Children's Single-word Speech

This edited volume presents a detailed and comprehensive examination of our current state of knowledge about the single- word period of language acquisition in children (which begins towards the end of the first year of life, and ends sometime in the latter half of the second year of life). The issues which are covered include: the semantics and the pragmatics of children's single-word speech, the relationship between cognitive development and the development of single-word speech, the relationship between prelinguistic communication and single-word speech, the relationship between single-word speech and children's later multi-word speech, and the significance of the study of single-word speech for our understanding of language acquisition in general. This volume provides an invaluable guide to what is currently known about these various topics; it also highlights those issues which are still under debate, and describes the most promising theoretical perspectives which are currently being explored.