The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 5. Expanding the contexts. D. I. Slobin. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997. Pp. 339

For many years, research and theory on language acquisition have been sustained by data on English language learners, with an occasional crosslinguistic contribution. With more than 5,000 languages currently spoken in the world, we are not even close to a systematic sampling of languages and language learners. However, current crosslinguistic inquiry motivates much of the most interesting work in theoretical linguistics, neurolinguistics, and, thanks in large part to Dan Slobin's multivolume series, language acquisition. Volumes 1, 3, and 4 of The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition summarize critical features and the overall course of development for 25 languages. The chapters in Volume 2 consider theoretical issues raised by the crosslinguistic evidence. Volume 5 is the most recent publication, and, like Volume 2, its chapters provide a broader perspective on the data. The five chapters of the current volume attempt to enlarge the all-too-often narrow portrayal of the individual language learner grappling with the intractable problems of syntax and morphology. The authors review relevant data from previous volumes and consider how prosody, semantics, and pragmatics can disambiguate syntax and morphology and how a framework of systematic typological variation is crucial to understanding just how this might be accomplished.