The bibliography contains over 50 annotated citations of research on the nature of maternal speech and its effects on child language development. It is limited to studies focusing on verbal features of mothers' speech to normal one-to-four-year-olds learning English. The first section is devoted to literature describing characteristics specific to maternal speech, variations found within maternal speech, and explanations for maternal speech. The second part cites studies of the features of maternal speech that assist in language acquisition, correlational studies, and criticisms of these studies. The studies are briefly reviewed in a summary section, and an unannotated bibliography is appended. (MSE)