ePub The Prism of Grammar: How Child Language Illuminates Humanism (A Bradford Book) download

by Tom Roeper

Author:

Tom Roeper

ISBN13:

978-0262512589

ISBN:

0262512580

Language:

English

Publisher:

A Bradford Book (February 13, 2009)

Category:

Relationships

Subcategory:

Parenting

ePub file:

1152 kb

Fb2 file:

1180 kb

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Rating:

4.8

Votes:

851

Tom Roeper Parenting English

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Adult expressions provide endless puzzles for the child to solve.

Adult expressions provide endless puzzles for the child to solve. Скачать (pdf, . 6 Mb) Читать

The Prism of Grammar book.

R brings acquisition to life with many do-it-yourself ‘explorations’, intended to be played with a child in your neighborhood and/or developed into experiments in your lab. PoG is informal and entertaining, and R’s creativity and enthusiasm for his subject are evident in every chapter.

By (author) Tom Roeper.

In The Prism of Grammar, Tom Roeper brings the abstract principles . The Prism of Grammar. MIT Press Direct is a distinctive collection of influential MIT Press books curated for scholars and libraries worldwide.

Author: Tom Roeper Hardback: ISBN: 0262182521 Pages: 355 Price: . Adult expressions provideendless puzzles for the child to solve.

Бедность делает человека изобретателем.

Recommend this journal.

Exploring the creativity of mind through children's language: how the tiniest utterances can illustrate the simple but abstract principles behind modern grammar―and reveal the innate structures of the mind.

Every sentence we hear is instantly analyzed by an inner grammar; just as a prism refracts a beam of light, grammar divides a stream of sound, linking diverse strings of information to different domains of mind―memory, vision, emotions, intentions. In The Prism of Grammar, Tom Roeper brings the abstract principles behind modern grammar to life by exploring the astonishing intricacies of child language. Adult expressions provide endless puzzles for the child to solve. The individual child's solutions ("Don't uncomfortable the cat" is one example) may amuse adults but they also reveal the complexity of language and the challenges of mastering it. The tiniest utterances, says Roeper, reflect the whole mind and engage the child's free will and sense of dignity. He offers numerous and novel "explorations"―many at the cutting edge of current work―that anyone can try, even in conversation around the dinner table. They elicit how the child confronts "recursion"―the heartbeat of grammar―through endless possessives ("John's mother's friend's car"), mysterious plurals, contradictory adjectives, the marvels of ellipsis, and the deep obscurity of reference ("there it is, right here"). They are not tests of skill; they are tools for discovery and delight, not diagnosis. Each chapter on acquisition begins with a commonsense look at how structures work―moving from the simple to the complex―and then turns to the literary and human dimensions of grammar. One important human dimension is the role of dialect in society and in the lives of children. Roeper devotes three chapters to the structure of African-American English and the challenge of responding to linguistic prejudice. Written in a lively style, accessible and gently provocative, The Prism of Grammar is for parents and teachers as well as students―for everyone who wants to understand how children gain and use language―and anyone interested in the social, philosophical, and ethical implications of how we see the growing mind emerge.

ChallengeMine

This is a required textbook for a course I am taking on language acquisition. It is easy to follow and provides interesting and relevant examples. It has a little more embellishment than I am used to. That is probably because it is intended more as a guide for parents or others who want to learn about child language, but it suffices as a textbook too.

Maveri

Nice grammar book.

Moronydit

It was great! Everything is perfect. Thank you!

Steelraven

Anyone who wants to understand what Universal Grammar (Chomsky) is all about could do no better than to read Tom Roeper's excellent book. And it is a must-read for anyone interested in child language acquisition, language teachers (first and second), and speakers of (or listeners to!) non-standard English.

However, this book is about far more than that. Or should I say, Universal Grammar itself is about far more than you might think. The book, and UG, are about the nature of mind, and what it means to be a human person. In fact, the title of Chapter 2 is "Grammar's Gift to Our Image of Human Nature." In that chapter, Roeper makes the bold statement: "The body is just an extension of the mind. The body is designed to express the mind--the opposite of the common view that the body is real and the mind an illusion."

Modern science since the Enlightenment has struggled with these ideas. Today, the world's mind seems to have arrived at a position of extreme reductionism in its thinking about nature and the human person. We think of this mental attitude as having been arrived at by dint of dispassionate, rational thought. However, Roeper will convince you that observation and logic in fact lead us away from reductionism.

Linguistics occupies an interesting position - it claims for itself, with some justification, the status of a hard science; yet its subject matter is the stuff of poetry. Linguistics does not shy away from this nexus, and in its philosophical underpinnings aims to do justice to both sets of values. Roeper's book leads the reader to an understanding of how this might be so, and to the hope that this may be the future for the other sciences also.

Roeper writes as a scholar and a humanist. In his introduction to the book, he expresses the hope that he has written "like a human being." In this, above all, he has succeeded.

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TPoG is a brilliant meditation on Chomskyan linguistics, child language acquisition, and the relation of both to philosophy of mind. It is not an exhaustive treatment, but, within its scope, a rigorously well-argued one. TPoG is chock full of fascinating facts about language and the developing mind, incisive critiques of certain less rigorous approaches to the analysis of both, as well as compelling hypotheses and -- in many instances -- suggestions for how they might be empirically pursued. Though Roeper is the first to admit that his thinking on some of the most worrying philosophical and linguistic problems may prove wrong, the positions he stakes he defends quite masterfully. TPoG is, if nothing else, food for great thought. It's a superb addition to the literature.

Vutaur

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I helped in the early stages of editing this book, but I don't think my small involvement should bar me from recommending a truly wonderful book. Prism is one of a kind. It's simple to read and also incredibly sophisticated. We have all heard toddlers and young children talk with their quaint ways of expressing things, but no one hears them like Tom Roeper does.

For example, have you noticed the difference between "oops" and "uh-oh"? The explanation on page 40 points it out. That is, if a big dog comes at you and you drop a tray of glasses you are carrying, you can say "uh-oh" to express your fears about the dog OR your dismay at dropping the glasses, but you can't say "oops" about the dog, just about dropping the glasses. The book gives you just the right stories to help find out if your child has figured out that you can't use "oops" for things unless you had a hand in them. My 33-month-old granddaughter got the difference, without a second's hesitation.

Another one of my favorites is an experiment from a colleague that Roeper has turned into an "exploration" for us. It's a very clear difference between "a" and "the" that you might think is too small for a child to pay attention to. You show the child a row of ducks (or pennies, or anything you have handy), and say "Here's a row of ducks. Take a duck." Then request either, "Now give me a duck," or "Now give me the duck." For "a duck," the children are invited to select a new duck for you. If they are sensitive to the difference, for "the duck," they will surrender the duck they just took (p. 71).

There are at least 50 Explorations like these and hundreds of child examples spread throughout the chapters, interspersed in a conversational, but very careful explanation of key grammatical concepts like Universal Grammar, merging, and why "and" is not one of the first relationships in children's early two-word speech.

Until this book, I was never able to explain to friends and relatives what is so fascinating and important about child language. Thanks to this Prism of Grammar, they can see for themselves (and you can, too).

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