Research in psychology and in linguistics has converged to suggest that the syntactic frames in which verbs appear carry meanings of their own, apart from the meaning of the verbs themselves. To date, however, a gap has existed between these two lines of research: Research in psychology has inferred the meanings of frames only indirectly; research…

Examines phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling of infants from 7 to 11 months of age. The investigation was to verify assumptions that, in infant vocal development, there is a systematic increase in the phonetic variation of these babbles, and separate stages of repetitive and nonrepetitive babbling are posited. (22 references) (GLR)

IN THIS ARTICLE THE AUTHOR GIVES AN OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS DURING THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE PUBLICATION OF VOLUME 34, NUMBER 2 OF "REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH" IN APRIL 1964. DISCUSSED ARE (1) LEARNING AND NATIVISTIC THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, (2) EMPIRICAL FINDINGS IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLINGUISTICS,…

Examines the effects of chronological age, mental age, and intelligence quotient on verbal imitation of five-year-old children, concluding that transition occurs during the fifth year of life as young five-year-olds emitted more mimical and less conceptual responses than older five-year-olds. (RB)

A major concern in recent research is whether perceptual or functional information is of primary importance in children's early word meanings. In the study described here, artificial objects were used so that form and function could be independently manipulated. There were 57 subjects, ranging in age from 2.5 years to adulthood. The subjects were…

This study constitutes the beginning of a longitudinal investigation of phonological development of four children from birth to 2 years. Little variation was found in mean fundamental frequency. Duration, within-utterance range and variability did show developmental change. (RM)

The use of the verbs "go" and "come" was examined in the spontaneous speech of seven two-year-olds. As verbs of motion, the words were used in the context of describing the contour of movement rather than as means of relating end-points of a journey. This is considered crucial in explaining children's difficulty in discriminating the verbs in…

Case studies of a few naturally bilingual children are reported in the context of a larger research project with bilingual children living in Rome. Studies focused on personality traits present from birth and concomitant with bilingual development. Data confirm full psychological normality on the part of bilingual children. (Author/AMH)

This paper discusses C. Chomsky's 1969 paper on children's syntactic development and the subsequent studies made to test her findings. Later studies indicate that Chomsky's results were not clearly differentiated, and a slight alteration in procedure changes results significantly. (CHK)

There are problems in interpreting the naming behavior of children. Children may misname a word because the word is absent from their vocabulary, because it is not yet firmly established, or because of a word retrieval or lexical assessing problem. Preliminary results are reported of an experimental technique designed to account for these…

A study compared learning disabled (LD) adolescents with oral expressive problems to non-learning-disabled (NLD) adolescents on a formal operations task, with emphasis on a comparison between non-verbal performance and verbal explanations of the task. This paper reports part of the study, a comparison of two high school freshman subjects. The task…

This article reports on a study to determine the role of intonation in language acquisition. Related studies are mentioned. Research methods for the study are outlined and two case studies are reviewed. Conclusions show that adult-child interaction influences not only the child's use of intonation but also his acquisition of syntax. (Text is in…

RESEARCH PROJECTS IN PROGRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR ARE OUTLINED IN THIS REPORT. EACH PROJECT DESCRIPTION INCLUDES A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE PURPOSES, SCOPE, AND DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH, AS WELL AS AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORK ACTUALLY UNDERWAY. THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS ARE ALSO…

Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded over a five-week period after the first emergence of cooing were studied. It was found that the features of the more primitive sound types regrouped themselves in comfort sounds. The implications for theories of prespeech development are discussed. (EJS)

The development of plurals in two German-speaking children was analyzed, based on observational data. It was argued that the children were learning plurals by rote, conditioned by morphological complexity which cannot be subsumed under any general rule. (Author/NCR)