Before the beginning: the development of tools of the trade

Before the beginning of the Journal of Child Language in 1974 three technological innovations had set the stage for a fundamental expansion and revision of our understanding of the processes of child language acquisition. Portable audio and video recorders changed both the quantity and quality of da...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of child language 2014-07, Vol.41 (S1), p.1-17
Main Author: SLOBIN, DAN I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adults
Child
Child Development
Child Language
Children & youth
Cognitive Processes
Computers - history
Databases, Factual
Diaries
Graduate Students
Grammar
History, 20th Century
History, 21st Century
Home Visits
Humans
Laboratory Equipment
Language acquisition
Language Development
Language Research
Language typology
Linguistic Input
Linguistics
Morphology (Languages)
Native language acquisition
Periodicals as Topic - history
Periodicals as Topic - statistics & numerical data
Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Semantics
Speech
Tape Recording - history
Undergraduate Students
Verbs
Video Recording - history
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Summary:Before the beginning of the Journal of Child Language in 1974 three technological innovations had set the stage for a fundamental expansion and revision of our understanding of the processes of child language acquisition. Portable audio and video recorders changed both the quantity and quality of data. Computers made it possible to store and search large corpora, to rapidly carry out statistical analyses of the distribution of linguistic forms and their changes over time, and to simulate models of acquisition. This essay is a personal and historical overview of the unexpected consequences of those technological innovations for the study of child language. In looking to the future, another tool, linguistic typology, is essential for building models of language acquisition.
ISSN:0305-0009
1469-7602
DOI:10.1017/S0305000914000166