Details findings indicating that most early linguistic competence is item based. Maintains that language development proceeds without evidence of system-wide syntactic categories, schemas, or parameters. Suggests that findings are not easily explained by the development of children's skills of linguistic performance, pragmatics, or other external…

In response to earlier studies by Thompson and Chapman (1977) and Clark and Clark (1977), 16 middle-class and upper-class White children between 1.2 and 2.2 were tested for overextension in production and comprehension. (AM)

When task-related variables are carefully controlled, the referential communication paradigm provides a useful assessment tool for focusing on characteristics of the speaker in a communicative setting. It serves as a useful instructional tool by providing negative listener feedback for inadequate descriptions. (Author)

The purpose of this study was to synthesize theories and known facts of language acquisitions provided by transformation-generative grammarians and the cognitive theories of Piaget and Vygotsky into a unified theory and to suggest a partial model of the reading process. Review and analysis of transformational-generative theory strongly indicate…

This introduction to, and comment upon, a symposium on communicative competence argues that the appropriate unit of analysis in language development is communicative competence and proposes that the development of communicative competence can be studied usefully through observing children's communication during role play. Communicative competence…