Eduardo D. Faingold is Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at the University of Tulsa."The Development of Grammar in Spanish and the Romance Languages applies Mayerthaler and Bailey's seminal work in linguistic naturalness and markedness to child language development. The focus is on Spanish in its many varieties, including its 'daughter' creole, fusion and koine languages, but Faingold also draws on evidence from Portuguese, Italian, Rumanian and French in the course of systematically examining the acquisition of a range of grammatical constructions. The account is further enhanced by reference to historical language change, contact language phenomena, creolization and second-language learning. The highly integrated new study demonstrates a new impetus and predictive force for markedness theory."--BOOK JACKET. Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights ReservedResearchers in Romance languages will find this book a stimulating and broad-ranging treatment of the development of grammar, demonstrating the relevance of markedness for both linguistic theory and language teaching. A substantial and original account of a unique body of data, across first and second language acquisition, creolization and historical linguistics and across a wide range of languages and contact varieties, demonstrates a new impetus and predictive force for markedness theory.BR
show more 
show less