Resumen de Usage-Based Approaches to Child Language Development
Melvatha R. Chee, Frances V. Jones, Jill P. Morford, Naomi L. Shin
There are two major approaches to the study of language acquisition: nativist and usage-based theories. To date, a large majority of the usage-based literature on child language development has focused on monolingual children acquiring majority languages such as English. By studying minority languages, scholars can observe patterns of acquisition when language input is more variable and/or restricted. This unique and understudied context of language learning promises to provide new insights into their understanding of language acquisition. This chapter aims to address this gap in the research by reviewing language acquisition in three typologically distinct minority languages used in New Mexico—Navajo, American Sign Language, and Spanish—serving as a case study of non-majority language contexts. It focuses on two characteristics of language input that have been shown to influence acquisition in monolingual and majority language contexts: frequency and saliency.
