Examines similarities between human evolution of language and the development of child's language, including the gradual building of sentence, the use of gestures, and the introduction of symbols. Discusses principles of human uniqueness, brain development, and the internal mechanisms for language stages, and offers conclusions similar to…

The ways in which preschoolers use the word "but" were studied. It was found that the eight preschoolers, who ranged in age from 3;9 to 5;5, were able to use "but" to express a number of different types of adversative relationships. "But" introduced clauses containing information that: (1) contrasted with shared knowledge about the usual state of…

The early and continued use of semantic, syntactic and contextual clues in recognizing mispronounced words was demonstrated in an experiment involving preschoolers, grade school students and college students. Errors in highly predictable words and contexts were most easily recognized by all regardless of reading ability. (PMJ)

Examines the innate faculties that underlie linguistic competence, especially syntactic competence, and proposes a theory of these faculties which accounts for the complexities of language and the evolution of human language. (AM)

Three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the "easy to see" construction (such as in the sentence "children are hard to understand") is acquired at a younger age than the 7-9 year range reported by previous studies (Cambon and Sinclair, 1974; Chomsky, 1969; 1972; Cromer, 1970; Kessel, 1970).…

Two major strategies for linguistically encoding an idea or proposition are suggested. The first strategy involves encoding an idea in the space of a single utterance, while the second strategy conveys the proposition through a sequence of two or more utterances. The tendency has been to focus on discourse as a composite of sentences (the first…

The use of locative prepositions in the spontaneous speech of 30 Hebrew speaking children two to three years old was studied. The rank order of locative prepositions is determined according to the correct use in obligatory contexts, and tentative conclusions are drawn concerning the order of acquisition of these terms in Hebrew. An attempt is made…

This investigation studied the performance of fifteen normal and fifteen language-disabled children on experimental pragmatic tasks and on a standardized Piagetian measure of sensorimotor intelligence. The children were matched for mean length of utterance, all subjects performing at the holophrastic level. A series of experimental measures was…

Sixty-five grade 5-6 children were tested on a verbal recall task involving material of varying semantic and syntactic content. There was no difference between best and poorest readers in their performance on random lists of words, but there were clear differences on meaningful sentences and on syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous…

This is a report of a study conducted by a group of teachers to discover the extent to which students in the first three years of school were aware of the phonetic system of their native language (French) with emphasis on the means they used to analyze it. In the first year, the children discovered phonetic oppositions by touching their lips and…

Children's self-monitoring of language production, as it is reflected in spontaneous speech repair, was studied. Recordings of the speech of three children aged two to three were analyzed for spontaneous phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic repairs. After tabulation, repairs were identified as "for the listener"…

Reports on an action research study to determine the possibilities of extending language development opportunities for 26 male 4 to 5-year-old students. Describes teaching methods used, including story telling, questioning, and drama. Explores issues that emerged during the study and evaluates teacher behavior. (CFR)