Part 1 Infancy and protolanguage
Editor's Introduction
1 Representing the child as semiotic being: meaning and moving in the earliest months of life
2 Learning how to mean
3 Early language learning: a sociolinguistic approach
4 A sociosemiotic perspective on language development
5 One child's protolanguage
6 Meaning and the construction of reality in early childhood
7 The ontogenesis of dialogue

Part 2 Transition from child tongue to mother tongue
Editor's Introduction
8 Into the adult language
9 On the development of texture in child language
10 The contribution of developmental linguistics to the interpretation of language as a system
11 On the transition from child tongue to mother tongue
12 Language as code and language as behaviour: a systemic-functional interpretation of the nature and ontogenesis of dialogue
13 The place of dialogue in childen's construction of meaning

Part 3 Early language and learning
Editor's Introduction
14 Relevant models of language
15 The social context of language development
16 Three aspects of children's language development: learning language, learning through language, learning about language
17 Towards a language-based theory of learning
18 Grammar and the construction of educational knowledge