Melissa Bowerman
Encyclopedia
Melissa Bowerman was a leading researcher in the area of language acquisition. She was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
.
Within the field of language acquisition
, she specialized in the relationships between language and cognition
, language and spatial representation, and language and event representation. Recurrent themes in her work included the relationship between conceptual development
and language development
, the use of cross-linguistic comparisons to disentangle what is universal and possibly innate from what is learned, the nature of children's early linguistic rules
, and the potential of information about language acquisition to help decide among alternative theoretical approaches to language structure.
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is an institute for scientific research in the area of psycholinguistics. The institute is located in Nijmegen in the province of Gelderland in The Netherlands. The institute is a member of the German Max Planck Society and is the only institute of...
.
Within the field of language acquisition
Language acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary. This language might be vocal as with...
, she specialized in the relationships between language and cognition
Language and thought
A variety of different authors, theories and fields purport influences between language and thought.Many point out the seemingly common-sense realization that upon introspection we seem to think in the language we speak...
, language and spatial representation, and language and event representation. Recurrent themes in her work included the relationship between conceptual development
Cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of brain development and cognitive psychology compared to an adult's point of...
and language development
Language development
Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and...
, the use of cross-linguistic comparisons to disentangle what is universal and possibly innate from what is learned, the nature of children's early linguistic rules
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, and the potential of information about language acquisition to help decide among alternative theoretical approaches to language structure.
Key publications
- Bowerman, Melissa. 1973. Early syntactic development: a cross-linguistic study with special reference to Finnish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Choi, S., Bowerman, M., Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns, (1991) Cognition, 41 (1-3), pp. 83–121
- Majid, A., Bowerman, M., Kita, S., Haun, D.B.M., Levinson, S.C., Can language restructure cognition? The case for space, (2004) Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (3), pp. 108–114.
- Choi, S., McDonough, L., Bowerman, M., Mandler, J.M., Early Sensitivity to Language-Specific Spatial Categories in English and Korean, (1999) Cognitive Development, 14 (2), pp. 241–268.
- Bowerman, Melissa, and Stephen C. Levinson, eds. 2001. Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Majid, A., Bowerman, M., Van Staden, M., Boster, J.S., The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective, (2007) Cognitive Linguistics, 18 (2), pp. 133–152.
- Bowerman, Melissa, and Penelope Brown, eds. 2008. ;;Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Argument Structure.;; New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.