Before the beginning: the development of tools of the trade

Before the beginning of the Journal of Child Language in 1974 three technological innovations had set the stage for a fundamental expansion and revision of our understanding of the processes of child language acquisition. Portable audio and video recorders changed both the quantity and quality of data. Computers made it possible to store and search large corpora, to rapidly carry out statistical analyses of the distribution of linguistic forms and their changes over time, and to simulate models of acquisition. This essay is a personal and historical overview of the unexpected consequences of those technological innovations for the study of child language. In looking to the future, another tool, linguistic typology, is essential for building models of language acquisition.