This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and…

What are the sources of variation in the input, and how much do they matter for language acquisition? This study examines frequency variation in manner-of-articulation classes in child and adult input. The null hypothesis is that segmental frequency distributions of language varieties are unigram (modelable by stationary, ergodic processes), and…

This article presents the methodology used in a population-based study of early communicative development in Norwegian children using an adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventories (CDI), comprising approximately 6500 children aged between 0 ; 8 and 3 ; 0. To our knowledge, this is the first CDI study collecting data…

Our understanding of the relationships between lexical and phonological development has been enhanced in recent years by increased interest in this area from language scientists, psychologists and phonologists. This review article provides a summary of research, highlighting similarities and differences across studies. It is suggested that the…

Fikkert (1994) analyzed a large corpus of Dutch children's early language production, and found that they often add targetless syllables to their words in order to create bisyllabic feet. In this note we point out a methodological problem with that analysis: in an important number of cases, epenthetic vowels occur at places where grammatical…

Adult expansion of child utterances can serve as a communication check and as a base for child language research. Inappropriate expansion may be corrected by the child if it changes his meaning, or may be ignored, if word order or phonetics appeared correct to the child. (CHK)

Edwards (1992c) concerns data and data use rather than manuals. It presents principles to facilitate reliable archive research in an imperfect world. MacWhinney and Snow (1992) endorse the principles but disagree on important details, discussed in this response. (21 references) (KM)

Research on child language acquisition should distinguish between different possible causes of variation and not just attribute variation to individual variation. An alternative analysis using a different methodology can show that children's patterns of acquisition are actually relatively similar. (Author/CB)

A study of 5-year olds' ability to distinguish promises from predictions was suspected to have achieved its results due to methodological problems. A similar study with 32 children ages 5 to 6 that used several variations of the previous study's procedures was found to have similar results, suggesting the earlier findings were an accurate…

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)

Describes an unusual phonological pattern exhibited by a child aged two years that involves the production of word-final strident continuants in words whose adult forms contain these features in initial, rather than final, position (e.g., ops for soap). (13 references) (GLR)

Presents an outline for a theory of syntax acquisition, surveys other approaches to language acquisition, and addresses the following methodological issues: (1) the relevance of linguistic theory to the model; (2) how the model is tested; and (3) the domain of the theory. (Author/AM)

Garman (1974), reporting on 20 Tamil children aged 3 to 5, postulated a linguistic strategy and 2 prelinguistic strategies to explain results of a question-picture choice task involving sentences with embedded and subordinate clauses. Reanalysis of this data identifies four processing strategies and argues that certain grammatical sensitivities…

Investigates how early a developing bilingual who is exposed simultaneously to English and Spanish can make appropriate language choices. Kept detailed records of the child's cumulative vocabulary from the first word at 10 months and on weekly audiovideo recording in both Spanish and English contexts from age 1-3. (Author/VWL)

There has been relatively little discussion in the field of child language acquisition about how best to sample from children's spontaneous speech, particularly with regard to quantitative issues. Here we provide quantitative information designed to help researchers make decisions about how best to sample children's speech for particular research…