The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate changes in knowledge acquired by children between the ages of 8 and 17, with respect to certain complex word-derivation processes and (2) to investigate the relation of the changes in children's knowledge of word derivation to various aspects of their reading achievement. The study used ten words…

A total of 224 subjects participated in a study to determine how children and adults comprehend logical connectives. Specifically, the study examined the effects of age, content, and practice on the encoding and combination of logical relationships expressed by six types of logical connectives: conjunction, disjunction, conditionality,…

It is possible to perform a structural analysis of similar conversations and define units within particular types of conversations to discover the regularities underlying the considerable variation in natural communication. Convergent communication consisting of an exchange of information in pursuit of a mutually agreed upon goal can be seen as a…

Two major strategies for linguistically encoding an idea or proposition are suggested. The first strategy involves encoding an idea in the space of a single utterance, while the second strategy conveys the proposition through a sequence of two or more utterances. The tendency has been to focus on discourse as a composite of sentences (the first…

The express purpose of this presentation is with education and the technology of training strategies which relate to the conditions under which any two language systems are to be learned. It is assumed that Black English is structurally different from Standard English. It is concluded here that although the burden upon bilingual children is heavy,…

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 is a study of the kinds of processes involved in learning the meaning of individual lexical items, and in particular how the acquisition of lexical meaning is related to the cognitive structuring of events on the one hand and the ability to produce syntactic paraphrases of a word's meaning and other related constructions on the other. It is…

The general goals of this study of Luo children in Kenya were (1) to provide a description of the acquisition of language in terms of categories acquired within the age range of 12-35 months; (2) to account for their linguistic competence in the generation of their language; and (3) to illustrate how social settings alter the linguistic…

The present level of understanding of the psycholinguistic processes and capacities underlying the child's acquisition of language is reviewed in this publication. In the first chapter, linguistic theories, biological characteristics of language learning, and the distinctions between language competence and language performance are discussed. The…

It is possible to examine the development of English wh-questions in first and second language learners and to detect regularities in the order of emergence of certain linguistic structures. It is also possible to speculate whether the stages in language acquisition correspond to the transformational derivation in transformational grammar. The…

Previous research has shown how macro-structures can affect children's verbalizations. This study focuses on whether conversational contexts of forms are learned along with syntax, on what makes syntax, and on how to predict speech. Transcripts of videotapes of young children provided a matrix of function or act against actual utterance, wherein…

Some insight into the relationship between language and thought can be achieved through a comparison between American Sign Language and English. This paper discusses several studies on this topic and defines some of the problems. The author feels that the deaf using American Sign Language cannot be considered linguistically deficient. A structural…

This project seeking to develop sound methodological research techniques for second-language is based on an initial pilot study which (1) identified and classifies the utterances of a child learning Spanish as a second language, and (2) determines whether there are any significant trends in the observed order of learning of kernels and transformed…