Describes discourse development in the sign language of 24 profoundly deaf children. Findings indicate children were acquiring appropriate discourse strategies comparable to those used by hearing children in spoken conversations and adult deaf signers. (DF)

Suggests that children's use of social scripts for the production of sustained dialog in peer interaction depends on the nature of role play and that their attempts at script expansion are precursors to adults' recognition of the potential of conversation for self-expression. (FL)

Analyzes different strategies used by speakers/writers and hearers/readers to deal with underspecified coherence relations, phrased in terms of Horn's (1984) Q- and R- principle. Presents data from the psycholinguistic literature on the interpretation of underspecified relations and data from language-acquisition research suggesting that both…

Concludes that by grade four children have mastered the basic intrasentential use of both "but" and "although." Adds that not even by grade eight do children display knowledge of the intersentential rule of focus governing adult use of these conjunctions. (FL)

Suggests that even the youngest children use systematic strategies in ordering the elements of a story based on causal and temporal relationships. (FL)

Examines how native and nonnative undergraduate-student speakers adjust their referring expressions to each other in conversation. Finds that lexical entrainment was just as common in native/nonnative pairs as in native/native pairs; natives uttered more words than nonnatives in the same roles; and native expressions were judged less…

Indicates that (1) children's violations decreased with age; (2) in the dyadic context, fathers assumed a more directive role in response to children's violations than did mothers; (3) there were no between-parent differences between parents regarding reactions to children's violations in the triadic context. (NKA)

Examines elementary school-aged children's knowledge of directives. Presents findings of cross-sectional research which contrasted first-, third-, and fifth-grade students' comprehension, production of, and reasoning about directives varying in degree of explicitness. Indicates that children's knowledge of directives continues to develop during…

Analyzes language teaching and learning as it transpires during the course of verbal interaction in the home. (DF)

Proposes that dialogue provides children with opportunities to participate with adults in creating linguistic relationships of which they would be incapable alone. Reports the findings of a study of dialogues between mothers and their young children. (FL)

Reports the results of a study showing that one stylistic feature, the inclusion of connectives other than "and/then" is a good predictor of explanation in five- to ten-year-olds, but a straightforward lack of linguistic resources is not necessarily what limits older children's achievement of explanatory narrative. (HTH)

Describes a psycholinguistic investigation of children's competence in the production of extended discourse, concentrating on discourse form (narrative versus expository) and production modality (written versus spoken). (SKC)

Examines telephone discourse of twenty children between two and five years of age for answerer rules, turn-taking, constructional units, conversational acts, closing sequence, and ability to take messages. Shows developmental differences, although mastery of discourse skills appeared only in response categories, and primarily at four and five…

Explores three aspects of temporally displaced talk between mothers and children: (1) the role of the knowledge base in such talk; (2) the effect of mother talk on child talk; and (3) the impact of such talk on the child's knowledge base. Indicates that maternal speech can mediate information and experience and contribute to the child's world…

Analyzes play discourse participation frameworks in groups of different gender and age compositions, focusing on different ways that children "voice" a pretend play role. Uses a preschool classroom for an observational study. Finds significant differences in voicing used by older and younger play groups. Discusses results with respect to the…