The idea of semantic features has taken some force within psychology and a number of research workers have suggested that semantic acquisition is, in some manner, determined by semantic components. This notion has come to be called the "semantic feature hypothesis". An examination of the semantic feature hypothesis was made by testing 80…

This paper discusses various theories of the role of memory in vocabulary acquisition and storage. Several research models are described, and theoretical considerations and questions are presented. The lexicon is seen as an element of grammar; an understanding of lexicon organization is important in the understanding of vocabulary acquisition.…

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in American-English work-initial stop consonants, as revealed through instrumental analysis of voice onset time characteristics. Four monolingual children were recorded at approximately two week intervals, beginning when the children were about 1;6. Data provide…

THE LITERATURE ON INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT APPEARS TO ATTRIBUTE TO THE YOUNG CHILD A HIGH LEVEL OF LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT AND A RELATIVELY LOW LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT IN OTHER COGNITIVE SPHERES. IN AN ATTEMPT TO RESOLVE THIS DISCREPANCY, THE AUTHOR ADVANCED THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THE DESCRIPTIONS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT ARE BASED ON AN ANALYSIS OF THE…

Several studies have begun to investigate the claim that children can make most phonological discriminations when they begin to speak. This paper investigates how well children aged 2;3 to 2;11 can discriminate between pairs of minimally different real words, and it shows that the results are affected by how well the children know the words. It is…