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Foreword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Lisa J. Green
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Summary

When a pre-eminent scholar in theoretical linguistics turns her hand to the topic of child language, one can expect novel insights and expository innovation. Lisa J. Green has brought her incomparable knowledge of African American English to bear upon conversations with black children. Many of these exchanges have emerged from her seminal experimental work, but, with a touch of genius, she elucidates the intricate grammatical tapestry behind ordinary conversations. She preserves our sense of real children as she exposes how they bring together elliptical discourse, intonation, and subtle semantic implications when they just answer an ordinary question or make a heartfelt assertion.

Thus she is able to illustrate the most tantalizing features of AAE with careful situation-grounded discussions: aspect, tense, negation, and question formation. Her explorations of and sensitivity to verbatim and elliptical meanings constitute an advance in acquisition research as well. We learn a great deal from this kind of microscopic dissection of real conversations that cannot be gleaned from statistical summaries of naturalistic data or cross-sectional experimental work. Children’s own explanations reveal much more about their grammars than first language researchers have thus far realized.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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  • Foreword
  • Lisa J. Green, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Book: Language and the African American Child
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975561.001
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  • Foreword
  • Lisa J. Green, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Book: Language and the African American Child
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975561.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Foreword
  • Lisa J. Green, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Book: Language and the African American Child
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975561.001
Available formats
×