Children's differing learning trajectories cross-linguistically have been at the forefront of gender acquisition research, often with conflicting results and conclusions. As a result, the source of children's different learning behaviors in gender acquisition has been unclear. I argue that children's gender acquisition is driven by the search for…

This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and…

Tests the hypothesis that children are predisposed to learn suffixes rather than prefixes. Results of four experiments generally support the hypothesis. Importance of language learning strategies and influences of child's experience on strategy use are discussed. (JMB)

Reports on a study of the acquisition of personal inflections in Portuguese, and presents an analysis of the speech of one of the children followed in the longitudinal study. (AM)

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)

Reports on research on the acquisition of adjectives vs inflectional endings in Italian children. Patterns resulting from a longitudinal study involving two children and an experiment involving 84 children are compared to patterns of adults participating in the latter experiment. (Author/AM)

Investigation of fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-graders' knowledge of derivational morphology and the relationship between that knowledge and their ability to spell derived words, found that, while there was a strong developmental trend in both the mastery of derivational morphology and the spelling of derived words, spelling performances lagged…

Three paper-and-pencil measures were administered to students in fourth (40 students), sixth (30 students), and eighth (30 students) grades to assess different aspects of their knowledge of English derivational suffixes. Results indicated that children appear to develop a rudimentary knowledge of derivational morphology--the ability to recognize a…

This paper is based on an investigation of an increasing tendency in modern German to use the second person singular imperative without the suffix "e." All major works on German grammar, including the standard reference books on the subject, require this suffix for all weak and most strong verbs. (Those verbs which change their stem vowel from "e"…

This paper seeks to formulate a principle that explains the working of the Japanese number system with respect to Japanese nouns and that defines the kinds of nouns and contexts that condition the forms of number expressions. It is the author's theory that in applying numbers to nouns, the Japanese make a formal distinction between things they…

Twelve Spanish-speaking kindergarteners livinq in Los Angeles were tested for usage of English verb tense morphemes through responses elicited during task situations that were dramatized with the use of toy-like realia. The children were first asked to provide a constructed response to questions, and were then given model sentences for immediate…