Experimental studies demonstrate that contrast helps toddlers to extend the meanings of novel adjectives. This study explores whether antonym co-occurrence in spontaneous speech also has an effect on adjective use by the child. The authors studied adjective production in longitudinal speech samples from 16 children (16-36 months) acquiring eight…

Summarizes a case study of the bilingual development (Italian/English) of a child in Australia. Data consist of recordings of her natural interactions from 18 months to her fourth birthday. The study focuses on how Christina learns the strategies of everyday interaction in the two languages. This is the first study to use the Systemic Functional…