Abilities of 2-, 5-, and 7-year-old children to interpret, judge acceptability of, and produce class extensions were assessed. It was concluded that increasing ability to deal appropriately with class extensions is primarily due to general advances in language acquisition rather than to any development unique to the class-extension word-formation…

In two experiments 96 children and eight adults were tested for comprehension of the modifier-head relation in compounds such as apple-knife or were asked to label objects with compounds. Results show that by age three children reliably interpret novel compounds and made use of novel compounds to subcategorize. (RH)

Results question the validity of Cummins's threshold hypothesis and suggest that degree of bilingualism is related to variability in cognitive measures only before a certain threshold of proficiency in the second language is attained. A cause-effect model in which degree of bilingualism appears as the causal factor affecting children's cognitive…