A number of first language (L1) research studies are examined in an attempt to discover whether the hypothesized similarity between L1 acquisition and second language (L2) learning has any empirical support. The relationship between age and language learning is considered to determine if there are changes in learning ability, rate of learning and…

Discusses the importance of providing opportunities for children to learn through talk with an adult and contains excerpts from transcripts of parent-child and teacher-student conversations. (DF)

Examined the role of exposure to speech in children's vocabulary growth. Characterized vocabulary growth rates for children from 14 to 26 months of age. Found a relation between individual differences in vocabulary acquisition and variations in the amount of a mother's speech to her children. (BC)

This keynote address argues that policy makers should consider a project approach to implementation of research results regarding foreign language learning; they should pay attention to what is being revealed by a growing number of evaluation and impact studies concerning effective innovation and project effects. Second, language teaching research…

A case study analyzed the babbling and speech production of an infant, aged 20 to 24 months, whose family members spoke Portuguese, English, and French interchangeably. Focus was on vowel production, choice of lexicon, and the relationship between babbling and speech in the interaction of his languages. The child's utterances were recorded in…

The proceedings of this Georgetown University Round Table on developmental psycholinguistics are divided into four sections: (1) "Children's Language Acquisition: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Theory"; (2) "Children's Language Acquisition and Communicative Disorders"; (3) "Developmental Psycholinguistics and Second…

Children's early utterances were studied to determine whether there are developmental changes in the content, context, frequency, and form of their speech and the degree to which the changes correspond to changes in Piagetian cognitive stage. Twenty children were studied; six were 10 or 11 months old, and the remaining 14 were distributed evenly…

Literature on the sighted child suggests that blind children might be delayed in language acquisition and/or restricted in the semantic content of their utterances and in the communicative intentions they express. This study questions the use of guidelines appropriate for monitoring sighted children in the study of language development in blind…

The sentences in two first grade basal readers were categorized using Joan Tough's language function classification system to determine whether lower level basal readers allowed children to use their knowledge of language functions in reading. The range of language functions and language uses in the basals was compared to those that Tough found in…

Seven 18- to 32-month-old children received from seven to 26 experimental sessions each between October 1966 and April 1967. A session lasted from 5 to 15 minutes and concerned control over the verbal responses of the children with token-operated reinforcement devices. In order to make the results of the experimental sessions meaningful, an…

An interactionist-discovery theory of child phonology is proposed based on the following tenets: children invent their own phonological rules, and phonetic mastery is not automatically or generally in step with learning about phonemic contrasts. When a child learns the sound pattern of a language, there is constant interaction between the…

Up to the present, no studies have been done in the area of child language in Mexico. The Center of Linguistic and Literary Studies of the Colegio de Mexico carried out an empirical investigation of the language of six- to seven-year-old Mexican children. This paper presents, in preliminary form, some partial results of the investigation,…

Transcriptions of recorded conversations of nine-year-old French children are analyzed and presented in this comparative word count. The actual count of the 55,588 word corpus is arranged alphabetically and contrasted with selected, identical words found in the Francais Fondamental word list. Proper nouns are listed separately at the end of the…

Because learning to read is based on the ability to sift and organize sensory input, it is important for teachers and curriculum planners to know of the sorts of language experiences which develop reception and, subsequently, reading skills. Research on the effects of visual and auditory presentation of information and on early sensory experience…

Assuming that an infant's first stage of verbal communication is melodic and the result of controlling the motion of the vocal cords, a question arises concerning the second stage in development. Is it the shaping of the oral cavity of the direction of the articulators? The author's observation of an infant through his first year of development…