The Language of Children: Evolution and Development of Secondary Consciousness and Language, 2nd Edition

This book provides a very readable introduction for students of psychology, language, and education to how children acquire and use language. Focusing on research evidence and everyday examples, it covers a broad range of topics and assumes no prior knowledge of developmental psychology or linguistics.

The emphasis of The Language of Children is on explaining psychological (cognitive, biological and social) variables in language. The development of human language use is first related to the development of signaling in other species and to the early interaction between the infant and his or her mother (or other caregiver). It goes on to relate the child's development of language to broader cognitive development, and considers the influence of schooling and social experience.