LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The aim of the first edition of Language Acquisition was to provide as comprehensive a description and explanation as possible of the changes in the childs language as he or she grows older. In this second edition Paul Fletcher and Michael Garman have the same fundamental aim. Six years later the field has not changed dramatically, but there have been fruitful theoretical developments -- the learnability hypothesis, in particular, has been influentially expounded -- and empirical work seeking evidence of specific language capacities in children has made notable advances. Equally significant are shifts in emphasis