ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the acquisition studies of numerous languages highlighting conceptual underpinnings of child grammar that could not be determined by study of any one language in isolation. It examines the following four propositions about the ways in which children use grammatical marking to express linguistically relevant notions: conceptual development provides starting points for grammatical marking; preferred event perspectives provide starting points for grammatical marking; universal conceptual schemas can override input language patterns; and conceptual development determines order of emergence of grammatical forms. Along with universal preferences for the semantic content of grammatical markers in early child speech, crosslinguistic study also reveals preferences for the placement of such markers and for the construction of morphological paradigms and word-order patterns of particular types.
