Written and Spoken Language Development across the Lifespan

This multidisciplinary volume offers insights on oral and written language development and how it takes place in literate societies. The volume covers topics from early to late language development, its interaction with literacy practices, including several languages, monolingual and multilingual contexts, different scripts, as well as typical and atypical development. Inspired by the work of Liliana Tolchinsky, a leading expert in language and literacy development, a group of internationally renowned scholars offers a state-of-the-art overview of current thinking in language development in literate societies in its broadest sense.

This book is a fitting tribute to Liliana Tolchinsky, one of the premier researchers in writing and language development. It delivers on the promise in the title to examine developmental relationships between oral and written language. Compared to the extensive research on relationships between reading and writing, there is relatively littlework connecting speaking and writing. Comparisons between oral and written language demand detailed investigation of linguistic features, including semantics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics, all of which are addressed. As primarily a cognitive researcher, I am aware that we do not pay adequate attention to linguistic factors in studying writing development and instruction. Several of the chapters provided insights that I will use in my own work. I anticipate that the book will be enthusiastically received by researchers with interests in writing development, linguistics, relationships between speech and writing, and writing assessment. Charles A. MacArthur, Professor, University of Delaware, USA