ends up with something more complicated rather than simpler as his “universal grammar”.

Uno studio sulla nascita e sullo sviluppo del linguaggio umano. Sicuramente interessante per i linguisti.

Arrivato nei tempi previsti e in ottime condizioni. Libro estremamente utile e interessante per chi voglia studiare l'acquisizione del linguaggio. La prospettiva presentata qui è di tipo cognitivista usage-based.

応用言語学の資料として購入。日本版はクレーだったが、これはカンディンスキーみたい。でも違う作家だ。