Ibbotson P. What it Takes to Talk - Exploring Developmental Cognitive Linguistics

Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter Mouton, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2020. — X, 224 p. — (Cognitive Linguistics Research Series, Volume 64).This book puts cognition back at the heart of the language learning process and challenges the idea that language acquisition can be meaningfully understood as a purely linguistic phenomenon. Summarizing decades of important research on the topic, it outlines the contribution that psychology has made to understanding the mechanisms driving language development. For each domain-general capacity placed under the spotlight – memory, attention, inhibition, categorization, analogy and social cognition – we establish the extent to which they shape the acquisition of sounds, words and grammar. Developmental Cognitive Linguistics explores how the unfolding cognitive and social world of the child interacts with, constrains, and predicts language use. The conclusion is that language is special, not because it is an encapsulated module separate from the rest of cognition, but because of the forms it can take rather than the parts it is made of, and because it could be nature’s finest example of cognitive recycling and reuse.