This study analyses variation sets in a sample of child-directed speech (CDS) in Turkish in terms of their structure and effect on child speech. The term "variation set" was first introduced to describe the sequences of repetitions, in which the intention behind expressions stays the same throughout the whole conversation while the form…

Linguistic and pedagogical considerations about children's use of a second language in the classroom are discussed with reference to samples of speech obtained from ten to twelve year old children in Germany. The children had been taught the second language of English. The speech is examined in relation to functional and sociolinguistic criteria…

This report describes the steps by which ethnographic literature was explored for cross-cultural differences in the role of language with particular reference to its acquisition and use by children. The exploration is put in the context of ongoing work in the development of a systematic guide to field studies of this sort. A principal effort of…

A Language-research experiment designed to examine the linguistic competence of bilingual Italian-American children demonstrates that structures shared by Italian and English are acquired in approximately the same order and at the same rate, and that the sequencing of specific structures reflects linguistic complexity. Structures appearing in both…