Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the…

This is a study of linguistic variability among social levels in West Germany and of the problems associated with doing such an analysis. The data, ordered according to sex and social levels, were collected from young children retelling narratives heard on tapes. The report represents a comprehensive study of the children's syntactic performance…

This collection of articles written over a period of 10 years concerning the transformational syntax of English has been divided into six sections. The articles in the first section provide background material for the reader with no specialized linguistic preparation. They present the fundamental questions that linguists are now asking, some of…

Two claims about early stages of language development--that of a limitation on length of utterance and that of reduction rules which delete major constituents from simple sentences--are questioned. Supporting arguments are reviewed, and alternative explanations offered. (RM)

This bibliography is intended for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who desire a convenient guide to linguistic scholarship in English, education, linguistics, and related areas. The listing is selective, but the compiler has tried to provide ample coverage of the major fields and topics, with emphasis on works published in the…

This article clarifies the position taken in the Greenfield and Smith book (1976), including relation to speech act theory, and elucidates some general theoretical issues in early language development. (Author/NCR)

This article reviews and criticizes Fay's particular transformational descriptions as implausible. (Author/NCR)

This Outline is designed for students of the English language who have progressed beyond the introductory stage and are confronted by a variety of often conflicting texts. It is an attempt to provide a "comprehensive account of the fundamental coherence to be found among the major theories of linguistics" and an "appraisal of the cultural lags…

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children aged 2;0 to 13;11 and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. Full passives were classified as reversible (The dog was chased by the girl), instrumental non-reversible (The lamp was broken by [or with] the ball), or agentive non-reversible (The lamp was broken…

The discussion throughout this paper is devoted to answering the question: What is the nature of our knowledge of language and what theoretical assumptions does the answer entail for linguistic description? Discussed are--(1) what it means to know a language, (2) the distinction between linguistic competence and performance, (3) justification of…

The paper shows informally how model-theoretical semantics may be used by a computer to give a straight-forward analysis of the meaning of children's language. This approach to semantics grows out of the main thrust of work in mathematical logic. It is discussed in the framework of generative grammar and is based on the application of the…

This paper, based on Rosenbaum's (1967) grammar of adult English, attempts to apply ideas of deep structure and transformations to child grammar. The main rules predicated include phrase structure rules, segment structure rules, contextual features, and transformational rules. In this approach, the role of transformations is to segment and place…

When asked to judge as correct or incorrect three categories of sentences (those with errors similar to their own patterns, those with common "baby errors," and correct sentences), four-year-olds made significantly fewer corrections of errors similar to their own, suggesting that children learn their own errors. (MSE)

The comprehension of deviant sentences is dependent on several linguistic variables. Grammaticalness (G), meaningfulness (M), and familiarity (F) are three variables which are potentially such. In order to study the effect of violating these variables upon Ss' responses to deviant sentences, 85 deviant and 15 correct sentences were assigned to…

Developmental trends in the effects of expectations regarding agent/action matches on judgments of sentence acceptability were investigated. Five sentences reflected expected relations ("harmonious") and five contradicted them ("contrary"). Twelve subjects each were in grades 4 through 8 during year 1; the same 60 subjects…