These transcriptions of children living in a suburb of Paris represent and illustrate linguistic behavior and interests of the average nine-year-old French child. Seventy-nine children in groups of three were recorded in 30-minute periods of free conversation and 10-minute periods of play. Analysis reveals more than 30 centers of interest which…

Since behaviorist conceptions fail to account adequately for the individual's unique reorganization of knowledge and his generation of original sentences, this study was intended to produce a conceptual structure to describe the systematic processes of high-order language events as a basis of a theory of language and teaching practice. It…

In laying the groundwork for a co-operative scientific inquiry in the field of learning sciences the following five areas of access to the study are considered in this introductory inquiry statement: 1) genetic sociology (symbolic systems and early socialization); 2) experimental ethnography (the effect of literacy on the structure of skill and…

This study is concerned with misarticulated speech sounds of children and the phonetic realization of these sounds. The articulation errors of 384 standard-English-speaking school children were analyzed in speech samples obtained by the National Speech and Hearing Survey and were samples of both free speech and of performance on the…

This investigation sought to learn about the oral and written language behavior of students from kindergarten age through grade 7, and to determine the validity of different analytic techniques for measuring children's development in control of syntax. Language samples were collected from 180 children (grades K-3, 5, and 7) by having the children…

The designation of the Japanese word class "joshi" (in English known as particles, post-positional case markers, or relationals) by the term te-ni-wo-ha can be traced to the early superimposition of the Chinese writing system on Japanese speech. Because of the structural differences between the two languages and the existence of elements in…

This paper points out some linguistic and stylistic features of Black English as spoken by children and discusses the occurrence of particular language patterns. Examples of distinct intonation patterns, paralinguistic effects, language rhythm, and other phonological features are all considered. A statistical survey of particular age-group usage…

Argues that children's OV utterances cannot be related transformationally to VO utterances because children initially acquire OV and VO with different sets of verbs, and also argues that L2 acquisition data can be accounted for within a model of L1 structural transfer, without requiring adult learner access to Universal Grammar. (Author/LMO)

Assessed language quality of 15 four-year olds with three conversational partners: a center-care teacher, an older child, and a younger child. Data coded included number of turns, utterances, gaps, statements versus questions, contingent responses, and amount of self-talk. Found that children take more turns with an adult but produce fewer…

This article highlights the link between lexical and phonological acquisition by considering learning by children beyond the 50-word stage and by applying cognitive models of spoken word processing to development. The effects of lexical and phonological variables on perception, production, and learning are discussed in the context of a…

The term "scaffolding" refers to adult behaviors that support and guide children's participation in activities, including speech events, enabling the children to extend the range of what they are able to do without assistance. A study examined how scaffolding behavior in support of expository discourse differed among preschool teachers in…

A case study investigated the emergence of language and language concepts in a bilingual child, a girl aged 16 months to 6 years, 7 months. Observations were made by the child's parents and relatives in the child's home where the mother spoke Finnish and the father English. The report summarizes developments in phonology, morphology, word-level…

Using a comparative and historical approach, this paper examines linguistic perspectives on minority education, specifically language-based explanations for the reading problems of working class minority group students. The paper first discusses the ways in which competence and performance theories of language treat the relation between language…

This study is a detailed analysis of the phonological development of Sylvia, a bilingual child, in her acquisition of American English and Brazilian Portuguese from the age of 1 year, 7 months to 3 years, 8 months. The study is divided into four stages: ages 1.7 - 1.9; 1.9 - 2.1; 2.1 - 2.3; and 2.3 - 2.8. Up to the age of 1.9, the same…

The tradition of reading aloud to children has great intrinsic value and should be continued as part of the language arts program. Five major reasons for reading aloud to children can be gleaned from recent linguistic and psychological research and from folklore and intuition: (1) It allows the modeling of syntactic and phonemic language patterns,…