The syndrome of childhood autism is typified by major abnormalities in language development, yet there are few systematic descriptions of autistic children's linguistic systems. This paper represents the beginning of a comprehensive investigation of the language of verbal autistic children and concentrates on comparing the syntax used by ten…

This monograph reports a longitudinal study of the language development of 211 pupils as they progressed from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Data include transcribed interviews, written compositions, reading and IQ scores, listening scores and ratings, teachers' ratings on specified language factors, and reports of books read. Results…

Three studies assessing language comprehension of infants and toddlers through a method requiring a minimum of motor movement, no speech production, and differential visual fixation of two simultaneously presented video events provide insight into children's emerging linguistic capabilities and help resolve controversies about language production…

Argues that while many publishers may simplify the sentence structure in the basal reader to facilitate the process of learning to read, this practice may result in texts with stylistic features and text formats that are unnatural and uncharacteristic of written English or the language development level of the children. (FL)

Examines the second stage of natural second language attrition in the first language environment observed in a Japanese male returnee child. The subject spent 7 years in the United States, was 8-years-old when he returned, and was highly proficient in English. The second stage is characterized by a period of change in syntax and morphology,…

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that children's use of Japanese case particles obeys the grammatical principles introduced at the earlier stage of language development. In previous studies concerning the acquisition of Japanese case examined through the experimental method, it has been suggested that children acquire the functional use…

Children and adults participated in a series of experiments to examine certain cues to surface constituency that are salient to children in the recognition of syntactic structure. Cue recognition was studied through a set of experiments requiring seven-year-old children to repeat certain syntactic constituents. It was found that the children could…

The proceedings of this Georgetown University Round Table on developmental psycholinguistics are divided into four sections: (1) "Children's Language Acquisition: Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Theory"; (2) "Children's Language Acquisition and Communicative Disorders"; (3) "Developmental Psycholinguistics and Second…

This study examined the effects of children's cognitively based role expectations on their judgments of the grammatical acceptability of sentences. Sixty children, 12 each in grades 4 through 8, individually heard 10 sentences violating the Minimum Distance Principle (MDP). The sentences were grammatical, but linguistically complex, and violated…

Research indicates that first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition involve some of the same processes, yet L2 learners apparently acquire the structures of the target language in a systematic way by passing through a sequence of developmental stages. This study shows that in the earliest stages of syntactic development the L2 learner's…

The development of production and comprehension by one two-year-old girl of three Japanese constructions (passives, causatives, and "te moraw"), which have similar surface configurations "NP ga NP ni V ("rare"/ "sase"/ "te moraw") TENSE," is investigated through elicited imitations and responses to the investigator's questions about the content of…

The present paper discusses some linguistic correlates of early bilingualism, correlates which have implications for first cognitions about language. The paper also touches on the question of what linguistic environments are optimal for the very young child to acquire two languages fluently, testing the importance of a one-speaker/one-language…

This revised second edition of the 1966 bibliography has been brought up to early 1975 by the addition of more than 1200 new items, reflecting the rapid development of the field of linguistics during the previous decade. The items in this edition total 3,000. As in the first edition, the items are chosen so as to provide a comprehensive guide to…

Question-answer interactions were chosen as an effective means of investigating the effect of the linguistic environment on language development. Research was reviewed indicating that the improvement in question and answer performance of a maturing child is based on the advancement of both his linguistic and cognitive abilities and that the adult…

An extreme view of language acquisition sees base structures as innate, and acquisition of the grammar of a particular language as a process of learning the transformation rules needed to get from base structures to surface structures of adult native speakers. Base structures are understood to most resemble simple-active-affirmative-declarative…