Traditional research methods of recording infant verbal behavior, namely, descriptions by a single observer transcribing the utterances of a single infant in a naturalistic setting, have been inadequate to provide data necessary for modern linguistic analyses. The Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior has undertaken to correct this…

Selected aspects of early phonological development are described, and eight important characteristics are suggested. It is held that the child plays a highly active, creative role in the acquisition process. The child's early vocables constitute a connecting link between babbling and adult-modeled speech; the child's phonological systems for…

Speech discrimination by 12 children aged about 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 years was tested, using the discrimination learning procedure of Shvachkin's 1948 Russian study. Recent work on the acquisition of syntax and semantics shows an ordered acquisition for linguistic items; this pilot study was to test whether the ability to discriminate between consonants…

Fricatives and affricates in different word positions and initial fricative clusters were elicited from three linguistically deviant children (ages five years, two months to seven years) and one normal child (age two years, nine months) by means of pictures depicting familiar objects. Data from two of the older children and the normal child are…

Analysis of adult evaluation of children's linguistic output provides a basis for elaboration upon the work of McNeill (1970) and Brown (1970). When limited to the uttered words of a child paired with an utterance spoken at an earlier time, adults cannot judge the relative age of the children making those utterances; in fact, their predictions of…

A longitudinal study of language development is being conducted in which ten recordings of spontaneous speech are being made of l28 children at 3-month intervals. Children were stratified with respect to age, sex, birth month, social and educational family background and family occupations. A matrix was constructed for two groups of children, with…

Strengthening and changing the curriculum to meet the needs of the inner-city child must be done by recognizing both the cultural aspects of the child's environment and the actual problems that he faces rather than by imposing traditional middle-class values, activities, and language. Steps suggested to both the teacher and the parent for…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the Peabody Language Development Kit (Experimental Edition, Level III) in enhancing verbal intelligence, achievement, and language ability of 46 low-achieving third grade subjects selected on the basis of their being at or below the 33rd percentile on the Total Language Section of…

The effects of certain linguistic dimensions on auditory blending performance and training were examined. Dimensions included type of phonological context, consonant-vowel or vowel-consonant (CV or VC); units to be blended, syllables or phonemes (S or P); and size of units, single or double. Six ordered 96-word training blends were administered to…

Traditionally linguists have considered pidgin languages as corrupted constructions of European vocabulary based on African or Asian syntax. Recent systematic studies of these languages show complex patterns of mutual influence on many levels. To explain the structural similarities of pidgin languages, some linguists, such as Keith Whinnom, have…

This study examined three potential situational determinants of children's question-asking: (1) the presence or absence of a peer; (2) whether or not the children are given tactual access to the materials being used to induce questions; and (3) whether these materials are presented three-dimensionally (as objects) or two-dimensionally (as…

Forty children each from nursery school, first grade, and third grade participated in a study of the use of symbolic mediators in the control of overt behavior of children with internal and external locus of control. Each child participated in three different verbal control tasks: a push-button task, a pounding-board task, and a serial-recall…

This document reports on three years of clinical research involving the development of effective clinical intervention procedures for children with slow language development. The assessment and treatment approaches discussed in the report are based upon the developmental model of grammar described in Developmental Sentence Analysis (DSA), a…

The multiordinal use of terms requires the ability to distinguish essential relationships and attributes from incidental ones. Until the child reaches adolescence, his tendency to confuse incidental and affective factors with those crucial to word meaning hinders his use of terms at all levels of abstraction. Korzybski's theory of multiordinality…

A study was conducted to determine criteria to measure successful language development and to determine what factors might be considered to be the determiners of this development. Subjects were 16 children, aged 3 years 3 months, selected on an intuitive basis from the 64 children in the older age group to represent the full range of development,…