Research on child language is an interdisciplinary enterprise, uniting the efforts of psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, educators, neuroscientists and communication scientists. In selecting representative readings from this broad and fast-moving field, the editors of this collection have emphasized recent papers that illustrate the contribution of child language research to developmental cognitive science.

Although the authors of these papers represent a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives, there is a deliberate bias in favor of an interactive, rather than nativist, approach. Essential works on the major milestones of language development are provided, followed by tutorials that stress the neural substrates of language development, pieces on computational models of language learning, and on genetic contributions to developmental language disorders. Some papers have been updated or specially commissioned for this collection. The volume avoids jargon and is designed to be accessible to upper level students across a range of disciplines.