Presentación y Entrevista de Dan I. Slobin

Abstract

Slobin starts by explaining the reasons that motivated his interest in developmental psycholinguistics in the 60�s. He briefly explains the significance of studying language in the global understanding of the human being and justifies his interest towards the acquisition of highly inflexional languages like Russian or Turquish. Then, Slobin speaks extensively about the �Berkeley Crosslinguistic Acquisition Project�, of which he was one of the main creators. The author speaks also about some questions related to his �Theory of Basic Grammar in Children�; the synthesis of his �operative principals� to the language acquisition or the possibility of bringing Piaget�s and Chomsky�s conceptions closer together. In the last part he speaks about the present theoretical and research tendencies in the field that he considers promising, and ends with some reflections about the multilinguistic Spanish situation and the study of language acquisition. Miguel Pérez Pereira�s comments about this important researcher in Developmental Psycholinguistics open the article.