This paper provides an introduction to Lakurumau, a previously undescribed and undocumented Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. The first part of the paper is a guide to the Lakurumau documentation corpus, deposited in the ELAR archive. The participants and the content of the deposit, the technology used for recording, and the ethical protocols…

While previous sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that children faithfully acquire probabilistic input constrained by sociolinguistic and linguistic factors (e.g., gender and socioeconomic status), research suggests children regularize inconsistent input-probabilistic input that is not sociolinguistically constrained (e.g., Hudson Kam &…

An area in need of study in child language acquisition is that of complex multilingual contexts in which there is little language separation by interlocutor or domain. Little is known about how multilingual children use language to construct their identities in each language or in both languages. Identity construction in monolingual contexts has…

A survey of the literature on children's language and reading, divided into three major areas: the child, the instructional materials, and the teacher. (DD)

Six Samoan children ranging in age from 2 to 16 were the subjects of a study to document the spontaneous production of the deictic verbs "sau" ("to come") and "aumai" ("to bring/give"). "Aumai" appears to be used before "sau" and is generally used more frequently than "sau." Imperatives with "aumai" tend to be directed to higher status persons or…

Narratives from part-Hawaiian children 5 to 12 years old in a variety of circumstances were collected for several years. Typical verbal routines, ways of analyzing the data, tendency of routines to structure speech events, functions of nonnarrative routines in narrative performance, and establishing a context for narration are considered. (EJS)

The frequencies and co-occurrence distributions of some of the prosodic features in the speech of children are discussed. The emphasis is on the determination of systems and structure of non-segmental lectal variability in the children's speech without primary reference to function. The primary data consisted of selected episodes of connected…

This paper examines the formal and functional properties of code-switching among Mexican-American children. Two formal types of code-switching, code-mixing and code-changing, are identified, and developmental patterns in their use are discussed. Two major functional types of code-switching are also differentiated. The first, situational…

This is a report on a study of the attitudes of French-speaking young people, aged 10 to 17 years, toward French as it is spoken in two sectors of Quebec City. One sector, Sainte-Foy, is mainly upper middle class; the other, Saint-Sauveur, is economically and socially disadvantaged. The research was carried out on the basis of work in French and…

THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY WAS TO INVESTIGATE THE INFLUENCE OF PHONETIC, SYNTACTIC, AND SEMANTIC DIALECT DIFFERENCES ON COMMUNICATION BETWEEN PERSONS FROM DIFFERENT DIALECT COMMUNITIES. THE THREE HYPOTHESES UPON WHICH THE STUDY WAS BASED STATED THAT PHONETIC, SYNTACTIC, AND SEMANTIC FEATURES OF DIALECT DIFFERENCES WOULD EACH CONTRIBUTE TO…

A study was conducted to examine children's use of social factors as bases for evaluating different patterns of code switching in dyadic social interaction. The factors were role-related and social norms, interpersonal accommodation, intergroup biases, and socio-cultural status. An initial study was conducted of monolingual and bilingual English…

This study on the African child had three objectives: (1) to become familiar with the environment of the African child, (2) to investigate the vocabulary to which the child is exposed at home and at school, and (3) to compare the vocabulary of the native language with that of the school. The first part of the study constituted a linguistic study…

The studies reported here constitute part of a project on language development and social influence. The question of what to do to obtain a linguistic development that is not retarded by an unfavorable environment is discussed, relative to different value systems. In the first three chapters a theoretical background is given in which…

Analysis of French spoken by French girls aged 11-12 years found that, unlike older counterparts, theirs shows variable linguistic behavior on the phonological level that suggests avoidance of vernacular forms, the "sociolinguistic gender pattern." However, one speaker's discourse shows manipulation of conversational tone comparable to adult…