{"id":2305,"date":"2012-09-17T10:00:33","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T08:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2012-09-05T12:32:36","modified_gmt":"2012-09-05T10:32:36","slug":"the-development-of-grammar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=2305","title":{"rendered":"The development of grammar"},"content":{"rendered":"
The development of grammar<\/strong>: Language acquisition and diachronic change. <\/strong>Ed. by Esther Rinke <\/strong>and Tanja Kupisch<\/strong>. <\/strong>Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. Pp. 414. ISBN 9789027219312\u00a0<\/a>$113 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Dennis Ryan<\/strong>, University Writing and Language Consultants <\/em><\/p>\n

This book <\/em>originates from workshop papers on language development delivered by former students and colleagues to honor Jurgen M. Meisel, Professor of French, Spanish, and Portuguese at the University of Hamburg. Meisel has spent his career focusing on language development, revealing important similarities and crucial differences in first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) acquisition, including that the processes are fundamentally different. Meisel has also demonstrated empirically that bilinguals from birth learn languages in basically the same way as monolinguals.<\/p>\n

In keeping with Meisel\u2019s research, articles in Part 1 examine similarities and differences in L1- and L2 acquisition. For example, Suzanne Schlyter<\/strong>, in \u2018Tense and aspect in early French development\u2019 (47\u201374), concludes that early-age learners of French between 3\u20135 and seven years \u2018having Swedish as a first or concomitant language\u2019 (47) show clear language-learning differences from bilinguals. They surprisingly use more tense forms than child bilinguals and refer to the distant past in pass\u00e9 compos\u00e9<\/em> (the past-perfect tense), which child bilinguals do not.<\/p>\n

In Part 2, \u2018The acquisition of sentence structure and functional categories\u2019, Tom Roeper<\/strong> argues for \u2018strict interfaces where semantics, pragmatics and syntax must coincide\u2019 (205), but he also asks how interfaces are to be represented. Roeper concludes that \u2018greater \u2026 innateness of grammar is entailed by this vision of interfaces \u2026 non-linguistic abilities [being] biologically bundled with the UG in a way that requires species-specific innateness\u2019 (226), thus conceptually enlarging our understanding of \u2018interface\u2019.<\/p>\n

Part 3, \u2018Autonomous development vs. crosslinguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition\u2019, is indebted to Meisel\u2019s pioneering work in child bilingualism. Cristina Maria Moreira Flores<\/strong> and Andr\u00e9ia Schurt Rauber<\/strong> in \u2018Perception of German vowels by bilingual Portuguese-German returnees\u2019 (287\u2013305) use a categorical discrimination test, the results of which show that bilingual Portuguese children, aged 5\u201310 years, who have returned to Portugal from Germany and never used German again, still have the ability to clearly discriminate German vowel contrasts.<\/p>\n

Part 4, \u2018Language acquisition, language contact and diachronic change\u2019, is the subject of one of Meisel\u2019s research projects. Language change does not happen often, and Meisel believes multilingualism and language contact represent \u2018likely scenario[s] for \u2026 change\u2019 (9\u201310). In this context, in \u2018Acquisition in the context of language change, the case of Brazilian Portuguese null subjects\u2019 (309\u201330), Mary Aizawa Kato<\/strong> discusses the \u2018selective loss of null subjects\u2019 (309), when Brazilian children do not acquire null forms when learning the language, but only later during schooling.<\/p>\n

Meisel has impacted the personal and professional lives of a large number of colleagues and students, and <\/em>they in turn have produced significant work, as evidenced in this book. Of concern, however, at least to this reviewer, is the ongoing reliance of generativists on Minimalist glosses (e.g. \u2018fix the value of a parameter not instantiated in the L1\u2019), that even as a shorthand that expedites discussion and ongoing research simultaneously suggests a club atmosphere that limits its membership by excluding scholars who do not speak the language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The development of grammar: Language acquisition and diachronic change. Ed. by Esther Rinke and Tanja Kupisch. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011. Pp. 414. ISBN 9789027219312\u00a0$113 (Hb). Reviewed by Dennis Ryan, University Writing and Language Consultants This book originates from workshop papers on language development delivered by former students and colleagues to honor Jurgen M. Meisel, Professor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2306,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions\/2306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}