Handouts - Ten Lectures on Language, Cognition, and Language Acquisition

Bowerman also covers the learning of argument structure and expressions of end-state, with special attention to the adult speech that guides children, and hence also the role of typology in acquisition; how cross-linguistic variation affects, for example, how speakers represent ‘cutting’ and ‘breaking’ in different languages, and the relation of the Whorfian Hypothesis to cross-linguistic variations in the semantics of languages.

Bowerman’s over-riding concern throughout is with how children come to master the first language being spoken to them by their parents and caregivers.