For three decades, Tom Roeper has been one of the most acute observers of semantic and grammatical subtleties in children's speech, and one of the most creative thinkers on how to connect linguistic theory with language acquisition research. It is nice to have his insights collected into a book, which will be a source of ideas for years to come.
Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Language Instinct, Words and Rules, and The Stuff of Thought
Tom Roeper has an unmatched flair for identifying simple examples and spelling out both their amazing complexity and the richness of their theoretical implications. In this intriguing, ingenious, idiosyncratic and inspirational book he illustrates the enormity of the child's task in learning the simplest facts, from the meaning of 'it' to the contrast between 'painting a grey house' and 'painting a house grey'. He uses these and a wide variety of other examples to suggest practical activities for parents and researchers to indulge in with children. Most important, he emphasizes the educational and ethical consequences of taking child language seriously. This book will influence people's thinking not only on language acquisition but on human dignity and the nature of mind.
Neil Smith, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, University College London
This engaging, perceptive, and wide-ranging study investigates individual alnguages in terms of the challenges they pose for the child as well as their often surprising relations to other languages and to the general principles that constitute the genetically-determined language faculty. It goes on to unravel prejudices and misunderstandings, and to offer a more general conception of how the mind functions and of our place in a community of mutual respect and understanding. Lucid and engaging, The Prism of Grammar leads the reader from striking observations and experiments with children that anyone can carry out to subtle and intricate issues that concern every parent—in fact, anyone seeking to understand who we are and what we should be.
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, MIT
It has been said that as children we wrestle with the deepest mysteries of our time the mind-body problem, the existence of God but that adulthood's common emphasis on conformity purges this intellectual curiosity. In Tom Roeper's able hands we are treated to a journey back to this period of intense curiosity and mental growth one characterized by an exuberance of questions and comments, each reflecting intricate computations of the mind. But Roeper goes further and, with great courage and insight, attempts to show how the study of child language illuminates a much broader range of topics, from our capacity for free will to our often unconscious prejudices.
Marc D. Hauser, Harvard College Professor, author of Moral Minds
