The present volume reflects the proceedings of the fourth annual symposium at the Carnegie-Mellon University, which dealt with developmental linguistics in general and with child language acquisition in particular. Contents include an Introduction by John R. Hayes; "Derivational Complexity and Order of Acquisition in Child Speech," by R. Brown and…

Methods that can be used by the teacher to encourage children to use standard language are discussed. Three specific instructions to the teacher are given: (1) Recognize that this is part of the natural language growth process and accept it for that; (2) Realize that it cannot be changed overnight. The child will have to be exposed to the accepted…

Presented are guidelines for a developmental roles approach to infant education. Developmental objectives are listed for language, cognition, socialization, independence, and movement at five levels: establishing the base, exploring the environment through actions, exploring the environment symbolically, exploring relationships, and preparing for…

This study investigates acquisition of two aspects of the meaning of color terms: semantic organization and reference. A longitudinal, repeated measure design was used, and data were collected from 33 subjects, 2 to 4 years old at first testing. Four tasks were used: one to assess semantic organization (the acquisition of the…

Investigated in this study was the relationship between an inquiry approach to science instruction and language development. Four classes of sixth-grade children from two socioeconomic groups participated in the study. The treatment consisted of 12 inquiry film sessions and six discussion sessions, each session 40 minutes in length. At the end of…

Analyzed syntactically were language samples of five mildly mentally retarded children (6-10 years old). (CL)

Discusses the possibility of a neurolinguistic interconnection between the parieto-temporo-occipital junction, semantic aphasis, and cognitive and language development around age seven. (Author/HP)

An analysis of sentence grammar is made to show that the ability to produce coherent texts emerges slowly and late in linguistic and cognitive development. (HP)

Discusses the inadequacies of the linguistic development theory called cognitive determinism and suggests instead the linguistic input hypothesis. Concludes that it is not either cognitive development or linguistic input that determines linguistic growth, but an interaction between them. (RM)

Tested the comprehension of children aged 4-12 of double negation in Chinese. Young children interpreted double negation as simple negation. Only the oldest children consistently interpreted double negatives as equivalent to affirmative sentences. (SKC)

Describes a study designed to compare color-name with shape-name learning by three-year-old children in an experimentally controlled format. Results show that children learned color-label associates significantly more slowly than matched shape-label associates, and they committed more errors with colors than with shapes during learning. Provides a…

A cross-sectional and a longitudinal study of two-year-old children was performed to investigate the developmental relationship between understanding differences in spatial point of view and correct comprehension and production of I/you pronouns. Results suggest that understanding spatial points of view is a cognitive prerequisite to understanding…

Discusses results of study that attempted to determine whether subject-auxiliary inversion occurs in yes-no questions before wh-questions and whether noninversion errors are characteristic feature of acquisition of wh-questions. Findings do not support previous claims that inversion is acquired in yes-no questions before wh-questions. Rather,…

Discusses the audio and video-recorded longitudinal data from six infants with varying degrees of vision. The findings indicate that there are basic differences in early language, which appear to reflect differences in cognitive development. (SL)

Examines the development of children's knowledge about the presuppositions of cognitive verbs that take sentential complements. Results indicate that the presuppositions of the factives "know,""forget," and "remember" and the nonfactive "think" are not learned until age four. "Believe," which has factive and nonfactive properties, is mastered…