A First Language - the Early Stages (Paper)

A unique and impressive book in terms of both content and style. It is a scholarly work, part history, part review, but more than just a chronological or even critical survey of the research and theories of a particular group of people during a particular period of time. Brown discusses the major issues in depth and presents new analyses of the available naturalistic data. He questions each interpretation but always remains close to the data when deciding the adequacies of any particular characterization. A fascinating record...Linguistic and behavioral description has never been accomplished so meaningfully. An important landmark that should serve as an exciting introduction to the field, as well as a model for students on how to do rewarding exploratory research...A splendid source book for future students and researchers.

Focusing on the conversation performance and abilities of three youngsters, the author probes each stage in language development