Children's Discourse Person, Space and Time across Languages [Paperback]

Addresses questions in the study of first language acquisition in three domains of child language.Maya Hickmann presents an original comparative study of discourse development in English, French, German, and Chinese. She discusses the main theoretical issues in the study of first language acquisition and provides a wide review of available studies in three domains of child language: person, space, and time. Her findings concern the rhythm of language acquisition, its formal and functional determinants, and its universal vs. language-specific aspects. The conclusions stress the imp ortance of relating sentence and discourse determinants of acquisition in a crosslinguistic perspective.Maya Hickmann presents an original comparative study of discourse development in English, French, German, and Chinese. She discusses the main theoretical issues in the study of first language acquisition and provides a wide review of available studies in three domains of child language: person, space, and time. Her findings concern the rhythm of language acquisition, its formal and functional determinants, and its universal vs. language-specific aspects. The conclusions stress the imp ortance of relating sentence and discourse determinants of acquisition in a crosslinguistic perspective.Psycholinguist Maya Hickmann presents an original comparative study of discourse development in English, French, German, and Chinese. Hickmann discusses the main theoretical issues in the study of first language acquisition and provides a wide review of available studies in three domains of child language: person, space and time. Her findings concern the rhythm of language acquisition, its formal and functional determinants, and its universal vs. language-specific aspects. The conclusions stress the importance of relating sentence and discourse determinants of acquisition in a crosslinguistic perspective.1. Introduction; Part I. Available Theories and Data: 2. Theoretical issues; 3. Crosslinguistic invariló