Discusses the modifications in the direction of simplified and more linear language (American Sign Language) used by deaf mothers with their deaf children. (EKN)

Tests the hypothesis that mothers would label objects with adult-basic level terms when talking to other adults, but would label the same objects with child-basic terms when speaking to their young children who were just starting to talk, even though these labels may be very much "incorrect" by adult standards. (Author/RH)

Preschool children aged 2.6 to 5.0 were presented with reversible active and passive sentences in four comprehension test settings. The children's response patterns were analyzed in terms of individual response patterns. Extralinguistic cues accounted for the most common patterns. (Author/AM)

The continuity in development of syllable duration patterns was examined in seven young children as they progressed from preword to multiword periods of vocalization development. Results revealed no systematic increase or decrease in the duration of bisyllables produced by the children as a group, whereas lengthening of final syllables was…

Similarity neighborhoods for words in young children's lexicons were investigated using three computerized databases. Results revealed that words in five- and seven-year-olds' lexicons have many fewer similar neighbors. (Author/CB)

Develops a psychologically plausible model of the development of word-naming skills in children in order to verify psychological evidence indicating the importance of children's underlying phonological skills as determinants of the ease with which they learn to read. This model is highly successful in learning the pronunciations of single-syllable…

This study examined the influence of metrical patterns (syllable stress and serial position) of words on the production accuracy of 20 children (ages 22 months to 28 months). Among results were that one-fourth of the initial unstressed syllables were omitted and that consonant omissions, though few, tended to occur in the initial position.…

Investigates the claim that very young children avoid backwards coreference in their interpretation of sentences containing pronouns. It is argued that children initially prefer internal coreference even when such a response is disallowed for structural reasons and that avoidance appears to be a late developing phenomenon characteristic of…

Compares frequencies of cooccurrences in infant babbling between phonetic and contextual categories to expected frequencies, and considers deviations to be patterns in babbling. Results are provided of an examination of utterances of three Canadian-English and three Parisian-French infants whose babblings were transcribed and categorized according…

This paper constitutes a response to Lust and Mazuka's (1989) defense of the Principal Branching parameter and their critique of O'Grady, Suzuki-Wei, and Cho's (1986) experiment, which purported to show that even children learning left-branching languages exhibit a preference for forward patterns of anaphora. (Contains 16 references.) (JL)

A study explored the ability of children to comprehend expressions of uncertainty in varying degrees (e.g., "not likely, possible, probable"). Subjects were 42 French students aged approximately 9, 12, and 15. Results, including age and gender differences, and implications for classroom communication are discussed. (MSE)

Analyzed correct wh-question production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors in one child's wh-question data. Argues that two current movement rule accounts cannot explain patterning of early wh-questions. Data can be explained by the child's knowledge of particular lexically-specific wh-word+auxiliary combinations, and inversion and universion…

A study was conducted of the development of consonant clusters in the phonology of a native English-speaking child. His progress was studied over a year and a half period, in three one-month segments. His speech was recorded by tape and transcribed. Techniques used to elicit consonant clusters included real word imitation, imitation of nonsense…

This study was conducted to examine the acquisition of the meaning of the temporal conjunctions "before" and "after." The initial hypothesis was that in the acquisition of a word, the child learns its semantic components one at a time. The subjects were 40 school children attending the Bing Nursery School at Stanford…

The beginning reading progress of children may be linked to sentence structures used in reading textbooks and the syntax of the child's oral language. An investigation was made of the preprimers and primers of three major publishing companies and of Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (SWRL) reading programs to…