Purpose: This study tests the hypothesis that toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) will show differences from contrast groups in preferences for attending to speech. Method: This study examined auditory preferences in toddlers with ASD and matched groups of (a) typical age-mates, (b) age-mates with nonautistic developmental disabilities,…

The purpose of this study was to describe the function-form relationships in a child's developing language by establishing a methodology for examining the child's early propositions and the predications which express them, identifying the points in the syntactic hierarchy at which different "meanings" are encoded, and investigating the…

Reviewed is research relating to language acquisition and language performance of deaf children. (SB)

This master's thesis focuses on the relationship between children's development of communicative competence and patterns of communication between children and their primary caregivers. An overview of major changes, since the 1950s, in the theoretical and empirical approaches to language development is presented in Chapter II. Within this overview,…

A longitudinal study investigated early syntactic forms in child language; this paper reports on findings dealing with differences in approach to syntactic acquisition. Seven children aged 16-20 months were the subjects, and audio or video tapes were made once every three weeks beginning prior to the development of syntax. Data collection…

In speaking a child sometimes makes constructions in which a sequence of separate utterances expresses a semantic relation not expressed by either utterance. These "vertical constructions" are the main point of this study. Previous studies of construction in child language have largely dealt with sentences. In this study, sentences are…

Departing from Baconian science which focuses on explanation of the occurrence of events, Chomsky's linguistics involves a different orientation--namely the explanation of form to account for linguistic behavior. The "knowledge" upon which linguistic judgements are based involves the premise of innate mechanisms. The assumption that speakers and…

This study investigates and determines how the processes involved in language acculturation and socialization become interrelated in the linguistic, cultural, and social development of white, Italian-American monolingual and bilingual children of working class parents in Boston's North End. This sociolinguistic study deals particularly with the…

This handbook serves as an introduction to the study of children's language development and as a supplementary aid in the training of research workers in the field of children's language learning. As a teaching aid, it is suggested this work be used with a film entitled "Psycholinquistic Research Techniques: Children's Language." Major chapters…

This booklet points out some of the characteristics of the varieties of English spoken in Riverside and in the rest of California. The first chapter provides a general discussion of language variation and change on the levels of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. The second chapter discusses California English and pronunciation and vocabulary…

The purpose of this research was to develop methods to study the effects of context on children's comprehension and production of temporal terms such as "before,""after,""next,""then," and "but first." A longitudinal study, using naturalistic and traditional laboratory methods, and three…

This report contains fourteen papers on a wide range of current topics and experiments in speech research, ranging from the relationship between speech and reading to questions of memory and perception of speech sounds. The following papers are included: "How Is Language Conveyed by Speech?;""Reading, the Linguistic Process, and…

Papers from the 1998 Hispanic Linguistics Symposium include: "Patterns of Gender Agreement in the Speech of Second Language Learners"; "'Nomas' in Mexican American Dialect"; "Parsing Spanish 'solo'"; "On Levels of Processing and Levels of Comprehension"; "The Role of Attention in Second/Foreign Language Classroom Research: Methodological Issues";…