The world's languages draw on a common set of event components for their verb systems. Yet, these components are differentially distributed across languages. At what age do children begin to use language-specific patterns to narrow possible verb meanings? English-, Japanese-, and Spanish-speaking adults, toddlers, and preschoolers were shown…

When speaking to young children just acquiring language, parents employ certain appropriate language features. Parental speech in English and Spanish was analyzed for presence and distribution of these features. Differences were noted, yet there was a high degree of similarity across parents and languages for frequently occuring features. (CHK)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with the following topics: oral language characteristics of college freshmen; the language development of a modern day "wild child"; children's understanding of relational terms; the relationship of…