The research reported in this paper concerns an initial study asking two questions: Is second language learning like first language learning? Is there a change in learning rate or process with age? A nonrandom sample of children aged 4 to 9 years was studied. Subjects were 31 English-speaking children in Geneva, Switzerland, who were in schools…

This paper focuses on four studies of pupils' reading comprehension completed at the University of Alberta. A number of investigators have described the acquisition and use of connectives by pupils and have indicated the importance of connectives in the development of abstract logical thinking. (Teachers often consider these words too simple to…

Nine transcripts of recorded conversation of German children ranging from 10 through 19 years of age are of special interest to linguists working on child language. The recordings, made in Heidelberg, Berlin, Hanover, and Urach/Wurttemberg, include elicited behaviors called "linguistic activities". The interviewers attempt to elicit: (1)…

The phonologies of three English-speaking children at approximately two years of age are examined. Two of the analyses are based on published studies; the third is based on observations and recordings made by the author. Summary statements on phonemic inventories and on correspondences with the adult model are presented. For the third case, fairly…

Relatively little research has been done on the quantitative characteristics of children's word usage. This spoken count was undertaken to investigate those aspects of word usage and frequency which could cast light on lexical processes in grammar and verbal development in children. Three groups of 30 children each (boys and girls) from…

The pronunciations of children do not merely represent accidental misses with respect to adult pronunciation. Children employ substitutions and deletions in highly systematic ways; child pronunciations reflect a set of simplification strategies. The major common processes of both normal and abnormal child phonology result in simplification of…

Discusses nominal-pronominal reduplication (NPR) in the language of children ages seven and nine in four situations. Younger children produced more NPR; all children produced little NPR talking to their peers and increasing amounts talking to adults. Examples are given and analyzed. (EJS)

Analysis of parent language with toddlers with three different types of toys found few differences as a function of parent or child gender. The three contexts elicited their own language patterns and suggested that children who play frequently with dolls receive more opportunities to learn and practice language. (Author/CB)

Analysis of the free speech of one- to three-year-olds (N=21) found that measures of mean length of utterance (MLU) are positively related to age, are reliable, and can predict grammatical development, although there are identifiable points in the developmental evolution of MLU and MLU-like indices beyond which their reliability and validity have…

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…

Investigates the inconsistencies of personal pronoun production both in production and between production and comprehension in a pronoun-reversing child. (EKN)

Presents the results of an investigation into the acquisition of syllable structure and stress by a preschool Dutch child. Shows how the structure of the child's output approaches the adult models in stages and discusses a phenomenon called "mutation," in which all continuants are consistently replaced with "n-" in onsets. (51…

Analyzes the oral language patterns of students from working class backgrounds, revealing a preference for practical efficiency of communication over grammatical correctness or precision. By school standards, their spoken narrations are confused, incoherent, and incorrect, leading to cultural misunderstandings, mutual incomprehension, and…

Investigated whether the rate and patterns of pronoun case error were influenced by the composition of an individual pronoun's paradigm. Twenty-nine children ages 2;6 to 4;0 years were audiotaped interacting with their primary caregivers in various settings. Results indicated that 27 children produced case errors. The composition of a pronoun's…

Explores perspectives and methodologies that sociolinguistics brings to ethnographic research in schools. The article identifies the methodological contributions arising from linguistics that interactional sociolinguistics and microethnograpy share, such as the use of naturally occurring language data, the consultation of native intuition, and…