This paper examines the way children younger than two use non-verbal devices (i.e., deictic gestures and communicative functional acts) and pay attention to discourse status (i.e., prior mention vs. newness) of referents in interactions with caregivers. Data based on semi-naturalistic interactions with caregivers of four children, at ages 1;00,…

Data on four infants between the ages of 12 and 20 months were collected to answer two questions about children's communication behavior. (1) Is there a correspondence between communicative intentions expressed in gestures and vocal utterances? If both spring from common organismic tendencies, it should be possible to discern an "indicating"…

A framework which considers speech and language as separate entities in a symbiotic relationship is presented, and basic questions are raised concerning how speech and language function together and what their reciprocal effects are. Based on the notion that speech and language are independent, various examples of speech without language and of…

Developed as part of the Milieu Language Teaching Project at the John F. Kennedy Center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, this KIDTALK Behavior-Language Coding Protocol and manual measures behavior occurring during adult-child interactions. The manual is divided into 5 distinct sections: (1) the adult behavior codes describe…

This book reports the proceedings of the conference on the role of speech in language, the fifth conference in the "Communicating by Language" Series, sponsored by the Growth and Development Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The focus of the first group of papers is on the development of speech in man and…

Examines the changes that occur from ages 5 to 11 in question/answer sequences of Dutch children. Function, content, form of questions, and listener response are analyzed. (EKN)

The question is addressed whether a child would develop a communication system if a conventional linguistic model is absent. Six congenitally deaf children, who were not exposed to Sign Language, were observed and videotaped at play in their homes at intervals of one to three months. The children ranged in age from 1 year, 5 months to 4 years, 1…

The twelve papers in this volume, which concerns the interrelationship of language and sex, include: (1) "Difference and Dominance: An Overview of Language, Gender, and Society," by Barrie Thorne and Nancy Henley; (2) "Women's Speech: Separate But Unequal?" by Cheris Kramer; (3) "The Making of a Nonsexist Dictionary," by Alma Graham; (4) "The…