First language acquisition

the long version

The study of children's language acquisition is a topic without a discipline. There are virtually no university departments of language acquisition, and only one major journal devoted to the topic. Language acquisition is instead a subfield of other areas, such as linguistics, psychology, education, and communication disorders. These disciplines approach this topic from very different perspectives, resulting in a situation wherein there are a handful of general texts on the subject. This book uses linguistics as its foundation, but attempts to transcend a limited linguistic view by discussing works and issues produced in other disciplines. The goal of this book is to provide the reader with the to practice the field of language acquisition, not just learn about it.