This study examined early Hebrew verb acquisition, highlighting CDS-CS relations across inflectional and derivational verb learning. It was carried out on a corpus of longitudinal dense dyadic interactions of two Hebrew-speaking toddlers aged 1;8-2;2 and their parents. Findings revealed correlated patterns within and between CDS and CS corpora in…

The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in…

To express object transfer, Cantonese-speakers use a "ditransitive" ([V-R-T] or [V-T-R] where V = Verb, T = Theme, R = Recipient), or a more complex prepositional/serial-verb (P/SV) construction. Clausal elements in Cantonese datives can be optional (resulting in "full" versus "non-full" forms) or appear in variant…

Analyzes a child's use of word-level phonological constraints in multi-word utterances. The selection and avoidance patterns and modifications of adult forms indicated the presence of a syllable sequencing constraint that governed grammar and word combinations. (Author/CB)

Preschool children aged 2.6 to 5.0 were presented with reversible active and passive sentences in four comprehension test settings. The children's response patterns were analyzed in terms of individual response patterns. Extralinguistic cues accounted for the most common patterns. (Author/AM)

Analyzed correct wh-question production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors in one child's wh-question data. Argues that two current movement rule accounts cannot explain patterning of early wh-questions. Data can be explained by the child's knowledge of particular lexically-specific wh-word+auxiliary combinations, and inversion and universion…

Reports a study of two- and three-year-olds' acquisition of complex sentences with perception and epistemic verbs that took a second verb in their complements. Complement types, complementizer connectives, and the discourse contexts in which complementation occurred were specific to individual matrix verbs. (Author/CB)

Re-analysis of data regarding children's acquisition of tense and aspect indicated that children learning Polish were influenced by aspect in acquiring verb tense in the same way as children were influenced in learning other languages. Children beginning to learn verb inflections found aspectual contour particularly compelling in leading them to…

Explores how children learn the range of aspect inflection to which a verb is amenable. Analyses focus on the children's mastery of Aktionsart specific intersentential patterns. Three conclusions are given based on the study's results. (21 references) (GLR)

Provides evidence for developmental changes in the composition of the lexicon, reflecting a shift in emphasis from reference, to predication, to grammar. Findings show that the study of qualitative variation in lexical style is confounded by quantitative variation in rate of lexical development. Tables are appended. (Contains 42 references.) (JP)

Reports on research on the acquisition of adjectives vs inflectional endings in Italian children. Patterns resulting from a longitudinal study involving two children and an experiment involving 84 children are compared to patterns of adults participating in the latter experiment. (Author/AM)

Tests the prediction that children acquiring left-branching languages will exhibit a preference for backward patterns of anaphora by presenting data from Japanese and Korean which show the prediction to be false. Findings support the view that any directionality preference for anaphora is the same for all languages. (Author/SED)

Investigation of four- through six-year-olds' abilities to correct over-regularized plural nouns and verbs in the past tense showed that, generally, older children performed better than the younger children, and plural nouns were corrected significantly more than past-tense verb forms. Younger children were better at correcting the nouns than the…

Data from a transcript database of 12 children collected in 1-hour samples every month from 1;0 to 3;0 support the hypothesis that there should be strong differences in the frequency and types of errors between pronouns with suppletive nominatives and those without. The suppletive nominative forms "I" and "she" are blocked from overextension in a…

Analysis of 12 Scottish and 12 American 3- to 6-year-olds interacting with adults indicated that, because Scottish adults use the present perfect tense more frequently in their speech to children than American adults do, Scottish children use the tense in their speech long before American children do. (Author/CB)