The study investigates the development of English multiword negation, in particular the negation of zero marked verbs (e.g. "no sleep", "not see", "can't reach") from a usage-based perspective. The data was taken from a dense database consisting of the speech of an English-speaking child (Brian) aged 2;3-3;4 (MLU 2.05-3.1) and his mother. The…

Focuses on the effects of contextual demands on French-speaking children's spontaneous production of cleft sentences. The study shows that French children frequently produce cleft formulations when they contrast their own belief or knowledge with that of their addressee and when the matter of the disagreement concerns the agent of the action. (CB)

Challenges the position of Clark (1988) that no two forms in a language can mean the same thing. An alternative is offered that draws on the drive towards the adult system, development of nonlinguistic concepts, acquisition of language in context, and use of a cooperative principle in conversational exchanges. (64 references) (Author/CB)

Examines spontaneous conversations between adults and children. Findings indicate that adults' altered mean length of utterance and type-token ratio were based on their age. Contrary to the researcher's expectations, the adults did not choose their words from the 10,000 most common word types in an age-dependent manner. (Author/CB)

Examination of the relationship between linguistic forms and the functions they serve in one- to two-year-olds' (N=6) early talk about agentivity and control found that the subjects systematically employed different self reference forms to mark distinct perspectives on agency. 34 references. (Author/CB)

This paper focuses on the aspects of the lexicon in 66 prematurely born very-low-birth-weight and 87 full-term Finnish children at 2;0, studied using the Finnish version of the "MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory". The groups did not differ in vocabulary size. Furthermore, the female advantage in vocabulary size was not seen…

Examined whether there was negative evidence in adult reformulations of erroneous child utterances, and if so, whether children made use of that evidence. Findings show that adults reformulate erroneous utterances often enough for learning to occur. Children can detect differences between their own utterance and the adult reformulation and make…

Study of how the verbal component of "babytalk" affected three-month-olds' (N=40) vocal qualities suggested that conversational turn-taking facilitated a speak-listen pattern of infant vocalizations and indicated that what adults "say" to infants influences what infants "say" in response. (Author/CB)

An investigation looked at the relationship between control and coreference in three- to eight-year-olds' (N=81) performance of an act-out task. Results replicated previous findings that demonstrated five developmental stages (involving subject-oriented, object-oriented, mixed subject-object, and adult approaches) in chidren's interpretation of…

Oral language skills in the preschool years are predictive of children's later reading success and literacy acquisition, and among these language skills, vocabulary and narrative ability play important roles. Children from low socioeconomic families face risks to their language development and because of threats to these skills it is important to…

Analysis of a one-year-old's speech in two different speech contexts (dialogue vs. crib-monologue) yielded striking patterns of co-occurrences involving verb morphology and forms of self-reference. (Author/CB)

Examines the age at which and the form in which children produce speech acts which commit them to a future action. Results revealed that all of the four- to 11-year-olds produced directive speech acts, but only the older children used the explicit performative verb "promise" to reassure the hearer of their commitment. (Author/CB)

In this study, maternal speech was analyzed acoustically to see whether mothers spoke with the same simplitude in both real and play situations. Results showed that mothers use both pitch height and pitch range to introduce the preverbal infant to the difference between play and nonplay situations. (Author/JL)

Analysis of speech samples from British female adults (N=8) revealed that the subjects increased vocal pitch when addressing young children, but not as much as previously studied North American subjects did. Pitch increases were more commonly observed in free speech than in reading-aloud conditions. (23 references) (Author/CB)

Investigated the use of "mama" or similar sounds referred to as "mama" by 75 infants less than 6 months of age. Parents were directed to listen for "mama" sounds and to note the sounds made, the age of onset, whether the sounds appeared to be directed to any person or persons, or whether they appeared to have a purpose. (Author/VWL)