Results are described of a study of vocalizations of two female infants, classified as cry, discomfort, and vegetative sounds, recorded between one and eight weeks of age. The implications for later speech development are discussed. (Author/RM)

Intended for parents of blind children, the booklet presents guidelines regarding potential difficulties in blind children's language development. The first section focuses on repetitions and offers suggestions on dealing with and responding to those repetitions. Section 2 considers reasons for blind children's questions, including attention,…

The purpose of this study was to identify and provide normative data for weighting of those nonstandard linguistic features that make up deaf English. Subjects were prelingually or congenitally deaf high school students from the California School for the Deaf and a control group of normal-hearing fourth graders from a California public school.…

To demonstrate that the child learning language constructs his theory of language on the basis of the linguistic data available to him, this study investigated 21 linguistic parameters that Down's Syndrome and normal children are exposed to in their maternal linguistic environment. It was found that mothers produced certain levels of linguistic…

Two strategies that children use to figure out new word meanings--attention to linguistic form class and the assumption of lexical contrast--were examined. It was found that very young children use both form class and lexical contrast to interpret new words. (PCB)

Presents a case study of the babbling monologues produced by a Dutch child in the six weeks following acquisiton of the first word, which shows that this child's word production and his concurrent babbling are very much related. Concludes that word production influences the course of babbling and vice versa. (SED)

The acquisition of verbs may be more difficult than noun acquisition because verbs encode information that is inherently less stable and more ephemeral. A sorting-strategies method was utilized to analyze young children's acquisition of verb meaning. (DF)

Neologism is a term for any word introduced into a language regardless of the method of its creation. (DD)

Research with young Hebrew-speaking children revealed a development in linguistic control of the system of verb-pattern alternation from nonalternation to near mastery, with the concepts of causativity and distinctions in transitivity being lexicalized earlier than others. (Author)

A nation's language is on the order of a natural resource--subject, like the other, to depletion, the ravages of pollution, thoughtless neglect. Suggests the development of an American Academy like unto the French Academy which would diligently establish "sure rules to our language, rendering it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and…

Examines onset, atrophy, and possible interaction of a set of patterns in the speech of a child acquiring French and English. Examines how data bear on the question of whether the bilingual child has two distinct production phonologies from the earliest stage. Tests recent claims consonant harmony patterns. (Author/VWL)

In this study, six percent of a 2-year-old child's spontaneous utterances in six 3-hour samples were identified as one of three expressive metalinguistic utterance types: interrogatives, hypothesis tests, and evocative utterances. Evocative utterances were used most frequently. The subject used the strategies to seek nouns 78 percent of the time.…