This article describes the language patterns of eight preschool students in a computer environment. Videotaped interactions at the computer center were analyzed to examine the nature of the verbal interaction that took place among peers. Using Halliday's functional framework, the authors found that regulatory was the most popular language pattern,…

Sessions of verbal interaction (N=22) significantly facilitated syntax acquisition by 32- to 40-month-olds. In response to children's sentences, experimenters replied with recast sentences that maintained the same meaning but provided new syntactic information. A selective bias in these replies was matched by selectively stronger facilitation in…

The language spoken to young children is described and shown to constitute a special speech style. (GO)

Infants learn their language by first determining, independent of language, the meaning which a speaker intends to convey to them, and by then working out the relationship between the meaning and the expression they heard. (Author)

An understanding of the meaning of words used by people through the centuries reveals much about the history of the time examined. The study of language provides archival resources to man's development. (JB)

Discusses a study of the grammar and syntax development in the speech of three children; adapted from the forthcoming book, Developmental Psychology Today" (CRM Books, Communications Research Machines, Inc., 1971). (Editor/SW)

Described is a study in which videotape recordings of the language of 11 hearing impared children (2-4 years old) were analyzed according to 16 pragmatic and 13 semantic functions. Findings are presented for the following study aspects: reliability of coding, effects of degree of hearing loss and intervention, oral communicative behavior,…

The use of interpersonal verbal routines such as greetings and thanks is examined as a universal phenomenon of human languages. Examples from Syrian Arabic, American English and other languages are used to show differing patterns of structure and use, susceptible of grammatical and sociolinguistic analysis. (Author/RM)

The influence of maternal language use patterns on the use patterns of the child was investigated in a black, low-income mother-child pair over a 20-month period, beginning at the child's 11th month of age. Video recordings were made of the pair's interaction in an unstructured playroom setting approximately every four weeks. Child multi-word…

This report describes an investigation of the acquisition by children of a symbolic system, specifically English nomenclature--that set of nouns that serves the function of naming, denoting, or referring to objects. The five studies involve nine experiments dealing with one or another of the aspects of this problem. Two questions guided these…

As a result of a program of research about cognitive processes involved in learning to read and write among 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year old-children, this book attempts to get teacher-researchers to think through the implications of recent insights into literacy and literacy learning. The first section examines instructional assumptions; proposes a new…