Author Description

How does a child acquire language, and what may facilitate this learning? To carry out his investigations, Bruner went to the child's own setting for learning rather than observing children in a contrived video laboratory. For Bruner, language is learned by using it. Central to its use are what he calls "formats," scriptlike interactions between mother and child, in short, play and games. What goes on in games as rudimentary as peekaboo or hide and seek can tell us much about language acquisiton. But what aids the aspirant speaker in his attempt to use language? To answer this, the author postulates the existence of a Language Acquisition Support System that frames the interactions between adult and child in such a way as to allow the child to master the basic but necessary steps in learning to talk. It underlies the fine tuning involved in orderly language learning and allows the child to proceed from learning how to refer to objects to learning to make a request of another human being. - Back cover.