The best survey of the subject available, The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language brings together the world's foremost researchers to provide a one-stop resource for the study of language acquisition and development. Grouped into five thematic sections, the handbook is organized by topic, making it easier for students and researchers to use when looking up specific in-depth information. It covers a wider range of subjects than any other handbook on the market, with chapters covering both theories and methods in child language research and tracing the development of language from prelinguistic infancy to teenager. Drawing on both established and more recent research, the Handbook surveys the crosslinguistic study of language acquisition; prelinguistic development; bilingualism; sign languages; specific language impairment, language and autism, Down syndrome and Williams syndrome. This book will be an essential reference for students and researchers working in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, speech pathology, education and anthropology. Table of Contents 1. Introduction: perspectives on child language Edith L. Bavin Part I. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches: 2. Innateness and learnability Virginia Valian 3. Statistical learning Eric Thiessen 4. Neurocognition of language development Angela D. Friederici 5. The usage-based theory of language acquisition Michael Tomasello 6. Crosslinguistic approaches to language acquisition Sabine Stoll Part II. Early Developments: 7. Speech perception Suzanne Curtin and Dan Hufnagle 8. Crosslinguistic perspectives on segmentation and categorization in early language acquisition Barbara Höhle 9. From gesture to word Susan Goldin-Meadow Part III. Phonology, Morphology and Syntax: 10. A dynamic systems approach to babbling and words Marilyn M. Vihman, Rory A. DePaolis and Tamar Keren-Portnoy 11. The prosody of syllables, words and morphemes Katherine Demuth 12. Grammatical categories Heike Behrens 13. Verb argument structure Shanley Allen 14. The first language acquisition of complex sentences Barbara C. Lust, Claire Foley and Cristina D. Dye 15. The morphosyntax interface Kamil Ud Deen Part IV. Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse: 16. Lexical meaning Eve V. Clark 17. Sentence scope Stephen Crain 18. Sentence processing Jesse Snedeker 19. Pragmatic development Judith Becker Bryant 20. Language development in narrative contexts Ruth A. Berman Part V. Varieties of Development: 21. Children with two languages Barbara Zurer Pearson 22. Sign language acquisition studies Diane Lillo-Martin 23. Children with specific language impairment J. Bruce Tomblin 24. Language symptoms and their possible sources in specific language impairment Laurence B. Leonard 25. The language of children with autism Rhiannon J. Luyster and Catherine Lord 26. Language development in genetic disorders Fiona M. Richardson and Michael S. C. Thomas.