Describes a study that analyzes the naturalistic productions of "because" and "so" by 96 children, aged three-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half years of age, while narrating personal events. Analyzes results in terms of such factors as: correctness, types of causality, nature of actor/recipient, time of causality, producer, and linguistic issues. (SED)

Analysis of the use of the connective "but" by 3- to 9-year-olds indicated that all most commonly used the word to signal semantic relationships and for pragmatic functions. Younger children most frequently used "but" when causal or precausal relationships existed, and older children used "but" more to encode complex contrast. (Author/CB)

The distribution of a small number of syntactic structures in the speech output of 102 Israeli preschoolers was examined. Findings are reported on the proportion of grammatically analyzable clauses, the patterning of word order in Hebrew child language, and the emergence of syntactic connectedness through coordination and subordination of clauses.…

Traces the development of predicate use for genre and cohesion in the narratives of children aged two to five, examining predicate structures and types and their linkages via three types of parallelism and by means of explicit connectives. (Author/SED)