DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Building Language From the Ground Up

Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition
By Michael Tomasello. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 408 pp. Paper, $19.95.

The seemingly miraculous process of language acquisition has intrigued linguists and psychologists alike for decades, yet there is still surprisingly little consensus as to why and how it happens. Modern-day behavioral theorists continue to claim that simple associative learning principles are sufficient to account for acquisition of complex syntax. Chomskians and other nativists disagree and posit a variety of specialized cognitive mechanisms designed especially to take in linguistic and grammatical information.