Child Language and Developmental Dysphasia

1. Preface; 2. Introduction; 3. Part I: First Language Acquisition; 4. 1. Theoretical approaches in language acquisition research; 5. 1.1 The functionalist approach; 6. 1.2 The theory of Operating Principles; 7. 1.3 Learnability theory; 8. 2. Early child grammars; 9. 2.1 Some features of Stage I in German child language; 10. 2.2 A phrase structure grammar for phase II; 11. 2.3 Learnability considerations on syntactic categorisation; 12. 2.4 Parameter theory and the acquisition of word order; 13. 3. The grammar of a three year-old; 14. 3.1 Some features of phase IV in German child language; 15. 3.2 Syntactic structures in phase IV; 16. 3.3 Learning mechanisms for inflectional elements; 17. Part II: Developmental Dysphasia; 18. 4. Grammar acquisition and dysphasia (with particular reference to the research situation in West Germany); 19. 4.1 Linguistic features; 20. 4.2 Psycholinguistic aspects; 21. 4.3 Aims and basic hypotheses; 22. 4.4 On the design of the empirical investigation; 23. 5. Grammatical units; 24. 5.1 Nominal elements and the structure of the noun phrase; 25. 5.2 Adverbial elements and prepositional phrases; 26. 5.3 Verbal elements; 27. 5.4 Conjunctions; 28. 6. Selected areas of the inflectional system; 29. 6.1 Case markings; 30. 6.2 Verb inflection; 31. 7. Word order; 32. 7.1 Verb placement; 33. 7.2 Argument order; 34. 7.3 The position of the negator; 35. 8. Learnability theory and the acquisition of grammar; 36. 8.1 Child language development; 37. 8.2 Developmental dysphasia; 38. 9. Appendix; 39. 9.1 Profile charts; 40. 9.2 Transcripts; 41. Bibliography; 42. Index