Prelude: landmarks in the landscape of child language -- Can animals acquire human language? Shakespeare's typewriter -- The critical period hypothesis: now or never? -- Input and interaction: tutorials for toddlers -- Language in the first year: breaking the sound barrier -- The developing lexicon: What's in a name? -- The acquisition of morphology: linguistic Lego -- Linguistic nativism: to the grammar born -- The usage-based approach: making it up as you go along -- You say nature, I say nurture: better call the calling off off

Presented with the latest thinking and research on how children acquire their first language, this new Second Edition helps readers develop the skills to engage with key debates and current research in the field of child language. This practical text assumes the reader has no background knowledge of linguistic theory and all specialist terms are introduced in clear, non-technical language. A theme running through the book is the nature-nurture debate, rekindled in the modern era by Noam Chomsky, with his belief that the child is born with a rich knowledge of language. Child Language is rare in its balanced presentation of evidence from both sides of the nature-nurture divide. The reader is then encouraged to adopt a critical stance throughout and weigh up the evidence for themselves.