CONSTRUCTING A LANGUAGE: A USAGE-BASED THEORY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

TLDR

Tomasello’s book synthesizes child language and primate research to challenge generative theories by proposing that language can be acquired from input alone without innate linguistic predispositions. This review seeks to explain the book’s successes and shortcomings.

Abstract

CONSTRUCTING A LANGUAGE: A USAGE-BASED THEORY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Michael Tomasello. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 388. $45.00 cloth.Michael Tomasello has an impressive opus of publications in both child language development and primate research. This book represents a synthesis of that work as well as the exposition of an account of language development, which provides a thought-provoking challenge to the generative enterprise. As such, it is an important contribution to the literature of first language acquisition, and by extrapolation, of SLA, because it offers an account of how learners can extract language from the input without reference to linguistic-specific predispositions. It succeeds in many respects and fails in others, as this review will try to explain.