A replication and extention of a previous study involved 61 children aged three to five, who were asked to carry out certain instructions. Results indicate that children do observe the distinction between definite and indefinite pronouns as it applies to quantity. (Author/RM)

In an investigation of comprehension strategies in young children, children in R. Brown's Stages I, II, and III responded to commands varying in length, grammaticality, and meaning. (SB)

On the basis of two experiments on comprehension, it is argued that children go through at least three stages in acquiring the deictic contrasts between "here and there," and between "this and that." Children follow different routes through these states, since they choose different starting points in mastering deitic contrasts.…

This article discusses a study designed to ascertain the comprehension of the role of "because" in a sentence in children between the ages of 5;8 and 10;11. (CFM)

This research studied the processes which enable people to acquire semantic information from natural-language discourse. Specific objectives were: (1) to represent semantically the structural meaning of English discourse by a well-defined semantic model; (2) to develop a way of using the semantic representation of a text as a structural model for…

Two studies were conducted to discover possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged two to eleven. In the comprehension study, 100 children, aged three to five, were tested. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific "wh-" question-words. (Author/RM)

This article discusses a study designed to determine the order of acquisition of the two expressions "in front of" and "behind," using two featureless objects. (CFM)

This report summarizes two years of research by a team at the University of Austin, aimed at developing and testing a model of sentence comprehension. The general model that has guided the work maintains that, on the basis of cues available in a sentence's surface form, the hearer projects hypotheses about the grammatical relations and semantic…

Infants learn their language by first determining, independent of language, the meaning which a speaker intends to convey to them, and by then working out the relationship between the meaning and the expression they heard. (Author)

Swedes in four different age groups (9, 12, 15 and 18 years) judged written words which varied in three dimensions: syntactic category, objective frequency, and polysemy (multiple meaning). The subjects judged ease of comprehension of 24 words in a factorial arrangement. The method used was Thurstone's paired comparisons. A predicted complex…

Diary observations of two-year-olds' over-extended word use have been interpreted as arising from the word's underlying semantic feature structure. This interpretation was rejected after a study of five children. The need to construct models of early word meaning reflecting certain early language development patterns is discussed. (CHK)

The comprehension ability of 36 children at three stages of telegraphic speech was assessed using active behavioral responses to declarative and imperative sentences. A significant increase in verbal and behavioral appropriateness with age was found for imperative and declarative forms. Results are compared with Shipley, Smith and Gleitman's…

Ten objects were used to assess comprehension, production, and imitation of comparative and superlative suffixes in 100 children ranging in age from two years, six months, to four years, six months. (Author/AM)

This study examined the comprehension of Wh-questions in English in children between the ages of 5 and 9. The study showed that difficulties with Wh-questions are not overcome by the age of 9. (Author/RM)

Active and passive sentences were presented with probable and improbable semantic content to 100 first graders and 100 kindergartners. "Irreversible" sentences were considered improbable. In a design employing syntax, probability, grade, and sex as factors, probability and syntax were found significant both as main effects and in their…