The phonetics and phonology of the Kyungsang dialect of Korean is distinct from those of the standard Seoul dialect with regard to segments and lexical pitch. However, whether the distinctive phonetics and phonology of Kyungsang Korean are maintained by younger speakers is questionable due to the increased exposure to Seoul Korean and the…

What are the chances of a dyad of Spanish-speaking strangers using informal address in casual, initial interactions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, today? To discover the pattern(s) of contemporary address, the Principal Investigator (PI) conducted a sociolinguistic experiment focusing on strangers' initial interactions to minimize the influence of…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether children, ages 4-7 assign invariant labels to objects or describe the objects in terms of the context of alternatives. The acquisition of adjective ordering rules and information limits on children's utterances were also examined. (JMB)

Analyzes mothers' speech in free-play interactions with their 12- to 27-month-old children for frequency and type of fantasy relationships. Results indicate that the older the child, the more fantasy talk a mother is likely to use. (EKN)

The development of linguistic politeness in 7- and 9-year-old Italian children was examined. A total of 80 subjects, 40 males and 40 females, produced requests according to different contexts which were graphically presented. Factors considered for such contexts were: sex of the speaker; sex of the addressee; status of the addressee, either peer…

This paper presents a study of metalinguistic awareness in young children. Metalinguistic awareness refers to the child's ability to concentrate on the sounds and patterns of language rather than on its communicative aspects. Metalinguistic awareness was studied by analyzing the verbal play and verbal games of 149 children from 6 months to 10…

Suggests that the increase in older adults (as compared to young adults) of uses of ambiguous reference is not caused by age- or cohort-related differences in knowledge structures needed to determine coreference based on plausibility; availability or weighing of strategies for using anaphoric devices; or assumptions about the degree of specificity…

A study of the babbling and phonological development of 54 infants used half-hour videotape recordings of the children at play in their own homes. The vocal output was phonetically transcribed twice for interrater agreement, and analyzed for the consonants used five times or more in the child's vocal repertoire. These consonants were considered to…

Indicates a greater effect of hospitalization experience on children's general conception of hospital roles and plots than on specific linguistic markers of the sick-room register. Showed that girls performed better in the role of nurse and mother whereas boys performed relatively better in the role of doctor and father. (JD)

A study designed to examine the variation that occurs in the request production of children between the ages of 6 and 7 observed the kind of requests children make, what they request, whom they ask, and how they formulate their ideas. Twenty native French-speaking children divided into two age groups (6- and 7-year-olds) were asked to complete two…

Examined whether kindergarten and first-grade children give sex-biased responses if reinforced and/or triggered by language, specifically pronouns, that they hear. Results supported the pronomial dominance theory of pronoun functioning for young children. Results also suggest that boys but not girls use a self-imaging response to neutral…

A study investigated whether the phonological properties of visually represented words routinely influenced the process of lexical access. Subjects were 40 college students and 40 fourth graders. Results provide little support for the claim that the phonological attributes of words are used standardly to achieve lexical access. (Author/MSE)

Analysis of French spoken by French girls aged 11-12 years found that, unlike older counterparts, theirs shows variable linguistic behavior on the phonological level that suggests avoidance of vernacular forms, the "sociolinguistic gender pattern." However, one speaker's discourse shows manipulation of conversational tone comparable to adult…