The study of language and communication development in children has been at the center of dynamic developments in recent decades. Directly resulting from revolutionary advances in linguistics, it has primarily developed within the interdisciplinary field of psycholinguistics and coincided with progress in the study of children's psychobiological development as well as cognitive phenomena.

It has experienced the flourishing that generally characterized the linguistic sciences and has impacted the broader field of humanities and social sciences. Language development is a key issue for studying a child's mental, cognitive, and social development because language plays a fundamental role in shaping the psyche, intelligence, and social life.

It can also make a decisive contribution to issues such as theory of language, knowledge, learning, and psychobiological development. From this study, natural and practical consequences arise for areas such as education and speech therapy.

The book examines, first of all, the historical, methodological, and theoretical dimensions of this scientific area. It then focuses on what we know about the development of linguistic as well as communicative abilities in children.

More specifically, it examines the individual domains of language development, which include the acquisition of phonological, grammatical, and semantic knowledge. It also investigates the development of so-called pragmatic, textual, and sociolinguistic knowledge that enables the use of language in communication.