Conventional implicatures are omnipresent in daily life communication but experimental research on this topic is sparse, especially research with children. The aim of this study was to investigate if eight- to twelve-year-old children spontaneously make the conventional implicature induced by "but," "so," and…

Figurative language, such as metaphor and metonymy are common in our daily communication. This is one of the first studies to investigate metaphor and metonymy comprehension using a developmental approach. Forty-five typically developing individuals participated in a metaphor-metonymy verbal comprehension task incorporating 20 short…

Examines the relationship between formal operational reasoning and two language variables--subordinate clauses and tentative statements. Supports Piaget's position of independence between linguistic and cognitive development, showing how subordinate clause use and tentative statement use are not related significantly to performances on reasoning…

A study was undertaken to explore the relationship of mothers' language to infant development in terms of the infants' development of sensorimotor intelligence. Specifically, the study chronicled the infants' advances in sensorimotor development from J. Piaget's Stage II to Stage III as a possible explanation for changes in maternal language. It…

The ability to produce and recognize paraphrases is necessary for a child's linguistic development. The purpose of this paper is to explain how three basic sentence types interact with age in determining the strategy a child uses in producing paraphrases. Three paraphrase strategies considered are lexical substitution, syntactic rearrangement, and…

A study investigated developmental changes in children's fluency in interpreting metaphors. Specifically, it examined the development of an implicit interpretation strategy found in adults of mapping relational structure from base to target. Ten subjects from each of three age groups--five to six years, nine to ten years, and college-age…

This paper describes the process by which student teachers in field experience programs transform present experience into personal knowledge through experiential learning. The paper is guided by the contemporary understandings about languaging; which include reading, writing, talking, listening, and the transformation of experience into new…

As human understanding is largely metaphorical, what metaphor is, how children use it, and how they can be taught to use it more effectively are important educational concerns. A direct or indirect comparison between two apparently unlike things, metaphor consists of a topic, a vehicle of comparison, and ground--or traits--linking the topic and…

A study investigated the linguistic development of three kindergarten children judged to be high, moderate, or low in emergent reading ability. Specifically, the study examined whether a developmental direction from dialogue to monologue exists in the children and whether a characteristic of thought termed "inner speech" underlies each…