Language skills are vital to children's learning and well-being, and the first 5 years of life are an especially critical time for language acquisition. Research suggests that when early childhood teachers create language-rich environments, children develop stronger receptive and expressive language abilities, especially children from low-income…

A reliable clinical taxonomy of illocutionary acts for young language learning children was determined and the distributions of those illocutionary acts in naturalistic play situations with 12 Down syndrome and nondelayed children (20 to 89 months) and their mothers were examined. (Author)

Intended for parents of blind children, the booklet presents guidelines regarding potential difficulties in blind children's language development. The first section focuses on repetitions and offers suggestions on dealing with and responding to those repetitions. Section 2 considers reasons for blind children's questions, including attention,…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether children, ages 4-7 assign invariant labels to objects or describe the objects in terms of the context of alternatives. The acquisition of adjective ordering rules and information limits on children's utterances were also examined. (JMB)

Longitudinal observations of six congenitally deaf children (1-4 years old) with hearing parents were performed to determine the structure of semantic relation representation. Ss' semantic relation phrases were analyzed in terms of case relations. Cases were found to be distinguishable from each other in terms of production probability. Two…

Semantic-cognitive language sampling procedures to assess language development are used at the Kennedy Center Experimental School which serves handicapped children from 3 months to 6 years of age. A half hour of natural language is transcribed with a written description of the context. Fifty consecutive sentences or 100 utterances are selected and…

The language spoken to young children is described and shown to constitute a special speech style. (GO)

This discussion centers on language development in young children particularly as it relates to Piaget's work. The author believes guidelines are lacking for describing structurally the outcome of the language acquisition process at different stages and that there should be more collaboration between linguists and psychologists in this area. (MS)

The author discusses the difference between the use of a sign language (which has its own lexico-semantic, syntactic, and expressive rules) and the use of signs as codes representing English in various ways; he urges use of sign language to provide early natural language experience for deaf children. (Author/LS)

Results confirm the value of play activities for language development, and illustrate the nature of linguistic interaction among groups of five-year-olds. (RL)

Describes a literature-based oral language program and its effects on Black children's ability to reproduce standard English structures. (ST)

Described is a study in which videotape recordings of the language of 11 hearing impared children (2-4 years old) were analyzed according to 16 pragmatic and 13 semantic functions. Findings are presented for the following study aspects: reliability of coding, effects of degree of hearing loss and intervention, oral communicative behavior,…

Surveys recent research in language acquisition, emphasizing the views of M. A. K. Halliday. (RL)

Comments on Cazden's paper "How Knowledge about Language Helps the Classroom Teacher-Or Does It: A Personal Account," which appeared in the previous issue of "The Urban Review," by drawing upon personal and professional experiences, asserting that "a child's or adolescent's 'silence' or shyness does not mean an incapacity for further development."…

A study investigated phonological skills of 8 African American English (AAE)-speaking 2-year-olds. They acquired and used the same phonemes and phonological processes as described in the literature for both AAE-speaking toddlers and toddlers speaking Standard American English. Results could not distinguish typical phonological development from…