This volume contains 11 papers on various aspects of language acquisition both in first language (L1) and second language (L2) from an ecological perspective. This approach departs from generative grammar by rejecting both its theoretical and methodological axioms. It first questions the generative assumption that language is a mental state determined by human biology and experience. In its stead, proponents of the ecological view treat language as an entity inseparable from the speakers and their social network (Leather & van Dam, chapter 1). Methodologically, they dismiss generative grammar's essential tenet that competence should be investigated independently of performance; along with this, they also reject idealization in the study of language and language acquisition. Leather and van Dam also presume a priori the nonexistence of context-free meanings (cf. Higginbotham, 1988). As for language acquisition, they claim that the notion of primary linguistic data is too narrow; rather, data in other forms such as gestures and deictic motion are equally relevant in language acquisition. Although both the generative and ecological approaches emphasize individual language learners, for the former, language development constitutes the normal human biology, triggered by sensory input (Chomsky, 1995), whereas for the latter, it results from the interaction of the individuals and their cultural environment.

Fettes (chapter 2) joins Leather and van Dam in adopting a broad and non-Cartesian view of language; namely, language as a public entity exists outside speakers and its development emerges as a psychological function of the culture and environment in which the language is used. Two of the chapters explore various ecological aspects of child language acquisition: joint attention as an innate mechanism (Kozima & Ito, chapter 4) and language socialization in Mexican children and their development of competencies (Baquedano-López, chapter 6). Another two articles represent classroom-based research on language development. Van Lier (chapter 3) discusses how to integrate use of computers into a project-based syllabus in teaching poetry and English as a L2 to children and adults. Van Dam (chapter 11) presents a longitudinal study on two Dutch teenage girls and an analysis of the notes they passed to each other over a period of 4 years in search of patterns of linguistic behaviors in a classroom setting. The two chapters on SLA represent two case studies. Lam and Kramsch (chapter 8) report on analyses of a Hong Kong Chinese learning English as a foreign language and claim that success in acquiring a L2 is contingent on a number of ecological factors, including self-confidence, ability to play multiple roles, and so forth. Pallotti's (chapter 10) study concerns a 5-year-old Moroccan girl living in Italy and discovers the patterns of her use of appropriations in a lunch setting, expressions the L2 speaker consistently constructed by incorporating her interlocutor's utterances. There are two chapters on child language acquisition of semantics. Zlatev (chapter 5) argues that children acquire lexical and syntactic knowledge by virtue of their general cognitive concepts rather than domain-specific and language-specific categories and principles, a hypothesis he calls the “cognitive determination hypothesis.” Toolan (chapter 7) develops an integrational approach through which he discusses the role of interactions between infants and their caretakers as a necessary element for language development. Finally, Powers and Babies (chapter 9) explore how to use computer models to probe for invaluable insights—inaccessible to theoretical linguists—into our understanding of the language development process.

Most articles collected in this volume are highly accessible and readable, and they provide an adequate case for the thesis of the volume—that language and language development are critically related to ecology. Unfortunately, with a focus on a wide range of issues and variables (conceivably relevant to language development, although not to the same extent), it is difficult to see how this approach provides insights into the two most critical problems in the study of language and language development. First, how do we account for the true human attribute that leads an infant or adult to the attainment of a language or languages irrespective of unforeseeable variations in experience (a problem known as “Plato's problem”; Chomsky, 1991)? Second, how do we explain the fact that language learners, of both L1s and L2s, develop knowledge that transcends their experience, the so-called “Humboldt's problem” (Chomsky, 1991) or the creativity of language?