This article discusses children's phonological limitations, including perceptual difficulties and productive difficulties. (NCR)

Adults and 4-year-old children were tested to determine whether the children were able to decode sets of familiar minimal pairs as well as adults. They listened to words spoken in a normal voice and a whisper. Indications were that the 4-year-old's perceptual mastery of English phonology is not yet complete. (SW)

Reports research which shows that a wide gap exists between basal reader language and children's level of oral language development. (JM)

In two studies involving seven developmentally disabled children aged 7-14, phonetic sounds and syntactic structures representing different levels of normal development were taught. Results showed that the children's sequence of learning language forms followed the normal developmental model (e.g., earlier emerging forms were acquired in fewer…

Reveals that young children acquiring Mandarin Chinese differentiate subject from topic, even though Chinese is a "topic-prominent" language. Data are based on results of a standardized, elicited imitation test of 95 Chinese children in Taiwan. Subjects between 2 years, 6 months and 5 years of age responded to coordinate as well as…

A study compared the Swedish tone accent acquisition of native-speaking children (N=2) and nonnative speaking college students (N=12). Both groups overgeneralized one pitch pattern to all bisyllabic words. Children used "Accent 2" (two-peaked) and adults "Accent 1" (one-peaked), analogous to the prevailing patterns of their…

Infants were tested for unimanual handedness at weekly intervals for a 14-week period beginning with the week of onset of duplicated syllable babbling. Group analyses indicating effects of sex and/or birth order on fluctuations and date review for individual infants suggested considerable variability across infants in occurrence and/or timing of…

Examines the syntactic complexity and grammatical transformations used by students of English as a foreign language. Suggests that they use and expand syntactic structures in a manner similar to native speakers. (EL)

This discussion centers on language development in young children particularly as it relates to Piaget's work. The author believes guidelines are lacking for describing structurally the outcome of the language acquisition process at different stages and that there should be more collaboration between linguists and psychologists in this area. (MS)

This study tested the hypothesis that the reported increase in children's use of prepositional phrases when exposed to novel (inverted) prepositional phrases could be eliminated by discrimination training in two prepositional forms. (Author/MS)

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

A study of the acquisition of interrogative forms in children of high socioeconomic status reveals that utterances belong more to the colloquial than to the standard range. It is concluded that disadvantaged children would show similar usage, leading to the suggestion that teachers teach language as they use it. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

Two transitional phases in the child's early language development are described; the first occurs between prelinguistic vocalization and one-word speech and the second between one-word and patterned speech. Cognitive, linguistic and affective inputs to the acquisition of reference and syntax are discussed in the light of the transitional…