Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction…

Computer programs for linguistic analysis of language samples from bilingual children were surveyed in order to evaluate their usefulness. Eight programs which could be implemented on the UCLA IBM 370/3033 computer were considered. It was determined that the Computer Assisted Language Analysis System was the most promising in terms of capabilities…

Children ages 1 1/2 to 3 years were tested to determine their comprehension of the terms "in,""on," and "under." It was found that children who listened to a pretest story involving the objects to be used in the study showed markedly better comprehension of the terms than children not exposed to the pretest activity.…

Investigates the perceptual representation of speech by young infants using a modification of the high-amplitude sucking (HAS) procedure. Results demonstrate that the infants' representations preserve detailed information about both the consonantal and vocalic portions of the syllables. (Author/RWB)

Reveals that young children acquiring Mandarin Chinese differentiate subject from topic, even though Chinese is a "topic-prominent" language. Data are based on results of a standardized, elicited imitation test of 95 Chinese children in Taiwan. Subjects between 2 years, 6 months and 5 years of age responded to coordinate as well as…

This investigation addresses problems of defining verbal imitation, and suggests solutions by analyzing verbal interactions between two children and their mothers. Children were between 18 and 35 months old, with a mean length of utterance between 1.4 and 4.2 morphemes. Analyses focus upon the uses these children made of maternal models; 10…

Assesses the interrelations among the functional properties of maternal speech, the structural properties of maternal speech, and child language growth for a period of six months for 22 two-year-old children and their mothers. (HOD)

A study of mother-child interaction focused on the contingent responses children make to various mother strategies to elicit language and the mothers' frequency of using that tactic. The subjects were six normal and four retarded children, matched for general language skills, and their mothers. Mother-child interactions videotaped at home were…

Designed to reveal children's awareness of print and use of contextual clues and to discover their metalinguistic awareness, language use, and attitudes toward reading and writing, this instrument consists of six tasks. The first three, print awareness tasks, present familiar labels and signs with different degrees of contextuality. The fourth and…

The background, rationale, elements, and organization of the newly-formed Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database containing child language data-transcripts are outlined in this first issue of their newsletter. The system was formed in response to a need for greater efficiency in data sharing, greater precision in data collection…

A study of the use of the complex Finnish morphological rule system in 45 children, aged 20-24 months, examined the children's inflection of nouns and verbs in speech characteristic of everyday Finnish. Analysis of the correct, unanswered, and incorrect test items found six classes of errors, which were then examined for clues to the underlying…

The results of an examination of computer data formatting and data analysis strategies from two diverse second language projects and their implications for establishing standards are outlined in the form of suggested formatting conventions and analysis procedures. The formatting suggestions address the issues of distinguishing line types,…

Reports on data collected in nine age ranges from 18 months to 71 months that examined children's ability to understand emotion-descriptive adjectives when used by adults and their own use of these words in productive vocabulary. (HOD)

Tests the universality hypothesis of language acquisition by asking young monolingual English and Japanese children to verify true affirmatives, false affirmatives, false negatives, and true negatives. The hypothesis was not supported in the case of Japanese-speaking children. A theory of cross-linguistic language acquisition is proposed.…

A collection of papers on neurolinguistics includes: "Communication Strategies in Aphasia" (Elisabeth Ahlsen); "Speech Planning in the Light of Stuttering" (Ann-Marie Alme); "L. S. Tsvetkova's Aphasia Rehabilitation Method and Its Applications" (Ritva Hanninen); "Semantic Aphasia and Luria's Neurolinguistic Model" (Birgitta Johnsen); "Aphasic…