First Language Acquisition takes a comprehensive look at where and when children acquire a first language. It integrates social and cognitive approaches to how children analyze, understand, and produce sounds, words, and sentences, as they learn to use language to cooperate and achieve goals. And it takes a usage-based approach in considering what children learn. It emphasizes pragmatic factors in language use, and includes research on word-formation, and on bilingualism and dialect-choice. This book presents the major findings and debates in highly readable form. It examines the changes and continuity in children's language as they go from 'Ball' to 'I want to throw it now', from 'Stop, door open' to 'You mustn't open the door before the car stops'; as they learn how to be polite, how to describe sequences of events, how to talk to family, friends, and strangers, and how to tell stories.