Polysynthesis in the Acquisition of Inuit Languages

TL;DR: The authors argue that multiword units are integral building blocks in language and that such units can facilitate mastery of semantically opaque relations between words, which can explain children's difficulty in learning a second language.

TL;DR: It is argued that the notion of polysynthesis can be used nonimpressionistically only if defined more cogently and more restrictively.

TL;DR: This article studied the early stages of grammatical constructions and the meanings they convey in pre-school children and found that the order of their acquisition is almost identical across children and is predicted by their relative semantic and grammatical complexity.

TL;DR: The CHILDES corpus has been used for a wide variety of purposes, including editing non-Roman orthographies, systematically adding codes to transcripts, checking the files for correct use of "CHAT", and linking the files to digitized audio and videotape.

TL;DR: This analysis reveals that lexical substance evolves into grammatical substance through various mechanisms of change, such as metaphorical extension and the conventionalization of implicature, providing clear evidence that language use is a major factor in the evolution of synchronic language states.