The grammar of engagement

By Jen Malat, on June 21st, 2018%

This blog post is written by Nicholas Evans, inspired by the Language and Cognition article “The grammar of engagement I: framework and initial exemplification” by Nicholas Evans, Henrik Bergqvist, and Lila San Roque. Read it online now.

‘Philosophy must plough over the whole of language’, as Wittgenstein famously stated. But which language? Singularising the noun allows a deceptive slippage between some language whose premises we take for granted (‘The limits of my language are the limits of my world’ was another great, and corrective, line of his) and ‘language’ in some dangerously, presumptively general sense. One of the great what-if questions for linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science is how different the last two millennia of western thought would be if we had built our . . . → Read More: The grammar of engagement

Journal of Child Language Special Issue Call for Papers

By Jen Malat, on February 1st, 2018%

Call for Papers: The influence of input quality and communicative interaction on language development

Guest Editors: Elma Blom and Melanie Soderstrom

While studies on the influence of the input on language development have often focused on the quantity of input, there is a growing recognition of the importance of qualitative aspects of the input and the characteristics of communicative interaction. Papers for the special issue would include studies of any qualitative input and interaction-based aspects of language development in diverse populations of children and youth.

Relevant topics and questions that papers could address are the following:

● Input quality, communicative interaction and language development: What is the role of qualitative characteristics of the input (e.g. child-directed speech, joint attention, responsiveness, turn-taking, reading vs. screentime, computer-mediated . . . → Read More: Journal of Child Language Special Issue Call for Papers