Children exhibiting a referential orientation seem more likely to acquire new object names than nonreferentially oriented children. Also, children's selection of words may be influenced by the phonological structure of the words. (Author/RH)

In two experiments, preschoolers interpreted a novel count noun applied to an unfamiliar stuffed animal as referring to a basic-level (such as a person or a dog) kind of object rather than to a context (such as a passenger) or a life-phase (such as a puppy) kind of object. (MDM)

Although research on the language of the disadvantaged child is receiving much impetus, few extant studies have been helpful to the teacher. This article reexamines widely held misconceptions about disadvantaged child language in light of modern linguistic and psycholinguistic advances. (WY)

Results of four experiments suggest that two-year-olds may be capable of forming inclusion relations when they hear a novel word for an object that already has a familiar name. (PCB)

Three experiments found that (1) nine-month olds listened more to two-syllable words with strong-weak stress patterns than weak-strong stress patterns; (2) six-month olds showed no preferences for stress patterns; and (3) nine-month olds showed preferences for strong-weak over weak-strong stress patterns in speech sounds passed through a low-pass…

Two strategies that children use to figure out new word meanings--attention to linguistic form class and the assumption of lexical contrast--were examined. It was found that very young children use both form class and lexical contrast to interpret new words. (PCB)

Sessions of verbal interaction (N=22) significantly facilitated syntax acquisition by 32- to 40-month-olds. In response to children's sentences, experimenters replied with recast sentences that maintained the same meaning but provided new syntactic information. A selective bias in these replies was matched by selectively stronger facilitation in…

Tests the hypothesis that the extent to which the durations of pauses (silences within the utterances of a single speaker) and switching pauses (silences between the utterances of 2 speakers) in the speech of children in conversation become similar (i.e., exhibit conversational congruence) is positively related to age. (BRT)

Tests the hypothesis that mothers would label objects with adult-basic level terms when talking to other adults, but would label the same objects with child-basic terms when speaking to their young children who were just starting to talk, even though these labels may be very much "incorrect" by adult standards. (Author/RH)

Samples of spontaneous speech were collected from 20 English and 20 German preschool children and their mothers. The children's frequency of use of various tenses was compared at different age levels within each language, across languages, and with their mothers' frequency of tense usage in speech to the children. (Author/JMB)

Reveals that young children acquiring Mandarin Chinese differentiate subject from topic, even though Chinese is a "topic-prominent" language. Data are based on results of a standardized, elicited imitation test of 95 Chinese children in Taiwan. Subjects between 2 years, 6 months and 5 years of age responded to coordinate as well as…

Five studies examined the contributions of syllable-ordering and rhythmic properties of syllable strings to 6- and 9-month-old infants' speech segmentation. Results indicate that the capacity for integrating multiple sources of information in speech perception emerges between 6 and 9 months, in rough synchrony with the emergence of integration in…

This study examined the factors influencing the choice of the conjunctions "and" or "but" in joining two clauses of a compound sentence. Subjects were students at first-, fourth-, seventh-, and tenth-grade and adult levels. (Author/ED)

Presents evidence from studies on adults' language processing and children's language acquisition that the lexicon is at the core of grammatical generalizations at several levels of representation. Proposes that phonological acquisition might provide the bootstrapping into grammatical generalization in general. Concludes that age-appropriate…