The development of language and language researchers: Essays in honor of Roger Brown Edited by Frank S. Kessel (review)

REVIEWS351 REFERENCES Brown, Jason. 1982. Hierarchy and evolution in neurolinguistics. Neural models of language process, ed. by Michael A. Arbib, David Caplan, and John C. Marshall, 447-67. New York: Academic Press. Givón, Talmy. 1979. On understanding grammar. New York: Academic Press. Lamendella, John T. 1976. Relations between the ontogeny and phylogeny of language. The origins and evolution of speech, ed. by Steven R. Harnad, Horst D. Steklis, and Jane Lancaster, 396-412. New York: New York Academy of Science. -----. 1977. The limbic system in human communication. Studies in neurolinguistics, Vol. 3, ed. by Haiganoosh A. Whitaker and Harry A. Whitaker, 157-222. New · York: Academic Press. Menn, Lise, and Loraine Obler. 1990. Agrammatic aphasia. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Benjamins . Aphasia Research Center[Received 9 January 1990.] Boston University School of Medicine Veterans Administration Medical Center 150 South Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02130 The development of language and language researchers: Essays in honor ofRoger Brown. Edited by Frank S. Kessel. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988. Pp. ix, 423. Cloth $59.95, paper $24.95. Reviewed by Julia S. Falk, Michigan State University First organized by Frank Kessel in conjunction with the 1981 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development in Boston, this tribute to Roger Brown was intended as a 60th-birthday Festschrift for the psychologist who brought linguistics to the study of child language acquisition and child language acquisition studies to the field of linguistics. In the United States only Roman Jakobson comes close to Brown in establishing this connection so directly; but Jakobson's seminal work on children's phonological development (Jakobson 1968) has long been superseded, whereas Brown's contributions to our understanding of the acquisition of morphology and syntax continue to influence contemporary research. Indeed, it is difficult to find a modern work on child language acquisition that does not cite Roger Brown (e.g. Bates, et al. 1988, Ingram 1989, Nelson 1989, Smith & Locke 1988). Brown's decade of work on the language development of the children called Adam, Eve, and Sarah began in 1962 and culminated in 1973 with the publication of A first language: The early stages. With typical modesty, Brown himself says of this classic that 'it does not explain how the acquisition of language was possible. But it did establish some empirical generalizations that have held up very well in subsequent research' (398). He had planned a second volume, The later stages, but when his analyses did not yield 'any strong generalizations comparable to those of the early stages' (398), Brown 'regretfully decided that the time was now past when he could effectively initiate research on first-language acquisition' (399). Thereafter, he occasionally wrote on language acquisition (e.g. Brown 1977, 1982), but his larger publications became 352LANGUAGE, VOLUME 67, NUMBER 2 (1991) increasingly directed toward psychology (Brown & Herrnstein 1975) ' and social psychology (Brown 1986). Roger Brown's work on child language acquisition continues today through the research of an exceptional group of scholars who were his students at Harvard—the contributors to this volume.2 Here they describe their own research , often beginning with its origins under Brown's guidance. Ofthe eighteen essays, all but four are focused on children's language acquisition. In an Afterword , Brown comments on the contributors: 'There is no strand that runs the length of the rope. There is no feature common to all members. They are not a family. But when all were gathered together for a party celebrating this book, you could see that there is a family resemblance' (394). Indeed, that is so throughout this book, which is but loosely organized around two broad and intertwined themes—the development of language and the development of language researchers. For the development of language, many of the contributions provide excellent overviews of the researchers' areas of interest. Most hold positions in psychology at American universities, but others are situated differently. Their distribution and the range of their research reflect Brown's varied interests and the flexibility of his program at Harvard. The volume begins with a chapter by Dan I. Slobin tracing his years at Harvard and then the crosslinguistic acquisition studies of his group at Berkeley (9-22); the penultimate chapter on...